Let's say I have a small village with 100 people of which everyone is able to work, what kind of professions do these people need?
Background to the society: they are as smart as medieval people, with an almighty god ruling them through a strict religious code.
Assuming it is independent and not a satellite settlement (a satellite community is far far more likely) there is only one job, farmer. there is not enough people to support specialized labor. (note farmer might be shepherd or fisher in a coastal settlement, but the point is they primarily produce food.) Maybe, maybe they have a blacksmith, although a hundred is is a pretty small number to support a full time blacksmith so more than likely they are part time, the rest of their time will be spent either farming or herding (and farming to feed them).
100 people is not a village, it's not a town, it only qualifies as a hamlet because there is no word for something smaller. because there is so few people there is no need for social infrastructure. It is basically band living, everyone knows everyone else intimately, moral control is communal because everyone knows everyone else and can shun an offender. You are looking at less than 20 homes in the entire settlement, probably less.
With very small communities there just is not enough surplus food production to support specialized labor. different people will have different talents (Bob is a better tanner and John is a better potter) but everyone does every job but their first job is still to feed themselves. The closest thing to specialization you will have is side projects, Dave may keep bees while Harry has a pole lathe for making bowls, but in both cases these are small side projects, the majority of their time is spent farming. Everyone farms, everyone hunts or fishes, everyone makes pottery, everyone is a carpenter, everyone is a brewer, everyone makes candles and clothing. Some jobs will be collective, several guys may get together to make a kiln or raise a barn but it is a community project.
If they are a satellite community their job is to harvest whatever resource the satellite community is built around, mining, lumberjacking, building a castle, ect. food is likely imported at some lords expense. Then you will have service jobs and administrator, a whorehouse, a brewer, and a church. Their will not be as many families in such a community and more single men.
My rough calculations.
the settlement mentioned has at most 20 farms likely less. I have seen estimates of around 10-15% surplus (literally a tithe) with an 8 oxen wheeled plow, the best system available. Assuming a farm feeds a family, that means 20 farms with an advanced plow can manage to support 1-2 other families. One of those will be your blacksmiths family. Then you need to feed the oxen which is more than a single farm can manage, so you lose a decent chunk of the remainder feeding the oxen. so I am estimating 1 specialist family per 20 farms. However yields were unstable so that is probably generous, if you have a bad year and too many specialists they might starve, so having the blacksmith also bring in food by other means is more stable, especially if 20 farms is an overestimate.
Unlike the main answers, we actually do see a few specialized professions even in small villages. This is true both for the middle ages and for contemporary indigenous people.
Most importantly, there would be a priest. Even small villages have a shaman, witch doctor, priest or other religious figurehead.
According to some historical research, productivity in agriculture being low in the middle ages, about 70% of the people needed to work in food production. That gives your 100 people village about 30 people who do not have to be full-time farmers. Most of those people will be small children, but I would estimate that your village can afford a dozen or so people who have food production as a hobby at most (say, the priest also has bees).
The other thing we know from historical research is that peasants in the middle ages were highly self-sufficient. They knew how to make their own clothes, how to deliver babies, apply whatever counted as medicine and how to build a shack. They would slaughter animals by themselves and barter with their neighbours instead of looking for a supermarket.
You would look to the professions that are highly specialized and can't be done "as an aside".
Making shoes is one such thing. They are very useful to have and good shoes are much more difficult to make than clothes or rope or pottery.
Furniture is another thing. Basic carpentry will be something most people can do, but making a proper table and benches or chairs, as well as specialized items that require proper craftsmanship, such as parts of a mill, would require a proper carpenter.
Your village might be too small for its own blacksmith, but this would be another profession you could find, because of the investment in tools, furnace, etc. that is needed, it is unlikely that everyone does a bit of smithing.
There might be a village sherrif or major or both combined - someone to enforce rules, but you're on the edge there. The community probably functions well without and doesn't need one, but it isn't too far from a size where such a position would appear.
Then there are specialists like a herbalist/apothecary or a teacher that at this size may or may not exist and may or may not be a part-time position of someone who also has a (smaller) farm.
Finally, there are a few farming-related professions that your village might have, such as a miller. Again, like the blacksmith the reason for this isn't that the job is so special, but that one mill or smithy shared by the village is better than everyone having their own.
If it is variety you are after, don't forget that "food production" is an entire field by itself. Some people grow crops, some have a vegetable garden, some have an orchard of fruit trees. There is also hunting, trapping and fishing. There are different kinds of animals to keep, shear, slaughter and make into meat and leather. Even the 70+ people in your village who are food producers are unlikely to all be doing the exact same things.
Need? At a minimum, and assuming this is not a village featured in the medieval version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, this small population village needs farms raising a suitably broad range of foodstuffs for the populace to have a healthy diet via bartering.
Many villages of this size might support itinerant peddlers and tradesman providing many of the other services useful for the village -- rag and bone man collecting rags, bones, and bits of scrap metal (they might double as tinkers too), traveling blacksmith fixing and making tools, traveling Ferrier if the residents have horses for working their land, tinkers to repair metal pots and pans.
Then maybe a cooper to make barrels for storing food for winter and transportation to markets for sale, and wheelwrights, and carpenters.
I agree with John that such a small village would probably consist of farmers, farmers, and farmers.
Except if the people are Humans or similar they were have two genders with somewhat different roles and a ranges of ages.
So probably the jobs would be farm husband, farm wife, farm hand, farm wife's assistant, farmer's little boy, farmer's little girl, old farm woman, and old farm man, which makes eight jobs in all.
Most of the farm hands and farm wife's assistants would be working for their parents, but some might be working for other families, presumably for room and board.
Presumably the farm husbands, farm wives, farm hands, & farm wives' assistants, would be numerous enough to do almost all of the work, with some assistance, "assistance", meddling, and advice from the other groups.
A village of that size would not have any professions, just crafts, trades and occupations.
The majority of the work would be done by women, and, as today, would mainly not be recognised as work - making and repairing clothes, rearing children , preparing food, brewing, baking, looking after livestock etc.
The most important person for future generations would be the midwife, who will be main determinant of mortality rate. (Though you might well geta midwife to come from the next village)
EDIT: To expand: what I'm trying to get at is the modern assumption that everyone has a job and a job title. That comes later. On this type of society there is little specialisation, but some people may have specific skills. Uncle Fred makes charcoal and shares it with the others, Aunt Mary always attends women in childbirth, Cousin Paul will help with building the walls of your hovel. It's an informal economy and you may be butchering a calf in the morning, fishing trout in the afternoon and smoking pork in the evening without being a butcher, fisherman or smoker.
With that small of a group most would be farmers. Some of them might have a sideline like being a blacksmith in addition to being a farmer. Every family would be able to do some craft work like spinning thread or wool, sewing, carpentry, Leather work including tanning, and so on.
The population would probably have to reach a few thousand to allow things like full time blacksmiths, furniture makers, doctors, brewers, bakers, and so on.
You forgot the major rule-enforcer, the village priest. It might not be exactly commercial in nature but it's certainly a profession and is one of the few people the slight excess food production will go toward supporting.
They've already answered above saying that food would be their priority and that their professions would depend on whether the community is a satellite settlement or not, but also keep into account how many adults you have.
Babies can't work, and children can only lend a hand with less physically-demanding tasks such as fetching water; herding geese, sheep, or goats; gathering fruit, nuts, or firewood; walking and watering horses; fishing; tending a vegetable or herb garden; making or mending clothes; churning butter; brewing beer; and helping with the cooking.
Teens can help with more difficult tasks, such as goading the ox in the fields while an adult handles the plough, and they might babysit. But this all depends on the settlement's population pyramid. If you say there are 100 able-bodied and -minded adults, then your population is probably actually larger than 100 because there are both young and old people that you aren't taking into the equation.
If you've got 100 people total, counting babies and children and teens and young adults and adults and elderly people, then your workforce will probably be halved at the very least, assuming the population pyramid is a healthy one (a larger number of younger people than older people).
If you had ever played Banished, you'd have skipped this question and asked how many of each for a given population size, and you'd know the temporal order in which the professions are important.
Farms, farms, and more farms? Not w/o seeds, and probably not before the fishery, and definitely not before hunting and gathering. Roam out into the wilderness expecting to subsistence farm your way, and you'll all die from starvation by no later than next summer.
If there's one profession this game is missing, it's bakers. But by the time someone builds an oven, to feed other people, I suppose the town would be large enough to no longer be considered 'banished'.... You can't bake without grain, and you can't harvest grain if you're dead from starvation. And by its nature, subsistence farming yields no 'product', so it's a long road you've got ahead of you until you're able to trade/buy bread.
[in case I did that as poorly as I suspect: this comment is a joking reference to the Four Yorkshiremen sketch by Monty Python]
– msouth Aug 21 '19 at 08:34There are two occupations no one has mentioned, but which would exist even in a village this small:
Shepherd. That is, someone to watch over the animals grazing in the village pasture. One can't simply assume that these animals aren't at risk from predators or thieves (which include inhabitants of the next village over who are looking for a quick & easy way to increase their own flocks). Yes, this shepherd might simply be a teenager -- male or female -- who does this for a year with no training beyond a few words of advice & a threat if he lets anything happen to the animals, but it is one st of hands taken out of the general labor pool.
Woodsman. All that wood for houses, furniture & tools has to come from somewhere. Most medieval English villages had 20-50 acres of woodland, which would need a specialist to look after. And wood was produced from most medieval woodlots not by cutting down the trees & planting new ones, but by coppicing: cutting the tree to produce suckers, which were allowed to grow into sizable diameters before harvesting. This meant that instead of producing timber once ever 30-40 years, a tree would produce useful timber every 7-20 years. I'll admit a village of 100 souls might not have its own woodlot & no woodsman, but a village of any size will have a shepherd. If you increase the size of the village, say to 500 inhabitants, a woodsman would be one of the next professions this village would need.
BTW, farming tends to be a full-time activity only for half the year -- spring & fall -- leaving them idle during the winter & summer. And idle hands are the devil's workshop: what better activity for an illiterate & physically fit peasant than to stir up trouble in the neighboring village? (Think of this as the ancestor to the modern sports rivalry between schools & cities.)
Geoff
I am pretty late for this, but I believe I can add some details, that may be interesting for people interested in how work was organized in small medieval community in central Europe.
Most answers are right about majority of population being farmers and the live rhythm of such society would be therefore dictated by the field works. Meaning it will be seasonal.
"On season" essentially everyone will be doing fieldwork. We need to remember that most of land around the village belongs to the "manor" and had to be worked first, only small portion of the land would be allocated for villagers needs. So amount of work would be substantially greater than resources available for villagers.
"Off season" would be dedicated towards maintenance, repairs, crafting of tools and processing of harvested resources. While men would work the wood, meat, leather and metals, women would be dedicated to textile production. In many parts of the Europe there are surviving folk traditions concerning these female "off season activities".
As small community as 100 people would acquire all non-food needs during these "off season" activities. The for iron for tools (the most obvious elephant in the room) would be obtained through the trading. Next possibility was to extract iron from bog (if one is available, but the location of the village might be selected with this in mind), but the amount needed would not facilitate the need for specialized professional.
However there still would be specialized full-time professionals as well.
The first of them being:
The local Witch, ye olde herbalist hag, or as we call them nowadays a Midwife
Midwifes were except from fieldwork and many other activities mainly because everyone had to know at all times where to find her, when she was needed. So midwife was expected to sit home all the time waiting for emergencies. She wasn't paid per se but villagers would provide for her every need. Midwifes may have had husband or family on their own, but girls that were seen as unfit for fieldwork or unmarriable were often selected as their apprentices (possibly laying base for crooked, ugly hag of a witch myth). Midwifes tend to have knowledge about medicinal plants and were usually the only person in the village who knew the first thing about medicine and were often called for other emergencies than childbirths as well.
A Priest
If village lacked the church of its own, villagers were usually expected to visit the nearest settlement that did. If the the distance was too great, villagers would be exempt from weekly service, but were still expected to visit during the holydays. Given (not only by) that the most important holydays (Christmas) are in the middle of the winter there is no surprise that even the smallest villages would seek their own priest.
In medieval Europe villages governing body would petition their lord, who would send the request to the nearest bishop. Bishop would sent someone to inspect the village and if there was an appropriate building to serve as as temple he would appoint a new parish and assign a priest.
Villagers were expected to provide a priest with his own house and allocate some of the village land to the parish. Villagers would work the manorial lands first, parish lands second and only then their own land. The "salary" of a priest being the produce from the parish land. Priest was also given servants (older women, usually widows took turns in this role), doing the cooking and housework for the priest.
Governing body
Villages were usually governed by the councils of elders. This wasn't full time profession, just the group of men who were trusted (enough) by other villagers to make decisions. These councils were sometimes 'hijacked' by the wealthiest or most influential villager, making the role more centralized over time, but with 100 inhabitants there was no way governing would take full of his time.
Only reason how it would become a "proffesion" at this scale is if the lord needed, for some reason, better control over the village. In that case he may name a mayor or a bailiff, who would be paid directly from lord's coffers.
Herders
While one can give the task of watching a small flock of gees or a odd cow to random child, if the villagers wanted to maintain some more substantial herd the job was preferably given to someone more responsible. But the difficulties of herding doesn't end with the manpower. Most of land around the village would be dedicated for crops (with fallow fields being harvested for winter fodder) a available grazing land had to be sought for in the greater distances. This was usual mainly with sheep as they can graze on land unsuitable for other livestock.
Shepherds would take the animals to the hills in spring and herd them back for wintering and culling. They were expected to return in the Fall with more animals than they left with in the Spring otherwise they were free to manage the herd as they seen fit. They were paid in whatever they were able to extract from the animals over the Summer and in share of meat and wool after they returned.
Only men left with the animals leaving their families waiting in the village and if there was some minority in the village this work may fall on them. (that's how Wallachian become the synonym for shepherd in area of medieval Hungary)
Others? If village was founded in order to extract some specific resource, then there would be of course professionals for that purpose, with the rest of village basically providing for them, but in that case a lot of thing would be imported in order to get the industry running.
Mining settlements were frequent example of this. Such settlement needed a lot of fuel, that was provided by one of the most prolific non-farming professionals - The charcoal burners.
Another example might been millers. If your villagers wanted to bank a bit on the neighbors they might petition the lord for a right to build a mill. This needed the lords permission and was highly taxed, but still very profitable as one mill could provide service form many villages and village that went through the trouble of getting permission had the monopoly. Illegal mills were typically burned (with miller and his family still inside in some jurisdictions).
Butcher, baker, candlestickmaker, doctor, teacher, miller, hoo.. oh wait, you said fictitious god overseeing all of them. So a Preacher. Most are farmers, some are hunters. All folks could have multiple roles. And a blacksmith for making/fixing tools.
A population of 100 isn't large enough to leverage the economics of scale, not even by Medieval period standards. I would expect every person older than a small child to be engaged in two or more trades and they would all occasionally collaborate on major projects like building a new house. Although none of them would rise to the same level of expertise that they would have been in a larger town, at least someone would have step into the role of healer and midwife. Every house would have a personal garden, and they would probably still rely heavily on hunting and gathering. If you're really interested in this topic, Joseph and Frances Gies wrote a series of well researched and popular books on Life in a Medieval Village, City, and Castle. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18546.Joseph_Gies
Farming produces food (which is essential for survival), fuel, and fibers. Most of the adult and teenage male population will be busy during the entire day during plowing, planting, and harvesting. But this is seasonal, and there are periods when farming requires only a few hours (or none at all) each day. Weeds and winter crops (if grown at all) grow slowly and do not need constant attention. Therefore, there will be seasons with plenty of down-time, and workers will find hobbies or crafts to do during this time.
Seasonal crafts could include brewing, weaving, leatherworking, shoemaking, pottery, light carpentry, and furniture-making. As the demand for these cottage industries is low, there is likely to be only one person in the village for each type of craft, with households trading for the goods that they need. Excess laborers could engage in woodcutting, hunting, or fishing. One farm with a mill is enough for grinding grain. The construction of new buildings would be performed by the community, much like an Amish barn-raising. But these are all seasonal activities, not full-time professions.
Women in medieval times were responsible for cooking, baking, food preservation, cleaning, and child-rearing. Some women would serve as nurses/midwives, when needed (i.e. not a full-time profession). Pre-teen children took care of the livestock.
The only true full-time profession would be the priest. If you plan to give your population a basic education, then during the week he can teach children how to read the bible.
Assuming they don't have other villages, I would expect you'd have someone fulfilling these roles:
A lot of it depends on what the village needs. At the basic levels, you just go to neighbors to ask for things (tools, food). Its when it becomes a significant effort (usually with the number of people involved or the complexities to maintain it) you get specialties (e.g., professions). So, it may be good to look at what they have and what they need.
Take an example: alcohol. Pretty much any farmer can make mead or ferment something. My father's father had a small room in his basement to make honey mead. Occasionally his friends would come over and they would drink it. That's your basic, go visit some friends.
Now, if the religion dictates that all alcohol must be blessed, then you add complexity. Someone has to manage it. For a few people, that might be easy, but soon it becomes a full time job (e.g., a profession) to bless all the spirits.
Enforcing that blessed rule would start as a simple task ("we police ourselves") but as the scope gets bigger, people abuse the system and end up driving orange cars around Hazard County. Then you need someone who spends most of their day not farming but chasing down the Duke Brothers. So, then you need a specialist (profession) to enforce the rules.
If the materials to make spirits are local, that's easy. However if there is some component (hops) that needs to be imported, you have to have someone doing the importing. If that is occasional (traveling merchant), you have someone to flies in, sells stuff, and moves on. However, if there is enough demand, someone is going to get in the role of mainly managing sales. That's your general store at first and then more specialized stores as the exchanges get more prevalent (a hundred people probably wouldn't have enough business to support more than a couple stores).
Same with clothing, woodcraft, stone, etc. It depends on the demand and the support structure. You'd be surprised how much you can get away with a once a week farmer's market. Hell, even once a quarter for things like outfits and furniture. That doesn't need strict professions.
Short answer: depends on what they need. If there is enough demand, someone will make a job of it.
I want to bring in another aspect: Not all villagers are equal (economically and probably also legally). There are a few farmers owning land and farm buildings, there are cottagers owning a small house and maybe a small patch of land for gardening, but working on the farms, and farmhands owning only their clothes and nothing much more. Maybe there is a nobleman present in the village, but he will be just a farmer as the other farmers.
There will be some specialized workshops: a blacksmith, a mill, a carpenter, but some of the workshop holders will also engage in farming. The village probably has a public baking house for fire protection, but not a baker.
And of course, there is a priest.
Ok agreed with some farmers, but they can't farm naked, so the village will have at least one crew of people that can handle making clothes.
Farming can be rude for clothes, so this crew has a job all the year. Especially when winter is coming
To make houses, and repair this village need a crew that is good to build with wood or other component and make tools with the help of a blacksmith.
Then all of those people need to drink (beer are made by farmer, but beer need water) and a farmer also need water to cultivate. So a crew that brings water to the village is essential.
A mayor is also essential, even a little village need a chief.
It's not all about farmers, but a village in medieval just need to cover the bascis I guess
