Landscape and Lifestyle. The economic and social foundations of medieval Europe were based on agriculture. Time was regulated according to seasons for plowing and harvesting, picking fruits, or collecting wood. A drought or flood, hail storm, or wildfire could have disastrous consequences for medieval peasants and, by extension, all those who depended on them for labor and produce: nobles, clergymen, and town dwellers. Moreover, the technology available to medieval Europeans to alter their environment and provide against climatic shifts was limited compared to that with which most modern Westerners are familiar. Dams, dikes, and aqueducts to direct water supplies and drain land fell out of use during the early Middle Ages as Europeans gradually lost the engineering knowledge of the Roman Empire. For earthmoving equipment medieval Europeans had carts and wheelbarrows; to put out fires, they relied on buckets of water or firebreaks prepared...