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Customary charters provide information on land surveying, but only from a normative perspective. Notaries public, polemen and agrimensors were rarely mentioned, but were credited with speedy techniques, a systematic approach and personal honesty. We cannot piece together any more the morphology of the land from existing sources, because of the variety of perches used. Surveying was focussed elsewhere, on organizing seignorial levies under the vigilant control of the communities. Space itself became a quantifiable accounting category, which brought about proportionality rules and a new rationality. Both the major seignorial and royal rivalries and the countless settling enterprises expressed an interventionist, organizing approach to economic operations.