Artefacts from Medieval Winchester

Over six thousand objects were recovered during the Winchester excavations of 1961 to 1971 - by far the most extensive corpus of stratified and datable medieval objects yet presented from a single city. Martin Biddle and the team of eighty-three contributors assembled by the Winchester Research Unit have used this material to investigate not only the industries and arts, but the economic, cultural, and social life of medieval Winchester. Their findings are being published in two parts: the first part, by Katherine Barclay, will deal with the pottery remains; and this second part in two volumes by Martin Biddle covers all the objects from the finest products of the Anglo-Saxon goldsmith's skill to the iron tenter-hooks of the cloth industry. Martin Biddle's study of the objects identifies change through time, and traces variation across the broad social scale - from cottage to palace - represented in the excavated sites. Using the objects as evidence for the economy of the medieval city, it also throws new light on some of the great questions of medieval industry and artistic production: amongst them the development of the textile industry, the origins of wire-drawing and the manufacture of pins, the beginnings of window-glass production, and the earliest glass painting. These objects are an essential part of the evidence for the development and changing character of the excavated sites to be published in forthcoming volumes of Winchester Studies on the Minsters. To ensure complete integration between the objects and the sites, every object in this volume is related to the context in which it was found and a concordance provides a detailed conspectus phase by phase of each of the twenty sites excavated between 1961-71, and of the objects found in each phase.

Table of Contents:
(Volume I.) Part I: The finds and their publication; General introduction; Site recording, planning, and processing the finds; Conservation; The medieval gold, silver, and copper-alloy objects from the Winchester excavations; The medieval iron objects from Winchester; The chronological and spatial distribution of the objects; Part II: Gold working; Silver working; Lead, tin, and pewter working; Copper-alloy working; Iron working; Metal-founding in Winchester during the early Middle Ages: the written and numismatic evidence; Metal-working equipment; Textile manufacture; Tanning and leather working; Bone, antler, ivory and horn working; Glass rings and the manufacture of high-lead glass; Wood working; Stone objects: petrography and provenance; Building tools and components; Window glass; Other tools and components; Part III: Personal possessions; (Volume II.) Devotional objects; Equipment and furnishings; Horse and riding equipment; Weapons and armour; Miscellaneous metal objects; Unidentified objects. Concordances. Index

Review :
'These volumes are a magnificent achievement, coming in on the crest of the current wave of publication of large urban excavations ... under his editorship, Winchester Studies will surely go from strength to strength.' Times Literary Supplement ' Object and Economy in Medieval Winchester will be the work to which one will turn first when in search of information about many English Medieval manufactures and artefacts ... These volumes are not only part of the record of about the most important medieval excavations undertaken in this century; they have an independent value as major works of reference.' Professor James Campbell, English Historical Review