Medieval village planning in northern England: some evidence from Yorkshire

A village plan comprising regular toft rows facing a street or green is common in lowland Yorkshire north of the river Aire and west of the river Hull, and many such plans are believed to have been established in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The obvious occasion for a settlement reorganisation involving the creation of regular plans was the aftermath of a phase of devastation between 1066 and 1070. Domesday Book data are used to identify the local circumstances that favoured regular plan creation. A two-stage recolonisation is hypothesised: first, local survivors were grouped into “manorial” type communities where pre-Conquest village layouts were usually revived; second, free colonists were attracted from other districts and settled in villages of regular plan. Subsequent population growth was in some cases associated with the addition of regular toft rows to existing settlements, thereby giving rise to the more widely distributed partly-regular plans.     

High Medieval Monasteries as Communities of Practice: Approaching Monastic Learning Through Letters

The theme of learning in high medieval monasteries can be approached by analysing such contexts as “communities of practice” on the basis of preserved monastic letters and letter‐collections. The letters' propagandistic function makes it extremely interesting to analyse the ways in which they represent learning in order to serve different purposes: to attract people to a monastery, to offer advice to members of monastic communities, and even to intervene in the debate that opposed monastic to secular and scholastic modes of study. Moreover, epistolary sources offer insights into the complex dynamics of social interactions within the monastery, in particular the plurality of learning agents and the reciprocal nature of learning exchanges. Therefore, this approach can offer a valuable contribution to the study of learning as a shared and dialectical process, which takes place through social interaction within a heterogeneous community. In addition, it helps to understand the way in which learning is linked to the shaping of identities, both individual and communal, because it affects and transforms the reciprocal social roles of the members of a monastic community.     

Precision GPS Surveying at Medieval Cottam,East Yorkshire,England

Abstract

To help promote the use of centimeter and sub-centimeter level GPS for surveying archaeological Sites, a series of tests was conducted at the deserted medieval village of Cottam in East Yorkshire,England. In order to understand the capabilities of the technology, the GPS system was tested for speed, accuracy, and reliability and the results were compared with those from a conventional total station. Using the capabilities of the total station as a benchmark, the GPS system's accuracy and reliability were found to be acceptable. The test system, however, was found to be considerably slower than the total station and much more difficult to use with equivalent levels of accuracy     

Monastic literate practices in eleventh- and twelfth-century northern France

This article aims to apply the concept of literate practices to the production of written artefacts in northern France during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. It is argued that the increasing impact of the written word in society was not a straightforward process but one that suffered setbacks and whose nature depended on how it was applied at a micro-level. Using the vantage point of the archives of a number of Benedictine monasteries in the valley of the Scarpe, a small river currently situated near the current Franco-Belgian border, it is shown how the monks responded to the uncertainties of their age by exploring the advantages of producing and receiving large numbers of documents, all of which were created, used and stored in functional and specific, but changing, contexts.     

Life in Medieval London

Abstract

This is the first detailed published study of the stained-glass ‘band’ window which survives in the east end of St Mary’s church, at Selling in Kent. It is argued that the Selling window was installed in the second decade of the 14th century; not, as is usually thought, the first. The window is a hierarchical statement, embodying a number of interrelated levels of meaning. Its primary function is to celebrate Christ’s incarnation, and the role of the Virgin and other saints as intercessors for mankind at the Last Judgement. The window clearly also commemorates the glory days of Edward I, who died in 1307. The historical evidence and the iconography suggest that, in addition, it is a memorial to the Clare family, installed after the English defeat at Bannockburn in 1314, commemorating the death of Gilbert III of Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford. The window was probably commissioned by the local lord Bartholomew Badlesmere and his wife, who was Gilbert’s cousin, between 1314 and 1317, when Bartholomew was executor of Gilbert’s estate.     

Medieval Britain in 1972

WHAT WAS IT LIKE to be a teenager in medieval England? Despite the fact that medieval society often singled young apprentices and workers out for comment, their study has been largely neglected in medieval archaeology. The skeletal remains of 4940 children and adolescents (6.6–25 years) from 151 sites in medieval England were compiled from a combination of primary data collection and secondary data from published and unpublished skeletal reports and online databases. The aim was to explore whether apprentices could be identified in the archaeological record and, if so, at what age they started work and what impact occupation had on their health. The data were divided into urban and rural groups, dating from before and after the Black Death of ad 1348–49, and before the Industrial Revolution. A shift in the demographic pattern of urban and rural adolescents was identified after the Black Death, with a greater number of young females residing in urban contexts after 14 years. The average age of males in urban contexts increased from 12 years to 14 years after the plague years, contrary to what we might expect with the greater opportunities for work after the Black Death. There were higher rates of spinal and joint disease in the urban adolescents, and before the age of 18 years, their injuries were more widespread than their rural counterparts. Domestic service was the potential cause of greater strain on the knees and backs of urban females, with interpersonal violence evident in young urban males. Overall, it was the urban females that carried the burden of respiratory and infectious diseases, suggesting they may have been the most vulnerable group. This study has demonstrated the value of adolescent skeletal remains in revealing information about their health and working life, before and after the Black Death.