Abstract

Recent work in Hampshire by RCHME arose out of work
carried out by Birmingham University in the East
Midlands. This has been reported in this journal (Lewis
& Mitchell Fox 1992, 1993) and is now approaching final
publication by Manchester University Press (Lewis,
Mitchell Fox & Dyer forthcoming). The East Midlands
project highlighted the incomplete nature and variable
quality of the existing state of knowledge of medieval
settlement. Many known settlements, In particular nonshrunken
and dispersed types, are excluded from present
archaeological recording systems, and much of the
information about known settlements is still scattered
through different sources, and often dispersed in different
places in the same source. As a result, it is very difficult
and time-consuming even to quantify, let alone assess,
the evidence for medieval settlement in any particular
place.