The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 244 • Roberta Gilchrist
bowl, jug or cooking pot, will provide understanding of its use, and additional information can
be gleaned from its surface condition (e.g. whether there is evidence of soot from cooking) and
through residue analysis to determine its former contents. Glass vessels are less robust than
pottery or wood, which survives in waterlogged deposits, but fragments of glass vessels can
sometimes indicate the presence of activities such as medical treatment (urinals used for diagnosis),
literacy (ink wells) and perhaps even alchemy, a chemical procedure that was believed to turn base
metals into gold (Moorhouse 1993). Larger monasteries for men housed scriptoria for copying
manuscripts, and considerable archaeological evidence can be found for monastic literacy. For
instance, parchment prickers, lead dry points, book plates and book clasps were all recovered
from St Andrew’s, York, and a number of sites have yielded evidence for pigments used in
manuscript illumination, including the Carmelite friary at Linlithgow, West Lothian, mixed in
oyster shells that served as convenient palettes.
Monastic libraries were repositories for knowledge from the Classical and Arabic worlds. This
informed the monks’ knowledge of technology and attitudes towards medicine, in particular.
Next to the cloister was the monastic infirmary, which consisted of a large aisled hall with a
chapel at the eastern end. The partially extant example at Christchurch, Canterbury, stretches to
c.75 m in length. Diet and hygiene were carefully regulated in the monastery, and a meat-enriched
diet was provided for sick and elderly monks in the infirmary. Every monk was expected to visit
the infirmary up to seven times each year for blood-letting, which was believed to maintain good
health. Concern with sanitation, in addition to ideas about spiritual purity, led to a strong emphasis
in monasteries on provision of fresh water (Coppack 1990; Greene 1992). The main requirements
were threefold: supply, distribution to buildings in the cloister and courts, and removal of waste.
Especially in towns, it was necessary to transport water over long distances through lead or
ceramic pipes, and to filter water from pollutants and contaminants by means of settling tanks.
The long-term nature of occupation at monastic sites, together with their emphasis on the
formalized use of space, can give the impression of a static continuity and uniformity. Archaeology
has in fact demonstrated a substantial diversity between different monastic orders, male and
female houses and larger and smaller monasteries. A considerable degree of change can be observed
particularly for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At some houses, space became less strictly
regulated, with buildings around the cloister being used for a variety of domestic activities, such
as baking and brewing, and for storage of grain. The coenobitic ideal of the communal life broke
down as the concept of privacy evolved, and religious belief shifted towards the importance of
the individual. In some monasteries, this is reflected in the partitioning of formerly communal
dormitories and infirmary halls, and in extreme cases, such as Elstow, Bedfordshire, the withdrawal
of small groups from the rest of the community to eat and live together in separate households.
Evidence of animal bones suggests that prohibitions on diet were broken in all but the strictest
of monasteries, while the recovery of personal artefacts and costly imported items suggests that
earlier vows to eschew wealth and private property had been breached.
THE WIDER VIEW
There are considerable parallels between British and continental evidence, particularly in the case
of monastic orders that had their origins or mother house in France. Monasteries developed
from models established in Carolingian Europe, with close resemblance of the British examples
from the tenth century onwards. However, castles and parish churches evolved along slightly
different lines from their continental counterparts. Fortified hill-top settlements, mottes and
donjons appeared in France and Germany from the mid-tenth to the eleventh centuries, and towers
on conical mounds were built at the same time in southern Germany and Italy. The motte and