Some Thoughts on the Origin of the Open Field System in Switzerland and Its Development in the Middle Ages

Abstract

This paper is concerned with one of the central questions of open-field research, namely whether the original forms of the subsequent open field systems in Switzerland can be identified and how the process evolved into its mature form. Another related question is that of the maximum territorial distribution, which remains as much unanswered for Switzerland as, according to Hildebrand (1980, p. 13), it does for the rest of Central Europe. The origins of the open-field phenomenon in Switzerland have never yet been systematically investigated or demonstrated with the exception of Grosjean's field map in the Atlas of Switzerland and the following postulates are therefore, at least in part, necessarily hypothetical and provisional.