Notes from County Correspondents.

In 1503, the canons of Ripon Minster initiated a building campaign to replace the church’s nave. Through a careful study of the documentary evidence, including sources that have not previously been considered, this article investigates how Ripon’s clergy organised and funded the project. It offers a more precise chronology of the works and an assessment of their impact on the use of the church by its parishioners. The article also considers the clergy’s motives for rebuilding, proving that the renovation was not a reaction to the old nave’s deterioration so much as an initiative to create a grander architectural setting for processions and more space for burial within the church.     

Excavations at the Medieval Village of Wythemail,Northamptonshire

EXCAVATION of a single enclosure revealed a sequence from early 13th-century timber buildings to structures with stone foundations, or completely stone-built, in the later 13th and 14th centuries. A two-roomed long-house was replaced by a more complex four-roomed long-house built on a different alignment. Also in the enclosure were a sequence of six outbuildings rebuilt in various positions. In the 13th century there were changes in property boundaries and in the 14th century a road was cut obliquely across the enclosure leading to fundamental changes in planning. Evidence for climatic deterioration was given by the increasing use of drains and of paved and cobbled surfaces in the early 14th century. Finds included metal objects, animal bones, local shelly pottery, and 12th- to 14th-century sherds from Lincolnshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.     

Late Medieval Jugs with Lettering

Previous interpretations of medieval moated sites, rooted in functionalist and culture-historical theoretical frameworks, describe moat owners as defending themselves from threats of physical violence or emulating a fashionable status symbol. This study takes an alternative framework by exploring moated sites’ active role in producing medieval ideologies of inequality. A set of case studies from the eastern Weald in south-east England provides evidence for how moats alter patterns of movement, produce spaces of stratified accessibility, and enhance the visibility of structures and spaces bounded by moats. Spatial data from surface survey is synthesized with historical context and ‘imagined’ moated spaces found in pictorial and textual sources to determine how moats may have been perceived by different groups of people in medieval society. By altering the physical and symbolic landscape, moated sites constituted the authority of their owners and contributed to the maintenance, or in some cases contestation, of medieval structural inequalities.     

A Medieval Pottery Kiln at Audlem,Cheshire

BUILDING ACCOUNTS for 1398–99 give detailed costs of the construction of a circular, brick, free-standing artillery tower. The artillery towers at Southampton and Canterbury were linked to existing wall circuits, and detached forts in France may be more comparable to the tower at Norwich.     

The Kitchen Area of Northolt Manor,Middlesex

Abstract

The Winchester Moot Horn was found in a chest in the late 19th century when the Westgate was cleared out in advance of its conversion to a museum. Although generally believed to be of late-12th- or early-13th-century date on stylistic grounds, and a civic horn appears in local documentary sources, its excellent state of preservation has always raised some doubt as to its antiquity. Recent study and scientific analyses have now confirmed its early date. A survey of other moot horns from England suggests that at least one other, from Canterbury, dates to much the same time.     

Death in the sun: the bioarchaeology of an early post-medieval hospital in Gibraltar

SUMMARY: In 2014, during construction work at the ex-Civil Hospital in Gibraltar, excavations led by the Gibraltar Museum revealed a major, previously unknown burial ground containing more than 200 skeletons. We present the historical, archaeological and radiometric dating evidence from the site alongside the results of initial osteological analyses. The data indicate that the burials pertain to an earlier 16th-century Spanish hospice, and therefore stand to offer new insights into the functioning of this early modern hospital and the health and movements of people at a time of incipient globalization.     

A Multi-Method Approach to Reconstructing Occupational History and Activity Areas: A Case Study at the Formative Site of Tlalancaleca,Central Mexico

While surface collection constitutes an important component of field research at the site and regional levels, the association between surface and sub-surface materials needs to be examined through independent lines of evidence. This study employed manual bucket auger probing and soil geochemistry at the Formative site of Tlalancaleca, Central Mexico (800 b.c.–a.d. 250), to evaluate the results of surface collection and to understand the formation process of the anthropogenic landscape. The combined results at one of the largest architectural complexes at Tlalancaleca indicate that it was built during the Late Formative period (500–100 b.c.) and rebuilt during the subsequent Terminal Formative period (100 b.c.–a.d. 250), which is corroborated by radiocarbon dates. Moreover, the results suggest segregated uses of space such as cooking/storage, waste disposal, and craft production areas within the complex. Overall results demonstrate the effectiveness of this multi-method approach for reconstructing occupational history and activity areas.     

Apollo alone and adrift in Samoa; early mead reconsidered

Derek Freeman. Margaret Mead and Samoa; the Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983. 375 pp. $20.00     

More on the Kula: Ethnography,history, and theory

Leach, Jerry W., and Edmund Leach, eds. The Kula, New Perspectives on Massim Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. xii + 577 pp. including plates, bibliography, index. $79.50 cloth.

Macintyre, Martha. The Kula, A Bibliography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. vi + 90 pp. including author index, appendix. $19.95 cloth.