Session: #438

Regular session

The general image of medieval buildings is that they were mostly made of stone in urban contexts and of wood on the countryside. This might be based on a nineteenth century romantic vision of rural life in contrast with the urban. The reality was far more complex. Not only could stone be found in farm buildings, equally wood was, despite fire hazards, for a long time a very popular building material in towns. More often a mixture of building materials occurred.
This led to growing demand for wood, in particular from the 12th century when urbanisation increased sharply. Local wood was no longer sufficient to meet the demand and it became necessary to import wood.
So timber construction in the Middle Ages had many dimensions. In this session we would like to explore and discuss these in more detail. Possible themes for discussion include:
• the development of wooden buildings in the Middle Ages;
• the materiality of wood as a building material in context of (for example) status and class;
• the use of wood as building material;
• the exchange of building techniques;
• the trade in wood and the import of wood;
• conserving / maintaining wooden monuments especially in light of increasing pressures from the climate crisis and tourism;
• new methods and techniques in researching wooden buildings.
We welcome contributions with a focus on medieval and post-medieval Europe.

buildings archaeology, wood, medieval archaeology, post-medieval archaeology, trade, heritage management

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Jeroen Bouwmeester (Netherlands) ¹

Laura Patrick (United Kingdom) ²
Duncan Berryman (United Kingdom) ³
Sarah Kerr (Denmark) ⁴
Robin Gullbrandsson (Sweden) ⁵