Research by historians on the genesis of agrarian structures of a certain region has traditionally been based on the very broad typological definitions of geographers, their aim being to establish when and how an openfield landscape of intermingling patches of woodland, small enclosed fields and hedgerows known as bocage, and vice versa. The reasons for those historical transformations are usually traced to socioeconomic or/and institutional upheavals. Underlying that type of approach of the history of landscapes is the search for simple linear causalities, i.e. logical causal relations over a long period of time, wich ignore infinitely changing and complex reality of a landscape system. The loose concepts of "openfield" or "bocage" can be an hindrance to an historical understanding of this complexity and diversity. My current research had led me to consider the significance of taking this complexity into account through an analysis of the evolution of the lands cultivated by a rural community (territoires agraires) and subject to the communal rule of a parish (un finage), in the Orleans section of the Beauce (France) in medieval and modern times.
