Agrarisch woon-werkverkeer in zeventiende-eeuws Sinaai. De ruimtelijke organisatie van landerijen op het vroegmoderne Vlaamse platteland

Abstract

Rural commuter traffic in seventeenth-century Sinaai. The geographical organisation of farmlands on the early modern Flemish countryside. Although historians have assumed a general, conscious dispersal of the parcels belonging to a medieval or early modern holding over the village lands, empirical research on the geographical organisation of farmlands, especially for the Low Countries, remains scarce. However, this in-depth case study of a typical early modern Flemish village, on the basis of an unique village land register and by means of GIS and spatial analysis methods, demonstrates that the striving for scattering was not ubiquitous. Moreover, in this village, besides the already identified factors, the location of the parcels cultivated by individual villagers also varied according to the type of their holdings and their divergent income strategies.