How did East Sussex Really Appear in 1066? The Cartographic Evidence

Abstract

Military history has provided significant insight into the factors determining the outcome of armed conflict through time. At the same time, it often fails to adequately assess variables unrelated to historical accounts per se that may contribute to military outcomes. For example, in 1066, English and Norman forces engaged in a decisive battle near Hastings, U.K. Numerous historical accounts have chronicled this event, using a combination of eyewitness and participant testimony, as well as written records, and art forms. Few, however, have paid significant attention to the role of the local landscape in shaping events. In the case of Hastings, the battlefield itself provides an example of the way in which geography can contribute to our understanding of historical events. By applying environmental sources and a regressive cartographic analysis, this study demonstrates that there is, in fact, considerable evidence to suggest how the landscape appeared back to the time of the battle. This finding is significant, insofar as it opens the door to new research on the Battle of Hastings which may shed additional light on the events that occurred there and the factors that influenced the outcome of this crucial conflict in British history. It also reveals the importance of applying new methodological approaches to traditional disciplines such as history, to deepen and expand existing analysis.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.