The openfield is a term of geography which indicates a agrarian Paysage with open fields. The French-speaking geographers decided to resort to this English term to avoid the French word corresponding (Campagne or champagne) that the multiple directions and the toponymic use made too ambiguous.

One should not confuse the landscape of openfield (always existing) and the social organization who generates this landscape (in particular the joint organization of certain agricultural tasks, which disappeared today in France). Thus the current landscape of openfield is the witness of a last social organization.

Simple definition:

A landscape of openfield is a landscape of fields open to a grouped habitat.

Characteristics of the openfield

The great characteristics of this landscape are the uniformity of the pieces - in thin straps for example - and the absence of fences around the fields or trees in the fields. This landscape often implies a habitat grouped in Village-heap or Village-street. In areas of Plaine S, as in Alsace, this absence of Arbre is marked so much that one can see the Clocher close Village.

The will of organization and centralization of the territory is strong in this type of structure, either the roads on the basis of the village are laid out out of star and reach each end of the Finage or it exists only one street around which all the dwellings are bound (in valleys and banks mainly). This village centralization will be explained further.

The villages themselves are very tightened, they describe a nuclear organization, which allowed the pooling of certain resources, like thatches of cereals left with the herd of the village.

The origin of these landscapes

Rare today, the Assolement was a principal feature of the openfields, fining was divided into 3 parts: the Sole S. the rotation consisted then of a rotation of the plates, biennial in the Mediterranean regions, triennial in the more moderate areas. One cultivated for example on a plate of corn, on another of the oats and the third was left one year in fallow. The year according to one made turn the cultures. This system had three advantages:

• the ground was not impoverished.
• the agricultural work could be organized in a collective way: all the corn pieces were harvested at the same time.
• the poor peasants and without ground had the right of glaner the harvested fields without one being able to fear that they are useful in the not harvested fields. They had also the right to bring to feed their animals in the harvested plates, it was what one called common grazing land the “”.

The first openfields would have appeared towards Mainz around year 800. They will be spread in Europe until XVe century.

The system was called into question to the 18th century, initially to England by the right of Enclosure, then to France by the Revolution which declared crowned the private property and released the ground owners of the collective constraints inherited the Old mode.

But the openfield did not deteriorate. At the 20th century it proved to be an agrarian landscape completely adapted to intense agricultural mechanization.

However, forms close to agrarian organization still exist in many Third World countries.

The field of openfield of Northern Europe

This type of Agrarian structure is most common in Europe. It occupies the major part of the Germany, the Belgium, the Bohème, the Hungary, the Poland.

• In France, it characterizes the areas of the Is and of the Northern . One particularly finds it in Artois, in Picardy, Beauce, Brie and Champagne where it gave its name to the old province. One also finds it in Normandy, in the countryside of Neubourg and the countryside of Caen, and Berry in the champagne berrichonne.
• In Belgium, it characterizes the landscapes of the Hesbaye.

External bonds

Community
• opened Fields, practices and villages in alignments in the north of the Loire-Atlantique: microphone-companies fossilized in the West of the woodlands *Les rural buildings in their environment in scrap-metal country and country of openfield

Random links:

Clitourps | Glossary of archeology/letter B | Tim Duncan | Cook Castilian | Javier Navarro