Perceptions of Medieval Settlement
Medieval archaeologists, possessing elements of the landscape and the buildings of the past, together with a good knowledge of the historical context, can recover many aspects of the way that space was perceived in the past. A phenomenological approach has been applied not only to castles, but also to the mundane world of peasants. Phenomenology emphasizes the experience of the world whereas archaeologists have been no less interested in the way in which that experience was manipulated and also in the competing ideas of space. Examples of encultured landscapes examined include natural places, gentry houses, village tofts, liminal places, and sites of pilgrimage. Drawing upon the evidence of place-names and documents, as well as the archaeological remains, it has been possible to reconstruct how people conceived of and experienced the world around them.