Medieval demography: Encyclopedia II - Medieval demography - Science and art of medieval demography

Medieval demography - Science and art of medieval demography

The science of medieval demography is a fairly new one, but one that has received considerable attention lately, in particular with interest in the social issues of the Middle Ages in the later part of the 20th century. Most modern scholarly works today contain a section or chapter on the demographics of a particular town, region or kingdom. Because the sources traditionally used for demographics, such as marriage, birth and death records are generally not available for this period, scholars rely on other sources, which can roughly be broken down in to two categories: field data (archaeological) and written records.

Examples of field data include the physical size of a settlement, and how it grows over time. The appearance, or disappearance, of settlements, for example after the Black Death the archaeological record shows the abandonment of upwards of 25% of all villages in Spain. However there are problems that limit the use of archaeological data. It is often difficult to assign a precise age to discoveries. As well, some of the largest and most important sites are still occupied and can not be investigated, thus limiting the archaeological record to the more peripheral regions, for example early Middle Ages Viking burials at Sutton Hoo for which otherwise no records exist.

Because of the limitations of field data, most of what is known about Medieval demographics comes from written records, which can be categorized into descriptive accounts, and administrative accounts. Descriptive accounts include those left by chroniclers when they wrote of the size of armies, victims of war or famine, participants in an oath. However, many of these accounts were embellishments, and thus act as supporting evidence and never taken factually on their own.

The most important written accounts are those taken from administrative records. These accounts are more objective and accurate because the motivations for writing them were not to influence others. These records can be divided in to two categories: surveys and serial documents. Surveys cover an estate or region on a particular date, kind of like a modern inventory. Manorial surveys were very common throughout the Middle Ages, in particular in France and England, but faded as serfdom gave way to a money economy. Fiscal surveys came with the rise of the money economy, the most famous and earliest being the Domesday Book in 1086. The Book of Hearths from Italy in 1244 is another example. The largest fiscal survey was of France in 1328. As kings continued to look for new ways to raise money, these fiscal surveys increased in number and scope over time. Surveys have limitations, because they cover only a snapshot in time they do not give long term trends, and they tend to exclude elements of society.

Serial records come in different forms. The earliest are from the 8th century and are land conveyances such as sales, exchanges, donations, and leases. Other types of serial records include death records from religious institutions, Book of the Dead (late 14th century onward), and baptism registrations.Other helpful records include heriots, court records, food prices and rent prices, from which inferences can be made.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Science and art of medieval demography", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki