Theme:
1. The Material Record: Current Trends and Future Directions
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
United Europe of Things? Materialities Creating Medieval Ritual Landscapes (c. AD 1000-1550)
Content:
The proposed session aims to bring together researchers from across Europe examining persistence and change in medieval ritual landscapes through material culture, such as through lived religion, personal/household devotion, ritual deposition and the material practices of religious institutions. We will be continuing conversations under the ‘United Europe of Things’ banner from previous EAA meetings - fostered by the European Medieval Finds (EMF) network (https://ypp.com.pl/emf/) - but here our focus is on the theme of how material culture is deployed in ritual action in the landscape. Another important strand we seek to weave in from previous meetings pertains to digital approaches to big data, specifically as they can be applied to questions of persistence and change in medieval ritual practices.
The Middle Ages saw huge religious transformations, experienced differently in various regions of Europe, alongside apparent persistence of established Christian tradition. How did different trajectories of conversion and reform influence personal devotion and engagement at a landscape level, and how did this change through time? On the other hand, to what extent did earlier traditions persist and how may this be contextualised: were there ‘persistent places’ that saw continued deliberate deposition? The session hopes to elucidate the regional differences and similarities in social interaction with religious landscapes across the period c. AD 1000-1550.
This session welcomes contributions with the following emphases:
- Material culture and persistent places
- Lived religion and personal devotion
- Multi-scalar approaches contrasting urban, rural, fluvial and other devotional landscapes
- Theoretical approaches to religious/ritual material culture
- Evidence from public and metal-detected finds
- Big data approaches to religious material culture
- Interactions with material culture of different social communities within a shared landscape
- Papers from across Europe, but discussions focusing on the fringes of medieval Christian Europe are particularly welcome
Keywords:
Small finds, Material culture, Personal devotion, Medieval Archaeology, Big Data, Digital Humanities
Session associated with MERC:
yes
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Robert Webley (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Jakub Sawicki (Czech Republic) 2
Mária Vargha (Austria) 3
Petar Parvanov (Bulgaria) 4
Michael Lewis (United Kingdom) 5,6
Affiliations:
1. University of Reading
2. Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague
3. University of Vienna
4. Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
5. Portable Antiquities Scheme
6. British Museum
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