Mick Aston Lecture: The Complex Lives of Medieval Ritual Objects.

This lecture is in memory of Mick Aston. Mick was a tutor in local studies at the Department before moving to Bristol University. Earlier he had made a major contribution to the archaeology of Oxfordshire through his work on the Sites and Monuments Record, then based at the city and County Museum in Woodstock. 

How did medieval people use material culture to live out their relationships to the sacred, the supernatural and their families and communities? This lecture harnesses a fresh source of archaeological evidence to shed new light on everyday religion in the English Middle Ages (c. 1000-1550 CE). It draws on research in collaboration with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (British Museum) to glean new historical insights from public finds data – objects recovered and recorded by members of the public, principally metal-detectorists.

Among the 325,000, later medieval public finds are objects of personal religious devotion, amulets, pilgrim souvenirs and ecclesiastical artefacts. How were they used by ordinary people to provide spiritual protection at critical times, such as childbirth? And why did so many of these potent ritual objects end up discarded in plough soil? This hybrid lecture critically reviews the use of public finds data as a source of historical evidence and demonstrates how it provides unique new insights to the beliefs of ordinary medieval people.