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during a period of rapid population growth from the twelfth to the early fourteenth century. During this time the lower strata of society emerged as a distinctive element in village population. Later, in many villages more than two-thirds of the population belonged to this group. This high percentage explains why the sub-stratum of society became so influential, sometimes even decisive, in shaping the physiognomy and economy of many settlements. But perhaps the foremost impression which comes from a reading of this work, with its broad basis of published and unpublished sources, is that of the diversity of village types even within a small area. Political and territorial, adminis- trative and legal variety, are mirrored in the village so that the natural conditions and possibilities of the country seem to appear only as a formal stage setting, For this reason the author does not attempt a typology of villages.

Grees tries to distinguish the village sub-stratum by identifying the Selde, whose owner, the Seldner, stands between the Buuer (farmer) and the Beisitzer (tenant) in the rural hierarchy. The functions of the lower classes were characterized by a degree of unifor- mity. The “co-operation” between the farmer with his much larger acreage and the Seldner should be mentioned first: the Seldner provided the necessary day labour during agricultural peak seasons, while the farmer with his draught animals was responsible for ploughing the land of the Seldner. But apart from this the Seldner served the villsge and its surroundings as craftsman; he was also employed by the village community as shepherd, swineherd and in many other capacities. Smiths, millers or brewers often owned a Selde for subsistence farming. Generally, however, the spinning and weaving of flax and hemp was the most widespread trade of the Seldner. The highest percentages were always to be found in villages open to newcomers and in villages which also served as administrative, ecclesiastical and economic centres of larger regions. One of the many merits of this study is that it stresses the horizontal and also, especially, the vertical mobility of this class. Certainly it represented the most dynamic and fluctuating element in village society.

Grees gives a statistical assessment of this class in different areas and then discusses over thirty case studies of individual villages. His maps are abundant and excellent. The reviewer sometimes wished for more data of an economic type. A detailed index-at least of the place-names-would have improved the book considerably. But apart from this, the study must be considered a major contribution to the geography of settlement and to historical social geography. The author of such an outstanding work ought not therefore to feel bound to apologize that his book is not a more “relevant” statement; this might be refuted in any case. The often harshly stratified society of village com- munities has passed, but the buildings which reflected it usually still exist. The evolution of this heritage is without doubt a subject worthy of study.

University of Heidelberg URSULA EWALD

DEREK J. ODDY and DEREK S. MILLER (Eds), The Making of the Modern British Diet (London: Croom Helm, 1976. Pp. 235. E6.95) ARTHUR J. TAYLOR (Ed.), The Standard of Living in Britain in the Industrial Revolution (London: Methuen, Debates in Economic History Series, 1975. Pp. lv+216. 55.40 and g2.90 softback)

“The controversy as to living standards during the Industrial Revolution has perhaps been of most value when it has passed from the somewhat unreal pursuit of the wage rates of hypothetical average workers and directed attention to articles of consump- tion . . . [such as] . . . food.” With these words of E. P. Thompson’s (reprinted on p. 144 of Taylor’s volume) in mind, one opens Oddy and Miller’s The Making of the Modern British Diet with eager anticipation. This work is addressed to the specific question of the role of food during industrialization and urbanization in Britain. The essays, some of which have appeared elsewhere, stem from a series of research papers read to an inter- disciplinary group of historians, nutritionists and food scientists, and follow in the

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tradition of Yudkin and McKenzie’s Changing Food Habits (1964) and Our Changing Fare (1966) by Barker, McKenzie and Yudkin.

The essays are grouped into three sections : commodity studies, studies of consumption (including standards of living and consumer preference) and studies of nutritional subjects. The range of dietary items considered is wide, from such essentially English foods as Huntley and Palmer’s ginger nuts to basics such as bread and meat. The diet for the reader is equally varied; it includes some essays that contain all the elements of a healthy diet-full of energy and stimulating-some that are stodgy with little palatability and others that have elements that might even lead to decay of health (how far should we accept the use of abbreviations such as “RTE cereals”?). This curate’s egg is costly at 26.95.

All the essays are short and the most successful are those where the authors have made original contributions to a clearly defined subject. It is invidious to place them in order, but T. L. Richardson’s, E. H. Whetham’s and A. E. Dingle’s papers are surely among the best. Richardson examines the standard of living of agricultural labourers in Kent from 1790 to 1840. He constructs a cost of living index from provisions accounts of parish poorhouses and workhouses, and assesses wages from the labour accounts of Cobham Hall Estate. The study is deliberately specific to this occupational group, area and period. Within this context Richardson demonstrates that those in regular employ- ment were only able to regain and improve on their 1790 position after 1825; for the many who suffered seasonal unemployment the position was distinctly harsh.

E. H. Whetham also links her essay to a specific topic, the London milk trade between 1900 and 1930. In an admirably argued and lucid way, she traces the interrelations between the extension of the market area, pressures to ensure quality of the product and reorganization of its distribution. One is sad that a line or lines on p. 67 of this essay have been omitted by the printer. A. E. Dingle’s study on drink and working-class living standards between 1870 and 1914 discusses the consumption trends, and the dietary contribution and calories foregone by expenditure on alchohol rather than foodstuffs. He sees the consumption peak of the 1870s as an outlet for the ready money of the wage- earner at a time when money wages for skilled workers were rising and temporarily exceeded the supply of available consumer goods other than basic needs. Later, when real wages increased through falling prices, an increase in the standard of living entered the family through the household purse rather than through the drinking habits of the head of the family.

Essays such as these are offset by others of less interest. Some of those on commodities and consumption are straightforward accounts; others, by aiming too high, fall short. What can really be said of the development of the meat industry in thirteen pages if the time scale considered extends from the beginning of agriculture to the present and the commodities range from the lion and crocodile to more usual forms of meat-including human flesh? The statement that “the meat trade concerned with the consumption of human flesh has completely disappeared” I found tantalizing; for elucidation of the nicer points of cannibalism I turned to Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. Finally, one must admit that the section containing essays on nutritional topics is the least successful. D. J. Oddy deveIops the theme of working-class diet between 1880 and 1914, and D. S. Miller stresses the difficulties of carrying out dietary surveys at the present time let alone in an historical context, but Yudkin’s contribution is frankly condescending. The editors may argue that historians until now have lacked sufficient basic nutritional knowledge, but this essay, which uses analogies of fueling a motor car, is of school-book level. It certainly does not fit the claim of being a research paper.

One moves from this book to A. .I. Taylor’s The Standard ofLiuing in Britain in the Industrial Revolution with mixed feelings. Here, with the reprinting of seven major articles on the standard of living controversy, one is moving from a varied diet to one of sustained and scholarly value. But is the diet perhaps overfamiliar; is it a question of “lovely rice pudding for dinner again” ? The volume includes contributions by Gilboy,

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Tucker, Ashton, Hobsbawm, Hartwell, E. P. Thompson and Neale, together with a comprehensive and excellent introduction by Taylor and two essays in postscript by Hobsbawm, and by Hartwell and Engerman. Hobsbawm’s postscript is short. He now sees the question at issue in his debate with Hartwell as trivial; but in so far as the debate stimulated research into what happened to the British people during the Industrial Revolu- tion, it was certainly not fruitless. Hartwell and Engerman, consciously pedagogical, explore the underlying economic framework of some of the pessimistic stances. Neither of these essays contain new research.

The importance of this classic debate to historiography is undoubted and for this reason the encapsulation of these papers in a single volume may be welcomed. But the majority are already easily available and it would be sad if their re-issue in collected form should over-direct attention introspectively into this part of intellectual history and away from the need, stressed so often in this volume, for analyses-such as Richard- son’s in the first of these two books-specific to time, locality and economic sector. The variety is more characteristic than the mean.

Newnham College, Cambridge LUCY ADRIAN

CHRISTOPHER TA~OR, Fields in the English Landscape (London: Dent, Archaeology in the Field Series, 1975. Pp. 174. f5.95)

As the author states, this book is not intended for the researcher but for the general reader enquiring into that most fundamental feature of the English rural landscape, the fields themselves. Mr Taylor has tackled a task surprisingly never before attempted and his admirably well-written, concise and clear exposition will be invaluable for those interested in the social and economic necessities of the men who made and constantly re-shaped fields.

Readers who have come to know Christopher Taylor as a first-rate field archaeologist with a shrewd eye for landscape will be disappointed to discover that, rather curiously, he has not written the book with his boots still muddy from the fields and his field note- book ready at hand. Instead, he writes on fields as historical abstractions rather than as a major theme of economic history and he has little to say on the almost endless variety of fences used to demarcate and enclose them, such as the great double-banks of Devon, the Wealden shaws and stone-walled fields wrested from the rocks of English moorland, which to the perceptive historical geographer are important clues to the cultural origin of settlers, to the environment and to the functioning of communities.

In short, the visual evidence of the past afforded by fields, and the ways in which they permeate the whole of human history, are not fully exploited by Mr Taylor; his approach does not fully live up to the title of his book or to the series of which it is a part. Never- theless, if he has not given us quite the book we expected or want, Mr Taylor’s synthesis is a well-digested quart of information in a pint-size of paper. For this his readers will be grateful.

The Polytechnic of North London PETER BRANDON

The Americas

GEORGE F. ANDREWS, Maya Cities: Placemaking and Urbanization (Norman, Oklahoma : University of Oklahoma Press, Civilization of the American Indian Series, 1975. Pp. 468. $20.00)

This lavishly illustrated and handsomely produced work is essentially a pictorial record of seventeen sites selected by the architect-author as being representative of lowland