Quoygrew - a settlement of farmers and fishers on the island of Westray
in Orkney - was continuously occupied from the tenth century until 1937.
Focusing on the archaeology of its first 700 years, this volume explores
how 'small worlds' both reflected and impacted the fundamental
pan-European watersheds of the Middle Ages: the growth of population,
economic production and trade from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries
and the subsequent economic and demographic retrenchment of the
fourteenth to fifteenth centuries. Concurrently, it addresses the nature
of island societies, with distinctive identities shaped by the interplay
of isolation and interconnectedness.