oakfed

Re: Star Mapping software: You call THIS progress?

I'm not sure if it's possible; will a 16-bit program run in Windows 7' date=' under any circumstances?[/quote']

 

32-bit Windows 7 (and Vista) can run 16-bit programs. 64-bit Windows 7 (and Vista) can't. You'd have to run it in a VM of some kind - either XP Mode (which isn't included in Home Premium, the most common version of Windows 7 on consumer PCs) or another program. Virtualbox and Virtual PC are both free - though you'll need a copy of Windows to install in the VM.

Re: Medieval Farming Villages

Yes - acres are not linear lengths' date=' but areas...[/quote']

Late replying to this...

 

Actually, although an acre is indeed an area measure, there was a linear length associated with the acre - the furlong, which was the customary length of a plowed strip. It's 40 rods long.

 

Similarly, the breadth of an acre was 4 rods (sometimes called a chain).

 

A rod was about 18 feet; it was the width of one strip in the field. Peasants were allocated specific strips in the common fields - scattered about, not contiguous. 4 strips were considered to make up an acre.

 

Like all medieval measures, though, rods, furlongs, and acres were not standardized and varied from place to place (even in the same field, not all the strips were the same length, because they had to fit the contours of the land, but they were all considered 'furlongs'.)

Re: Medieval Farming Villages

Here's a summary of Norman English village sizes from 'Domesday Book and Beyond', an old but as far as I know still accurate treatise on the Domesday book statistics:

The minimum size village considered sufficient to provide for one knight was a '10-hide' village. The Saxons had set the minimum land for 'thegn-right' at 5 hides. Coincidently, large numbers of the villages listed in Domesday Book have 5 or 10 hides. (Aside: the Saxon 'hundred', an administrative division of a shire, was called because it theoretically had villages with 100 hides).

A hide is a unit of both area and taxation.

Area-wise, a hide is usually considered to be 120 (cultivated) acres. A hide had four virgates (30 acres); a typical villein (about 1/2 the peasant families) held a virgate, though some had as much as a hide, while the rest - bordars and cottars - made do with less than a virgate, or no land at all (and made their living as hired labour).

You have to be careful with the hides in Domesday book, though, because they were used primarily for taxation. We know a lot about taxation in Norman England because of Domesday Book (which was compiled so the Normans could continue to collect the Danegeld as the Saxons had done; the Danegeld was assessed on hides.) As units of taxation, hides had flexible areas. Large swathes of England were either punitively or beneficiently 'hidated' - assessed 'for geld' at more or less hides than usual, as punishment or reward.