This work maps the cultural and physical divisions of medieval England. It concentrates on the level of hierarchy immediately above individual local societies, using detailed case studies of networks of linked communities in the East Midlands, the South and East Anglia. The societies studied are respectively on the periphery of a "cultural province", central to another such province and linked closely to a major urban centre. The text is a synthesis of modern continental historical scholarship, social anthropological and geographical techniques, and English medieval history. Included in the investigations are findings about the role of women in defining the sense of local community during the medieval period.