Session: #639

Content:

Much of the focus of medieval artefact studies has been on the large corpus of finds from urban settlements across Europe. The majority of the medieval population, however, resided in rural areas, which are increasingly being investigated through development-led and academic research projects. There is great potential to use artefacts to understand the living standards and everyday lives of medieval people, addressing fundamental questions of ‘what did medieval people own?’ to more complex economic and social questions surrounding consumption behaviour and value systems. Moving focus to the material life of rural settlements enables a better understanding of urban life and defines urbanism on the grounds of the archaeological record.
This session invites discussion on the material culture of rural households at the European scale. It builds upon the interdisciplinary Living Standards and Material Culture in English Rural Households (www.medievalobjects.wordpress.com) project, drawing together the study of finds from rural settlement excavations and historical records for the 95% of the English population who were not members of the elite.
Papers are invited which address the following themes:
• The range of objects being found in association with rural households and settlements and how this relates to the living standards of those inhabiting these places
• Interdisciplinary work which looks at different ways of interpreting material culture
• Theoretical models which enable new ways of thinking about objects in the European medieval world
• Ideas of value placed on objects; this could be economic or social.

Session: #639

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