1271 – 1599: Wool Standard

            The English Agricultural Records begin to quantify commodity prices in 1271, namely wool.  The commodity listing jumps from 10 in the first section to 209 in this section (Figure 2.3).  Harvest reports along with the commodity listing dwarf the other categories, with rain being the closest category to them.  The important thing to note in this section is that it is only 328 years long – as opposed to the first category that was 1050.  The details are becoming much more specific as the economic trend is becoming important to English society.  Wool is their number one commodity, and its price is recorded almost every year.

            Figure 2.3 is slightly misleading because the counts under commodity listed dwarfs the other categories.  Two hundred and fifty-five harvest years are reported showing a weighting to the favorable crops.  But again, it is not the intent of a content analysis to infer the years that are not recorded.  It is important to point out that the pattern or focus of records has changed significantly from the first section.  It is interesting that the Little Ice Age (~AD 1300 - 1850), which begins in this segment, does not begin to slant the coding until later (Fagan, 2000) .