Regiones

Regiones (singular: regio) or provinciae,(singular: provincia), also referred to by historians as small shires or early folk territories, were early territorial divisions of Anglo-Saxon England, referred to in sources such as Anglo-Saxon charters and the writings of Bede. They are likely to have originated in the years before 600, and most evidence for them occurs in sources from or about the 7th century.

Regiones were self-sufficient units of mixed subsistence agriculture consisting of scattered settlements producing the range of foodstuffs and other forms of produce necessary to support their population. They formed the defined territories of tribes or similar social groupings and were the building-blocks around which the larger Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were governed.

Regiones gradually fragmented in the later Anglo-Saxon period as land was granted into private or ecclesiastical ownership by charter, and the smaller manors that emerged were gradually re-organised for military purposes into hundreds and the larger shires that later evolved into counties. The patterns of obligation that characterised regiones were often retained between successor manors, however, and their traces can be seen in many of the sokes, thanages, liberties, baronies and other administrative and ecclesiastic divisions that characterised later medieval society.

Some historians have identified regiones with the concept of the Anglo-Saxon multiple estate. Others have argued that, while similarly organised, multiple estates represent a later stage of territorial organisation, after the concept of folkland or tribal occupation and obligation began to be replaced by that of bookland or documented private ownership.

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