Student Colloquium Round-up

Posted On: November 17th, 2024

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The Society for Medieval Archaeology’s annual Student Colloquium recently took place at the University of Leicester. Organised by our current Student Representative, Kate Evetts, it was a jam-packed three days of talks, field trips, and social events.

The event kicked off with a walking tour of Leicester led by Mathew Morris, Project Officer for University of Leicester Archaeological Services. The tour included Wygstons House, a medieval timber-framed building thought to be the oldest in Leicester; St. Mary de Castro church, built around 1107 on the site of an earlier Saxon church;  the Newarke Gateway, originally constructed in 1400 as a monumental gateway to a religious precinct;  Richard III’s burial place at Greyfriars; and Leicester Cathedral, the new resting place of Richard III (hyperlinks).

The main event was a day of conference talks given by students and early career researchers, with a keynote by Dr. Brian Costello, University of Leicester. The Society for Medieval Archaeology is proud to provide this platform for students and early career professionals to showcase their research in a supportive and friendly environment. The topics covered were fascinating and wide-ranging, highlighting some exciting avenues for future research and we look forward to seeing developments in the coming years.

The talks were as follows:

• Maren von Mallinckrodt (University of Iceland): Infant and Maternal Health in Early Medieval Iceland: Evidence from Hofstaðir and Keldudalur. Using evidence from the sites of Hofstaðir and Keldudalur, Maren discussed how discrepancies between dental and skeletal age in infants provides a reliable marker of physiological stress. At both sites, skeletal age estimates consistently indicate younger ages than dental age estimates, evidencing adverse living conditions in early medieval Iceland.

• Isobel Grimley (University of Bradford): Disrupted Young Lives: Frailty in Medieval Children and Young Adults from the Multi-Period Site of St. Oswald’s Priory, Gloucester. By assessing frailty in past young people, bioarchaeologists can unpick embodied childhood experiences and start to identify changes in health during periods where difference may be more subtle. Preliminary results suggest early medieval individuals from the site may have been more frail than individuals from the mid-late medieval period and Isobel’s paper explored the possible reasons for this.

• Emma Louise Thompson (University of Leicester): The Constructive Powers of Jewellery in Danish Viking Age Burials. The concept of “living objects” in Viking Age graves suggests that artefacts, particularly those associated with men like swords, have their own social biographies and can experience death and burial. However, this discourse often overlooks items associated with women, such as brooches and beads, which also held significant meaning. In her paper, Emma argued for examining the transformative powers of jewellery in constructing identities in life and death.

• Adrienne Ponsford (University of York): Early Medieval Brooches and their Contexts in Yorkshire and Humberside. Adrienne’s study compared PAS data with a dataset compiled from excavation and museum collections, demonstrating a distinct difference in the types of brooch represented. The implications of these differences were explored through discussion of chronological factors and three main hypotheses for why the proportions of brooch types do not correlate.

• Caroline Croasdaile (University of Oxford): The English Iconographic: Rings, Beads, Pendants and Other Engraved Metalwork. Caroline’s paper examined a unique style of engraved, enamelled metalwork in England featuring two-dimensional saintly and religious figural representation, which reached its height of production and popularity at the eve of the Reformation. Caroline expanded the definition of what is considered “English Iconographic” to incorporate a broader interface of comparable small devotional metalwork materials.

• Willa Stonecipher (University of Oxford): To Kill an Ampulla? Ritual Mutilation and Folded Ampullae in Medieval Britain, c.1066-1540. Willa’s paper investigated a subset of ampullae that have been intentionally folded prior to deposition, arguing that the folding represents the fulfilment of a pilgrimage. Furthermore, it is a vernacular way of negotiating with the agricultural landscape by invoking saintly intercession.

• Denis Ionuţ Mereuţă (Babeş-Bolyai University): Medieval Cave Archaeology from Pădurea Craiului Mountains. The caves of the Pădurea Craiului Mountains, formed by both natural and human actions, housed past communities from as early as 170,000 years ago. They are rich in archaeological heritage but the medieval occupation of the caves has been largely overlooked. Denis’ paper redressed this imbalance by focusing on the medieval artefacts and what they can tell us about the medieval communities that settled in the Pădurea Craiului Mountains.

• Hadley Wehner (Courtauld Institute): Carving Out New Histories of Experience and Interaction: A Study of the Medieval and Early Modern Graffiti at St. Alban’s Abbey. Hadley’s paper explored the function and meaning of late medieval graffiti in St. Alban’s Abbey nave. It also examined the role of such graffiti in the constitution of lay and clerical expression and community in late medieval St. Alban’s.

• Laura Bough (University of Hull): Regenerating Meaux Abbey: Exploring the Educational Benefits and Socio-Economic Impact of Virtual Reality in Recreating Meaux Abbey Through Its Wider Contexts and Historical Narrative (1150-1539). Laura’s research investigated the socio-economic, political and cultural impact of Meaux Abbey in East Yorkshire from 1150 to 1539, using virtual reality (VR) to recreate the abbey for an immersive educational experience. It also explored the effectiveness of VR in promoting cultural preservation and community engagement.

• Kate Autumn Evetts (University of Leicester): Industrialised Horticulture and Food Security: Adapting Urban Garden Space Functionalities Through Crisis in Medieval England. Garden spaces and features are often not considered in depth within household archaeology, yet gardens must have been important spaces for medieval people as they ultimately take away space from houses within plots. Kate’s paper highlighted the potential of assessing evidence of change within these urban garden spaces in informing on the endurance of town communities in the wake of the famine, war and disease of 14^th century England.

To round off the conference day, Dr. Brian Costello gave a keynote titled “A Grave Upstaging: Medieval Burials and Social Change”, which brought together several strands of research including heirlooms in medieval graves and the social function of burial practices in the early medieval period. All in all, it was a fascinating and thought-provoking programme of talks that prompted much discussion and some excellent questions.

The Colloquium concluded with a post-conference field trip to Bradgate Park and House, led by Professor Richard Thomas, University of Leicester. Bradgate Park is a medieval deer park, part of the Manor of Groby, and was originally enclosed by a bank and ditch topped with oaks. Bradgate House, now largely in ruins, was home to the Grey family from the 15^th to 19^th centuries and Lady Jane Grey was born and raised there. The site has been extensively excavated in the last ten years through fieldschool projects run by University of Leicester Archaeological Services and the School of Archaeology and Ancient History.

We’d like to extend our thanks to everyone who was involved in making the Colloquium such a success. In particular to our Student Representative Kate Evetts, to the leaders of the two tours – Mathew Morris and Professor Richard Thomas, to Dr. Brian Costello and all the fantastic speakers, and to the University of Leicester for hosting the event.