>> Old Sartar, that is, the dark orange territory. Both Old and New
>> Sartar have closer to 400 hexes, or an average of 500 people per
>> hex, allowing for a few mountain hexes.
> OK, I give -- counting them, there's 366, of which 20 are mountain, > and some monstrous number are hills.
Deduct population for 7 cities and about a dozen stockades with denser populations, allow for 2/3 population in hill hexes, and voila - same average numbers again. Also note that hillsides may make better fields under the plow than lowlands, for reasons mentioned in the plowing discussion.
>> [the iron age village at Hjemsted] was surrounded by acres, then
>> pasture, marsh, forest (admittedly little) and heath. None of these
>> were left unused.
> Sure, but I'll bet money not at the same densities of either people or > productivity.
At its peak, the village had something like 15 steads, with probably a good dozen people each - or in other numbers, it supported about ten full time warriors at one time, which calculates to about 200 inhabitants in toto to support them. (That was, coincidentally, just before the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain, which is said to have included Iutes as well.) Distance to the next market place didn't change, you get one of two or three villages you can place in a hex, with the necessary amount of rough terrain around. This way, population numbers in Sartar are about just justifiable, though definitely at the upper limit of evidence.
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