‘Magic and Archaeology: Ritual Residues and “Odd” Deposits’
Roberta Gilchrist
In S Page and C Rider (eds) 2019, The Routledge History of Medieval Magic (Routledge:
Abingdon), pp 383-401.
ISBN 978-1-4724-4730-2
The use of archaeology as source material for medieval magic raises a number of
methodological and theoretical issues. Many of the rituals of common magic revealed by
archaeology were never (or rarely) documented in medieval texts. The lack of correlation
between texts and material culture has been regarded as a methodological problem for
historians;1 to the contrary, these complementary sources permit access to social contexts and
agents that are under-represented in texts, particularly women and other practitioners who
operated in domestic and rural environments. It offers the potential to interrogate the
distinction between ‘theory and practice’ in medieval magic and opens up new opportunities
to directly access ‘the mental world of the non-literate’.2 Archaeology renders a wider range
of practices visible, but the absence of textual commentary makes it difficult to gauge
whether these activities were sanctioned by the church or regarded as illicit magic.
1
Sarah Randles, ‘Material Magic: The Deliberate Concealment of Footwear and Other Clothing,’ Parergon 30,
Number 2 (2013); Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press:
2000), 47.
2
Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe. Superstition, Reason and Religion 1250–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 6; Richard Kieckhefer, ‘The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic,’ American Historical Review
99 (1994): 833.
1
Archaeological evidence prompts reconsideration of definitions of medieval magic
and attention to the permeable borderlines between magic, religion, medicine and heresy. The
fuzziness of these categories is highlighted by evidence for material practices such as ‘odd
deposits’: the burial, discard or concealment of objects that seems to defy any rational
explanation. Such deposits are recorded in domestic and ecclesiastical contexts and across
the social spectrum, suggesting both lay and clerical participation. Distinguishing between
magic and religion was challenging for medieval people, even educated clerics, and remains
an area of contention among medieval historians.3 Archaeology adds a new perspective to
these debates, illuminating the murky space between documented practice and what people
were actually doing.
Archaeological sources reach a broader range of social and spatial contexts than texts
usually permit, for example, magic practised within the homes, churches and churchyards of
medieval England. The archaeology of magic has potential to reveal intimate rites that were
never documented in clerical texts, and to explore the close relationship between magic,
gender and the body, for example through burial evidence.4 However, material sources do not
provide immediate access to the thoughts and motivations of medieval people. Did they
regard their actions as ‘magic’ and why did they perceive certain acts as efficacious?
Attention to spatial context provides some basis for considering the social identity of the
practitioner – for example, whether a priest, craftsman, pilgrim or housewife – and grounds to
consider the possible motivations and perceived causation behind the magic ritual. Spatial
context may also provide insight to whether a rite was public or private and whether it was
regarded as licit or illicit magic. Archaeological interest in agency overlaps with the focus on
3
Catherine Rider, Magic and Religion in Medieval England (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 8–15.
4
Roberta Gilchrist, ‘Magic for the Dead? The Archaeology of Magic in Later Medieval Burials,’ Medieval
Archaeology 52 (2008).
2
causation in the study of medieval magic; in other words, the conceptual frameworks that
allowed medieval people to rationally attribute the cause of marvels to the intercession of
saints, the occult power of nature, or the intervention of demons.5 Similarly, archaeology’s
concern with materiality has close affinities with themes addressed in the study of natural
magic.
Archaeologists consider the material traces of magic within a ‘deep-time’ perspective.
We work at larger chronological scales and resolutions to most historians, taking a
‘stratigraphic’ approach which relates medieval evidence to that which comes before and
after it. This extended timescale highlights continuities in ritual practice and in the selection
and treatment of materials that extended over hundreds of years, across the watersheds of the
Christian conversion and the Reformation. Archaeology reveals an enduring repertoire of
common ritual actions that may be regarded as traditional or even indigenous to northern
Europe; these practices may have been influenced by ideas derived from learned magic texts
of Greco-Roman, Arabic or Jewish origin, to forge new beliefs and localised meanings. This
process of hybridity can be glimpsed especially in the late Saxon charms: these monastic
records of popular belief provide a bridge for understanding later medieval practice in
relation to earlier rites.6
Magic and Archaeology: Text and Object
5
Robert Bartlett, The Natural and the Supernatural in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008; Kieckhefer, ‘Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic,’ 821–24; Roberta Gilchrist, Medieval Life:
Archaeology and the Life Course (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2012), 216–52.
6
Karen Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England. Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill NC: University of
North Carolina, 1996); Jolly, ‘Medieval Magic.’
3
The first major archaeological treatment of magic was Ralph Merrifield’s, The Archaeology
of Ritual and Magic (1987), which presented an accessible overview of material evidence for
ritual practices extending from the prehistoric to modern periods in Britain. Merrifield laid
the methodological groundwork for an archaeology of magic, stressing the importance of
establishing rigorous chronological and spatial contexts for magical practices and ‘odd
deposits’, such as prehistoric axe-heads discovered in medieval contexts.7
Another pioneering contribution to the archaeology of magic was Audrey Meaney’s
research on amulets in Anglo-Saxon burials. She used the evidence of grave goods to identify
the burials of cunning women or seers, based on the presence of objects that were deemed
magical by virtue of their substance. She focused on amulets of animal, vegetable and
mineral materials, or those which were noteworthy for their exceptional age. Roman or
prehistoric artefacts in graves dating from the sixth to ninth centuries were interpreted as
objets trouvé, ‘found objects’ that were credited with the power to bring luck or avert evil.
Meaney set out two methodological premises that have been followed by much of the
subsequent archaeological scholarship on medieval magic: first, the relationship between an
object or material and its magical powers should be documented in medieval sources; and
second, a direct physical relationship should be demonstrated between the object and the
body in the grave.8 Her work was pivotal in recognising the agency of women in the practice
of magic, through the identification of objects in Anglo-Saxon women’s graves including
crystal balls worn suspended from the waist, bronze relic boxes that contained scraps of
thread and cloth, and bags containing collections of odd objects. Meaney interpreted these
7
Ralph Merrifield, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (London: Batsford, 1987), 6, 18.
8
Audrey L. Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones (Oxford: British Archaeology Report 96, 1981),
24–7.
4
assemblages as women’s toolkits for healing or divination, suggesting a significant ritual role
for some Anglo-Saxon women as community healers or seers.9
I have drawn on Meaney’s work to identify the use of magic in later medieval burial
rites in Britain (eleventh to fifteenth centuries) and to demonstrate long-term continuities in
the placement of apotropaic objects and natural materials with the dead.10 This recognition of
hybrid practices formed by the conversion to Christianity has prompted new study of
transitional burial rites and heightened archaeological attention to magic.11 The ‘deep-time’
perspective of archaeology provides new insight to the changing practices and meanings of
medieval magic: many rituals of common magic had their roots in pre-Christian practices,
while medieval rites influenced the practise of early modern magic to protect against
witchcraft.12 Archaeologists often adopt a long-term perspective in which to evaluate magic,
9
Audrey L. Meaney, ‘Women, Witchcraft and Magic in Anglo-Saxon England,’ in Superstition and Popular
Medicine in Anglo-Saxon England ed. D. G. Scragg (Manchester: Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies,
1989).
10
Gilchrist, ‘Magic for the Dead?’
11
Dawn M. Hadley, ‘Burial, Belief and Identity in Later Anglo-Saxon England,’ in Reflections: 50 Years of
Medieval Archaeology, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 30, ed. Roberta Gilchrist and Andrew
Reynolds (Leeds: Maney, 2009); Eleanor R. Standley, Trinkets and Charms. The Use, Meaning and
Significance of Dress Accessories 1300–1700, Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph 78
(Oxford: Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 2013); Chris Caple, ‘The Apotropaic Symbolled
Threshold to Nevern Castle – Castle Nanhyfer,’ The Archaeological Journal 169 (2012); Sonja Hukantaival,
‘Finding Folk Religion: An Archaeology of “Strange” Behaviour,’ Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore 55
(2013); Stephen Gordon, ‘Disease, Sin and the Walking Dead in Medieval England, 1100–1350. A Note on the
Documentary and Archaeological Evidence,’ in Medicine, Healing and Performance ed. Effie Gemi-Iordanou et
al. (Oxford: Oxbow, 2014).
12
Brian Hoggard, ‘The Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft and Popular Magic,’ in Beyond the Witch Trials:
Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
5
particularly in Scandinavia and the Baltic, where nineteenth-century folklore informs the
understanding of material practices that were prevalent from prehistory to the modern era.13
Important regional distinctions arise from the nature and timing of conversion to Christianity;
for example in the eastern Baltic, material practices associated with the treatment of the dead
are often regarded as ‘syncretic’ or ‘pagan’ survivals, rather than as part of a medieval
tradition of magic.14
Ritual Deposition
Over the past thirty years, archaeologists have explored the idea that the ‘deposition’ of
materials, such as the burial of selected objects in a pit, may have constituted meaningful
social practice. It has been argued that ‘odd deposits’ were created as part of ritual practice
that was integrated with aspects of everyday life in the past. Such deposits take the form of
deliberately made features that seem to defy any rational explanation, such as whole pots or
animals buried in ditches and pits, or objects placed at critical points in settlements, such as at
boundaries, entrances or the corners of houses.15 Odd deposits were first discussed in relation
13
Ann-Britt Falk, En Grundläggande Handling. Byggnadsoffer Och Dagligt Liv i Medeltid (Lund: Nordic
Academic Press, 2008); Hukantaival, ‘Finding Folk Religion.’ For the folklore approach in British archaeology
see also Amy Gavin-Schwarz, ‘Archaeology and Folklore of Material Culture, Ritual and Everyday Life,’
International Journal of Historical Archaeology 5, Issue 4 (2001).
14
Leszek Gordela and P. Duma, ‘Untimely Death: Atypical Burials of Children in Early and Late Medieval
Poland,’ World Archaeology 45, Issue 2 (2013).
15
Joanna Brück, ‘Ritual and Rationality: Some Problems of Interpretation in European Archaeology,’ European
Journal of Archaeology 2, Issue 3 (1999). For a critical review of the two distinct concepts of ‘structured
deposition’ and ‘odd deposits’ in archaeology see Duncan Garrow, ‘Odd Deposits and Average Practice. A
Critical History of the Concept of Structured Deposition,’ Archaeological Dialogues 19, Issue 2 (2012).
6
to Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements but are now recognised to have occurred in later
prehistoric and Classical contexts across Europe. It is only very recently that archaeologists
have identified the occurrence of odd deposits in early and later medieval contexts, with
similarities in the types of objects and materials selected for use across Europe, from pagan to
Christian eras.16
Odd deposits in pagan Anglo-Saxon houses and settlements took the form of human
and animal remains buried in buildings and at boundaries and entrances, although other
objects were also employed, including pottery vessels, brooches, beads, spindle-whorls and
loom weights. Close parallels have been drawn with earlier Iron Age and Roman practices,
particularly in the deposition of human and animal remains in pits. It has also been
acknowledged that these practices extended beyond the pagan period and can be detected in
later Saxon (Christian) urban and rural contexts.17 Odd deposits dating to the Anglo-Saxon
period were initially categorised as ‘votive’, but more recent discussions have evaluated this
form of ritual practice within the framework of everyday life. Just as Richard Kieckhefer
argued that magic should be perceived as ‘an alternative form of rationality’ that was
consistent with medieval views of the universe, archaeologists contend that odd deposits were
rationally conceived according to past world views, directed towards specific practical
purposes such as agriculture and technology.18
16
Helena Hamerow, ‘“Special Deposits” in Anglo-Saxon Settlements,’ Medieval Archaeology 50 (2006);
Gilchrist, Medieval Life.
17
Hamerow, ‘“Special Deposits”;’ Michael Fulford, ‘Links with the Past: Persuasive “Ritual” Behaviour in
Roman Britain,’ Britannia 32 (2001); James Morris and Ben Jervis, ‘What’s so Special? A Reinterpretation of
Anglo-Saxon “Special Deposits”,’ Medieval Archaeology 55 (2011).
18
Kieckhefer, ‘Special Rationality of Medieval Magic;’ Brück, ‘Ritual and Rationality.’
7
Merrifield noted that animal skulls, pottery vessels, clothing and shoes were
frequently found in extant buildings of later medieval and early modern date, usually placed
in the foundations, walls or chimneys.19 Similar practices have since been detected in
excavated structures dating to the medieval period across Europe, and spanning domestic and
ecclesiastical contexts. In medieval Sweden, for example, odd deposits comprise animal
remains, tools and utensils, pottery vessels, coins, personal items, prehistoric lithics and
fossils; deposits of coins are particularly common finds in parish churches.20 Odd deposits
identified in medieval English churches include paternoster beads of bone and amber, silver
spoons, pottery vessels, pilgrim badges and disused baptismal fonts.21
In medieval English houses, pottery vessels have been found buried near hearths and
objects have been recovered from post-holes, including special materials such as fragments of
glass and quartz crystal. There are two possible cases of gaming boards deliberately buried as
odd deposits: three limestone slabs with marks for ‘nine men’s morris’ were excavated from a
single tenement at the hamlet of West Cotton (Northants), dating from the thirteenth to
fourteenth century. Excavations at Nevern Castle (Pembrokeshire) revealed the special
treatment of a late twelfth-century entrance to the castle: the threshold was formed by
inverted slates with inscriptions on one or both faces. Amongst the symbols inscribed on the
slates were warriors, crosses, a pentagram and three boards for ‘nine men’s morris’. It has
19
Merrifield, Archaeology of Ritual and Magic.
20
Falk, En Grundläggande Handling, 207–8.
21
Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 230–6; Brian Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges: Medieval Finds from
Excavations in London (London: HMSO, 1998), 20.
8
been suggested that the grid pattern of the game may have been intended to trap or detain
malevolent spirits.22
Eleanor Standley has drawn attention to the use of personal objects of medieval dress
such as buckles and brooches as deliberate deposits. She argues that items were specially
selected for their apotropaic value: for example, at the village of West Hartburn (co Durham),
a silver brooch inscribed with the Holy Name (IESUS NAZARET/IHUS REX IUDEO) was
recovered near a circular hearth within a structure. The context was dated to around the
fourteenth century and Standley proposes that the deposit may have been made in response to
the fourteenth-century crises of famine and plague.23
[insert fig. 1 here – portrait]
Figure 1:
Silver brooch inscribed with the Holy Name from West Hartburn,
diameter 30 mm.
Source: Standley 2013; reproduced with permission of Eleanor Standley.
Ritual deposition in medieval England was not confined to domestic and religious
buildings, but extended to the deliberate discard of certain types of object in the landscape.
Pilgrims’ badges have been found in large quantities in rivers in England, France and the
Netherlands, with particular concentrations recovered at the locations of bridges and river
crossings.24 Pilgrim badges were selected for deposition as special objects because of their
22
Andrew Chapman, West Cotton, Raunds. A Study of Medieval Settlement Dynamics AD 450–1450.
Excavation of a Deserted Medieval Hamlet in Northamptonshire 1985–89 (Oxford: Oxbow, 2010), 157–61;
Caple, ‘The Apotropaic Symbolled Threshold,’ 446–7.
23
Standley, Trinkets and Charms, 83.
24
Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges; Merrifield, Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, 109.
9
apotropaic value to the owner. Pilgrim souvenirs were blessed at saints’ shrines like a relic;
they acquired the status of quasi-relics or consecrated objects and were worn as amulets on
the body, or alternatively, fixed to bed-posts or fastened to textual amulets and books of
hours.25 A large number of these mass-produced, tin-alloy badges were deposited in watery
places, possibly as part of the performance of a charm to mark the completion of a vow of
pilgrimage, or as a thanks-offering to a saint for a cure or miracle. The act of depositing a
pilgrim badge in water was clearly a common practice but not one that was documented in
medieval texts.
Medieval swords and daggers were also deposited in rivers and bogs, extending an
ancient prehistoric practice into Christian times. Merrifield argued that the medieval
deposition of swords was not votive but instead part of the transition to Christian funerary
rites.26 Because the burial of weapons was not allowed in the consecrated ground of
churchyards, their disposal in water provided an alternative mode of disposal. Archaeological
evidence for this practice appears to correspond with rural areas dominated by monasteries,
possibly indicating that religious houses may have controlled the ritual disposal of weapons
as part of their provision of funerary rites. Medieval weapons have been found in the Witham
Valley (Lincolnshire), which was densely settled by monasteries that were linked by ten
causeways across the fenland. Artefacts recovered from the causeways confirm that the
deposition of weapons had continued in the region from the Bronze Age right up to the later
medieval period. A total of 32 medieval weapons were found, including 10 swords, five
daggers/long knives, six axe-heads and six spearheads. David Stocker and Paul Everson
25
Don C. Skemer, Binding Words. Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages (University Park PA: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 68.
26
Richard Bradley, The Passage of Arms: An Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Hoards and Votive
Deposits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Merrifield, Archaeology of Ritual and Magic.
10
surmise that this practice ceased in the late fourteenth century, when it became acceptable to
display military equipment around the tomb in the church.27
The archaeological recording of odd deposits in medieval houses, churches and
monasteries confirms that the act of ritual deposition was widely practised in both lay and
religious contexts, and likely executed by both lay and religious practitioners. Paradoxically,
the burial or concealment of objects and clothing, or their disposal in rivers or bogs, was
rarely documented in medieval texts. Such practices operated outside the highly prescriptive
categories of medieval writing: they were invisible to financial records, chronicles and
hagiography. The motive behind odd deposits has been interpreted as broadly apotropaic or
protective; however, the act of burial was more frequently documented in relation to illicit
rites of harmful magic. Burial of special creatures or objects was sometimes documented in
relation to malignant sorcery: for example, a lizard buried under the threshold stone of a
house was intended to harm the fertility of householders and their animals.28 The interment of
animal parts in wall foundations or at boundaries is also documented in the practice of natural
magic and medieval recipes record the use of buried earthenware pots for distilling or
fermenting ingredients to be employed in medical preparations.29 The ubiquity of odd
deposits is in stark contrast to the rarity with which the practice was documented. This
27
David Stocker and Paul Everson, ‘The Straight and Narrow Way: Fenland Causeways and the Conversion of
the Landscape in the Witham Valley, Lincolnshire,’ in The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in
Northern Europe, AD 300–1300, ed. Martin Carver (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer/York Medieval Press,
2003).
28
Michael D. Bailey, ‘From Sorcery to Witchcraft: Clerical Conception of Magic in the Later Middle Ages,
Speculum 76, Number 4 (2001): 981.
29
Sophie Page, Magic in the Cloister. Pious Motives, Illicit Interests and Occult Approaches to the Medieval
Universe (University Park PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 47; Stephen Moorhouse, ‘Documentary
Evidence for the Uses of Medieval Pottery: An Interim Statement,’ Medieval Ceramics 2 (1978): 10.
11
dichotomy challenges previous archaeological methodologies for medieval magic that begin
with documented associations between objects or materials and their magical powers.30 The
archaeological elucidation of magic also requires a parallel approach which takes
archaeological context and pattern as its starting point.
[insert fig. 2 here – portrait]
Figure 2:
Sword with possible magical inscription of unknown meaning in Roman
and Lombardic lettering from the River Witham, dated c.1250–1330.
Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum
Magic and Materiality
The archaeological study of magic frequently focuses on the use of natural materials that
were considered to possess occult properties, or objects that were perceived to hold sacred
power acquired through a process of ritual consecration or physical proximity to relics. The
scholastic concept of natural magic emerged in the thirteenth century as an explanation for
materials and objects that possessed extraordinary properties (such as magnetism). These
were regarded as natural marvels within God’s universe, in contrast with magic conjured
through the power of demons.31 The boundary between natural and sacred magic was not
distinct within later medieval terms of reference: objects such as pilgrim souvenirs were
treated similarly to objects made of occult materials and ‘found objects’ such as prehistoric
lithics. Even mundane objects and personal garments could acquire sacred power for use as
quasi-relics. Sarah Randles discusses the widespread practice of concealing shoes and
30
Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones.
31
Page, Magic in the Cloister, 31.
12
garments in the fabric of medieval domestic and religious buildings in these terms, proposing
that concealment was part of a broader range of magic practices linked with cloth and
clothing. She argues that the permeable quality of a garment offered ‘the ability to absorb
virtue from its location, which it can then retain and pass on to the wearer’. She quotes a
fifteenth-century French vernacular literary text, The Distaff Gospels, in which women are
encouraged to secretly place their husbands’ shirts under the altar-stone when the priest is
celebrating mass. A husband wearing a garment treated in this way will be easy for a wife to
rule over and he will never beat her.32 It is very likely that local priests would have regarded
as illicit any acts which utilised the holy spaces in which the mass was performed or the
consecrated materials of the Eucharist.
The most powerful objects combined both natural and sacred properties, for example
paternoster beads made from amber or jet and blessed by the priest for use in personal
devotion.33 Jet and amber share inherent physical properties which may have been perceived
as evidence of occult power: when rubbed, both substances develop a static charge and emit a
smell. These characteristics were stressed in medieval lapidaries, alongside the powers of
many minerals and gemstones including coral, rock crystal and sapphire, which were
incorporated into jewellery for wearing as amulets or used to embellish reliquaries and other
religious material culture.34 The most influential medieval lapidary was the late eleventhcentury Book of Stones (De Lapidus) written by Bishop Marbode of Rennes, which formed
the basis for many later texts. The particular materials revered by medieval people for their
occult properties had been prized traditionally for millennia: archaeological evidence
32
Randles, ‘Material Magic,’ 119.
33
Standley, Trinkets and Charms, 67; Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 235.
34
Joan Evans, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London: Constable, 1922); Standley,
Trinkets and Charms, 86–8; Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 157–8.
13
confirms the enduring significance of materials including jet, amber, quartz and rock crystal
as well as animal materials such as antler and boar tusk.35
Jet was one of the most extensively utilised of such materials, a fossilized coniferous
wood, deep black in colour and easily carved. According to Marbode, jet was efficacious if
worn on the body, consumed as a powder, ingested through water in which the material had
been steeped or burnt to release beneficial fumes. The healing and anaesthetic properties of
jet were recommended for easing conditions ranging from childbirth to toothache, and it was
believed to possess powerful apotropaic value to protect from demons and malignant magic.36
Jet occurs principally in two locations – near Whitby in North Yorkshire and in Galicia in
northern Spain – and in both regions it was used to manufacture holy objects and pilgrim
souvenirs. It has been suggested that small, jet crucifix pendants were produced in workshops
at Whitby Abbey: a distinctive corpus of 22 crucifix pendants with ring and dot motif can be
dated stylistically to the twelfth century, including four recovered from graves. Damaged
pendants and raw materials have been excavated from Whitby Abbey, indicating a possible
source of production in monastic workshops.37 Jet and amber were luxury commodities and it
is possible that monasteries actively controlled both access to raw materials and the
production of amulets in occult materials.
Jet was used to manufacture a wide range of medieval objects including beads,
pendants, rings, brooches, pins, chess pieces, dice, dagger handles and bowls for possible
magico-medical use.38 This distinctive material may have been used for other types of magic,
35
Chantal Conneller, An Archaeology of Materials (London: Routledge, 2011); Andrew M. Jones, Prehistoric
Materialities: Becoming Material in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
36
Evans, Magical Jewels.
37
Elizabeth Pierce, ‘Jet Cross Pendants from the British Isles and Beyond: Forms, Distribution and Use,’
Medieval Archaeology 57 (2013).
38
Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 267–71.
14
such as divination. Bowls, dice and knife-handles are noteworthy in this respect as objects
used in divination rituals by medieval necromancers, who called upon spirits to guide them in
forecasting or decision-making.39 The archaeological distribution of jet dice and knives is
biased towards ecclesiastical sites, including the cathedrals and vicars chorals at Winchester,
Beverley and York. Divination was often associated with the clergy and this archaeological
distribution may indicate the use of objects made from occult natural materials for practising
clerical magic.40
Animal parts were also used in natural magic, with archaeological evidence for the
use of boar tusks and antler tines possibly as fertility amulets: animal material medica was
documented especially for use in relation to sex, conception, contraception and birth.41 Both
animal and human bodies were materials for magic, with documented practices including
divination from the shoulder blades of animals, human corpses and the clothing of the dead.42
Infant corpses were evidently regarded as an especially powerful substance, possibly used in
rites of sympathetic magic to prevent infant death, or as an occult material in witchcraft.
Kieckhefer has suggested that outside learned circles, substances regarded as repugnant or
taboo are likely to have been perceived as having occult power. He has noted evidence that
midwives and other women accused of witchcraft used infant body parts, either buried as part
of a charm or used as an ingredient.43 However, it is not clear whether such practices actually
39
Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Stroud: Sutton,
1997), 97.
40
Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 167.
41
Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 240–41; Page, Magic in the Cloister, 40–41.
42
Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 113; Sophie Page, Magic in Medieval Manuscripts (London: The British
Library, 2004), 56.
43
Kieckhefer, ‘Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic,’ 834; Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 59, 62.
15
occurred or whether these stories were intended to fuel the fifteenth-century witchcraft
stereotype.
Archaeological evidence reveals that infant corpses were sometimes buried outside
consecrated ground, interred in medieval rural and urban houses dating from the twelfth to
the sixteenth centuries. These infant burials were located in spaces that were in daily use as
domestic or associated working areas; the burials were usually dug against the exterior walls
of the main living rooms and sealed by later floor deposits, indicating that the buildings were
still occupied when the interments took place. In some cases the infant remains were judged
to represent stillborns, but others were weeks or months old at the time of death; these infants
would surely have been baptised and carried the right to burial in consecrated ground. The
infant domestic burials were carefully laid out and some were accompanied by grave goods:
animal parts were placed with an infant at Tattenhoe (Bucks) and a spindle-whorl and an
exotic shell were deposited with an infant at Upton (Gloucesters). I have suggested that the
interment of infant corpses in the house may have been linked to rites of fertility, drawing on
the evidence of charms for safe childbirth that were recorded in the eleventh-century
Lacnunga. These charms involved the recitation of words and the performance of actions,
such as jumping over a grave or collecting grave soil from an infant who had been stillborn.44
Did the infants buried in medieval houses serve as materials for rites of sympathetic magic,
rituals that were intended to protect future births?
Magic and Performance
44
Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 219–23, 284–5.
16
The burial of odd deposits can be likened to a charm, a ritual performance that combined
words and actions and sometimes involved the use of supporting herbs and objects. The
efficacy of the charm was strengthened by performances of the body; for example, apotropaic
formulae were written on the body and on substances such as wax to be consumed orally.
Portability was also important to facilitate close contact with the body, with textual amulets
enclosed in capsules, sacks and purses to be worn on the body.45 A comparison can be made
with devotional jewellery, such as reliquary rings and pendants that were relatively common
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.46 Charms were worn on the body by people at all
social levels: devotional words were inscribed on brooches, buckles, buttons, girdles,
pendants, pouches and rings, as well as on objects carried on the body, such as knives,
spoons, seals and mirror cases.47 The most common devotional inscriptions invoked the name
of Christ, either in the abbreviations IHS or IHC or INRI (Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum).
Euan Cameron observed that such invocation of the names of God ‘wanders into the realm of
the occultist grimoire or spell-book of the intellectual magician’.48 But material culture
demonstrates that words and letters held an integral mystique for the non-literate: ‘mock
inscriptions’ or false lettering were also common on items such as brooches. These were
made and purchased by those who believed in the power of words, but could not read or write
them.49
The performance of magic also involved the modification or deliberate mutilation of
objects, for example the bending of coins and pilgrim badges. This practice can be likened to
45
Skemer, Binding Words, 1–2.
46
David Hinton, Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 245.
47
Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 272–4.
48
Cameron, Enchanted Europe, 53.
49
Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 162–4.
17
the folding of charms written on parchment, lead or communion wafers: the act of folding
increased the efficacy of the charm by preserving its secrecy and containing its magic.50 The
folding or bending of pilgrim souvenirs can also be compared with the deliberate destruction
of magico-medical amulets, such as fever amulets thrown into the fire after the afflicted
person had recovered.51 The destruction of the amulet guaranteed that it was specific to the
individual and could not be reused, but the act of folding or mutilation was also part of the
ritual performance of magic. This premise is documented in relation to the practise of
bending coins: miracles recorded at saints’ shrines refer to the custom of bending the coin in
the name of the saint invoked to heal the sick person.52 Richard Kelleher notes the frequent
mutilation of medieval English coins through bending, piercing and cutting, citing 130
examples of folded coins.53
There is growing archaeological evidence that magic was performed in rural
communities as part of agricultural practices linked to the fertility of fields. Later medieval
practices extended traditions recorded in the aecerbot charm, dating to the late tenth or early
eleventh century, in which land believed to have been cursed by a sorcerer was cleansed
through an elaborate ceremony involving the blessing of turves.54 Recent archaeological
study of metal-detected objects in England has identified a pattern in which ampullae dating
to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were deliberately damaged before being discarded in
50
Lea T. Olsan, ‘Charms and Prayers in Medieval Medical Theory and Practice,’ Social Theory of Medicine 16
(2003): 362.
51
Skemer, Binding Words, 188.
52
Merrifield, Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, 91; Ronald C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular
Beliefs in Medieval England (London: Dent, 1977), 94–6.
53
Richard Kelleher, ‘The Re-Use of Coins in Medieval England and Wales c.1050–1550: An Introductory
Survey’ Yorkshire Numismatist 4 (2012): 130.
54
Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England, 6–12.
18
cultivated fields.55 Ampullae were pilgrim souvenirs in the form of miniature vessels used to
contain water, oil or dust collected from saints’ shrines and holy wells. While pilgrim badges
were commonly discarded in watery contexts in towns (discussed above), ampullae are more
typically recovered from rural contexts and particularly from cultivated fields. They were
deliberately damaged by crimping or even biting, presumably to open the seal in order to
pour the contents on the fields before discarding the vessel. Folded coins are also found
especially in plough-soil, suggesting the possibility of a deliberate act of discard as an
offering to protect or enhance the fertility of fields.56 Ceremonies for blessing the fields are
recorded in which the parish priest sprinkled holy water and recited the biblical passage of
Genesis 1: 28.57
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the
earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of
the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
The archaeological evidence of discarded coins and ampullae suggests that such liturgies in
the field were complemented by the performance of ritual deposition.
[insert fig. 3 here - portrait]
Figure 3:
Deliberately damaged ampullae; from top to bottom PAS nos IOW-
ED2A21, NCL-44A762 and LVPL-50FD62.
Source: reproduced with permission of the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
55
William Anderson, ‘Blessing the Fields? A Study of Late-Medieval Ampullae from England and Wales,’
Medieval Archaeology 54 (2010).
56
Kelleher, ‘The Re-Use of Coins,’ 195.
57
Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 58.
19
Magic, Craft and Technology
A connection between magic and technology can be demonstrated particularly in medieval
monastic contexts. For example, the monks of St Augustine, Canterbury, collected medical,
alchemical, craft and technical recipes and had access to facilities for making magical
objects: they kept equipment and utensils in the infirmary, used the plumber’s workshop and
commissioned work from metal craftsmen in the town.58 Archaeological evidence for such
activities includes specialist vessels of glass and pottery. At Glastonbury Abbey, for example,
two perforated pottery jars, four distilling bases and two crucibles were linked with specialist
scientific and technical activities.59 It has been suggested that the perforated pottery jars
would have been used for the production of white lead and for a variety of distillation and
fermentation processes, while the distilling bases may have been used in the production of
medicines or in alchemical practices.
It has recently been demonstrated that monasteries drew from more popular traditions
of magic to aid technical production. The workshops at the monastery of San Vincenzo
Maggiore (Isernia, Italy) have produced over one hundred prehistoric stone tools, many in
structural contexts including floor surfaces, post-holes and furnace linings.60 The tradition of
collecting prehistoric lithics was prevalent across medieval Europe. These objects were not
58
Page, Magic in the Cloister, 8.
59
Stephen Moorhouse, ‘Medieval Distilling Apparatus of Glass and Pottery,’ Medieval Archaeology 16 (1972);
Oliver Kent, ‘Wares Associated with Specialist Scientific and Technical Activities,’ in Glastonbury Abbey:
Archaeological Investigations 1904–1979, Roberta Gilchrist and Cheryl Green (London: Society of Antiquaries
Monograph, in press).
60
Karen Francis and Mother Philip Kline, ‘Prehistoric Stone Tools in Medieval Contexts,’ In San Vincenzo
Maggiore and its Workshops. Archaeological Monographs of the British School at Rome 17, ed. Richard
Hodges et al. (London: The British Academy, 2011).
20
recognised as ancient artefacts by medieval people; instead, stone axes were regarded as the
physical residue of thunder and flint arrow-heads were considered to be ‘elf-shot’ or fairy
weapons. They were believed to provide protection against lightning strikes and were
employed as odd deposits in medieval domestic and ecclesiastical contexts.61
The prehistoric stone tools at San Vincenzo Maggiore were deposited with workshop
demolition and occupation deposits dating to the eighth and ninth centuries and including
semi-precious gemstones and craft residues.62 They seem to have been employed in the
production of high-status craft objects and possibly in the protection of the workshops against
fire. It is suggested that a miniature greenstone axe may have been used in a manner
described in a craft-working treatise dated to the twelfth to thirteenth century and attributed to
Eraclius, in which green glass, burnt copper and ‘burnt thunder-bolts’ are mixed with ground
clear glass to create a green glaze for pottery vessels.63 A large igneous axe dated to the
copper age was discovered beneath a collapsed roof-tile deposit in a granary. The excavators
suggest that this may have been suspended from the roof as a thunder-bolt amulet, in the
manner described by Bishop Marbode. The majority of prehistoric stone tools from San
Vincenzo Maggiore were recovered from areas which were at high risk from fire, such as the
glass foundry, metalworking workshops and bell-casting pit. The excavators suggest that the
prehistoric lithics at San Vincenzo may have been employed as sympathetic magic – on the
61
Merrifield, Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, 10–16; Peter Carelli, ‘Thunder and Lightning, Magical
Miracles. On the Popular Myth of Thunderbolts and the Presence of Stone-Age Artefacts in Medieval Deposits,’
in Visions of the Past: Trends and Traditions in Swedish Medieval Archaeology, Lund Studies in Medieval
Archaeology 19, ed. Hans Anderson et al. (Stockholm: Central Board of National Antiquities, 1997); Gilchrist,
Medieval Life, 247.
62
Francis and Kline, ‘Prehistoric Stone Tools in Medieval Contexts.’
63
Eraclius, De Coloribus et Artibus Romanorum III.1; Mary P. Merrifield, Original Treatises on the Arts of
Painting (New York: Dover Publications, 1967), 204–5.
21
basis that objects believed to protect against lightning may also have been used to guard
against fire.64 The evidence from San Vincenzo indicates the use of prehistoric lithics as
magic objects both for specialist technical production and for apotropaic use.
[Insert fig. 4 here - portrait]
Figure 4:
Location of stone axes from the workshops at San Vincenzo Maggiore.
Source: Hodges et al. 2011; reproduced with permission of Richard Hodges and John
Mitchell.
The compelling evidence from San Vincenzo demonstrates the potential for future
investigation of magic in the practice of medieval technology and broader craft production.
Tools in common use were sometimes associated with magic, especially those linked with the
transformation of materials. Whetstones are a good example: these utilitarian objects were
used to sharpen iron tools in the home and workshop; they were also favoured objects for
concealing as odd deposits in buildings in Finland and Sweden.65 Whetstones were noted as
magical objects by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, and they occur in Old English and
Old Norse literature as symbols of authority. The connection between power and the act of
sharpening may have derived from the ritual significance of the iron smith: the act of
transforming metal was regarded as magical in many societies, for example in the British Iron
Age.66 The smith’s craft was also associated with ritual deposition: a cache of smith’s tools
64
Francis and Kline, ‘Prehistoric Stone Tools in Medieval Contexts,’ 398.
65
Hukantaival, ‘Finding Folk Religion,’ 111–2.
66
Stephen A. Mitchell, ‘The Whetstone as Symbol of Authority in Old English and Old Norse,’ Scandinavian
Studies 57 (1985); Melanie Giles, ‘Making Metal and Forging Relations: Ironworking in the British Iron Age,’
Oxford Journal of Archaeology 26, Number 4 (2007).
22
was excavated from a late Saxon building at Bishopstone (E Sussex), interpreted as an act of
ritual closure when the building was abandoned.67
A comparison can be made with the female domestic craft of textile production,
culturally associated with magic and the spinning of spells.68 Spindle-whorls seem to have
been particularly significant among weaving tools, used with a drop-spindle for spinning flax
and wool; these common domestic objects were occasionally placed in later medieval coffins
and graves, including a domestic infant burial at Upton.69 Utilitarian objects of stone, pottery,
wood, bone or lead were sometimes transformed by magic words: a lead spindle-whorl
excavated from the village of West Hartburn (co Durham) was cast with the reversed letters
‘Rho’, referring to the Christian symbol Chi-Rho, the monogram for Christos. Standley notes
a corpus of at least 30 lead spindle whorls from medieval England that were marked with
lettering.70
[insert fig. 5 here – portrait]
Figure 5:
Lead spindle-whorl cast with reversed ‘Rho’ from West Hartburn,
diameter 25 mm.
Source: Standley 2013; reproduced with permission of Eleanor Standley.
67
Gabor Thomas, ‘The Symbolic Lives of Late Anglo-Saxon Settlements: A Timber Structure and Iron Hoard
from Bishopstone, East Sussex,’ The Archaeological Journal 165 (2008).
68
Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones, 185; Randles, ‘Material Magic,’122; Gilchrist, ‘Magic for
the Dead?’ 132–3.
69
Roberta Gilchrist and Barney Sloane, Requiem: The Medieval Monastic Cemetery in Britain (London:
Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2005), 102–3.
70
Standley, Trinkets and Charms, 84.
23
Magic and the Dead
Material evidence for magic in Anglo-Saxon graves has been used to identify the individual
burials of female practitioners of magic (discussed above); in contrast, material evidence in
later-medieval graves has been used to identify the recipients of magic, and from this to infer
possible motivations and agents.71 The vast majority of later-medieval Christians were
wrapped in a shroud and buried in a simple earth-cut grave. But a small minority of burials
included special materials in the preparation of the grave-lining, placed within the grave or
coffin, or within the shroud. Archaeological analysis of excavated burials from medieval
England suggests that around two to three per cent had objects placed in close contact with
the corpse.72 The true figure is likely to have been much greater: a high proportion of these
items were organic materials – including textiles, bone, wood and even beeswax – and most
would have perished in the ground. Mortuary practices were highly localised, with significant
variations observed between monastic and lay cemeteries, and customs varying
chronologically and regionally.
Despite these caveats, distinctive patterns can be detected in the selection of grave
goods placed with the dead in later-medieval England. These included personal objects (dress
accessories and grooming tools), domestic and devotional items, and natural materials and
antique objects (or objets trouvé). Some of these objects were associated with magic in
domestic contexts, such as spindle-whorls, or connected with pilgrimage and rites in the
fields (pilgrim souvenirs and folded coins). Occult materials are relatively rare, but jet
pendant crosses have been recovered from graves in monastic cemeteries.73 A striking
71
Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones; Gilchrist, ‘Magic for the Dead?’
72
Gilchrist and Sloane, Requiem; Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 200–215.
73
Pierce, ‘Jet Cross Pendants’; Standley, Trinkets and Charms.
24
number of these objects may be regarded as traditional grave goods, continuing practices
prevalent in prehistoric, Roman and pagan Anglo-Saxon burials, such as the deposition of
beads, coins, fossils, animal teeth and quartz pebbles with the dead. The number of ‘found
objects’ is striking: tiles, pottery, coins and bracelets of Roman date were buried with the
medieval dead. The placement of such grave goods was targeted at certain social groups, in
particular children in both monastic and lay cemeteries.74
Potential evidence for the use of childbirth amulets has also been detected in the
graves of women who may have died in childbirth: a folded lead parcel was founded near the
abdomen of a female skeleton at the Benedictine monastery of St James in Bristol, which
contained granular material likely to be parchment; a female burial at the hospital of St Mary
Spital, London, had a textile bundle placed between her legs, also thought to contain
parchment.75 It has been suggested that the material residues of charms may have been
deposited in graves in the form of wooden wands or rods. Willow, hazel or poplar wands or
rods were placed in graves in England and Scandinavia, dating from the eleventh century
right up to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, and found with men, women and children.
These have been interpreted as objects connected with journeying or healing charms, for
example, as indicated in an Old English metrical charm recorded in an eleventh-century
manuscript given to Exeter Cathedral by Leofric (d. 1072). This invokes protection by means
of a staff: ‘I chant a victory charm; I carry a victory staff; victory by means of words, and
victory by means of an object’.76
74
Gilchrist and Sloane, Requiem; Gilchrist, ‘Magic for the Dead?’ Gilchrist, Medieval Life, 277–83.
75
Reg Jackson, Excavations at St James’ Priory, Bristol (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2006), 141; Gilchrist and
Sloane, Requiem, 200.
76
Gilchrist and Sloane, Requiem, 126, 171–4; Gilchrist, ‘Magic for the Dead?’ 128; Felix Grendon, ‘The Anglo-
Saxon Charms,’ The Journal of American Folklore 22 (1909): 176–9.
25
I have argued that traces of magic in later medieval graves were intended primarily to
support the vulnerable dead on their journey through purgatory, and to protect or heal the
corpse in the grave, perhaps to assist with its reanimation on judgement day. It may be
suggested that magic for the dead was practised by women in the care of their families, based
on evidence from visual sources that it was women who stripped and washed corpses and
wrapped them in the shroud for burial. But there are also indications that magic may have
been used to protect the living from the restless dead – to guard against revenants. Stephen
Gordon has argued that the act of lining graves with burnt materials may have been a strategy
targeted at corpses that appeared unusual and were therefore feared. He cites the use of burnt
materials in Bald’s Leechbook, dating to the ninth century, as a remedy against swelling. He
extends this argument to the inclusion of burnt materials in graves, suggesting that the rite
was reserved for cadavers that exhibited bloating and swelling, and which were therefore
regarded as candidates for revenants.77
Future Directions
Archaeological discussion has focused on the intersection of magic with religious devotion
and the use of special materials for healing and protection. Archaeological evidence reveals a
range of rites that were not documented in medieval texts, including the placement of objects
with the dead, the burial or concealment of odd deposits in houses and churches, and the
deliberate discard of weapons, pilgrim souvenirs and coins in water or on cultivated land.
How should we classify these practices according to definitions of medieval magic? For
example, can we regard odd deposits as the material residues of charms? It is likely that these
77
Gordon, ‘Disease, Sin and the Walking Dead,’ 64–5.
26
rituals appealed to Christian agents and the occult power of nature and therefore would have
been regarded as acceptable magic. Indeed, it is therefore debateable whether they should be
regarded as magic or instead as ‘unofficial’ Christian rituals.78 The practise of burying infants
in the home is an important exception – it seems inconceivable that medieval clergy would
have sanctioned such rites. Should we regard infant burials in medieval homes as evidence
for illicit magic?
Magic presents a conceptual and methodological challenge for archaeology due to the
inherent difficulty in identifying material evidence as the residue of magical intent. Historians
grapple with ambiguities in the definition of medieval magic but their starting point can be
found in normative categories of magic as defined by the authors and critics of magic texts.
The starting point for archaeologists is in the material record, which has no direct voice; the
subtleties of meaning, intention and agency can only be unlocked by developing theoretical
frameworks for interpreting archaeological evidence.79 Magic as ritual practice lacks
‘visibility’ in the archaeological record, in the same way that social categories such as gender,
age and disability were seemingly invisible in material evidence until appropriate frameworks
for investigation were applied. A further barrier is that the prevailing method of archaeology
is to identify and interpret dominant patterns in material evidence. This presents a paradox
for the archaeology of medieval magic, where some of the most fruitful avenues of research
have developed from reflection on ‘odd deposits’ and statistically insignificant patterns, for
example in relation to objects and materials placed in a small minority of medieval graves or
found occasionally as concealed deposits in surviving buildings. Archaeologists may find it
78
Rider, Magic and Religion, 11; Kieckhefer, ‘Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic,’ 833.
79
Aleksandra McClain, ‘Theory, disciplinary perspectives and the archaeology of later medieval England,’
Medieval Archaeology 56 (2010).
27
productive to consider magic as ritual practice that is by definition exceptional and alternative
to normative categories and dominant patterns.80 To render magic ‘visible’ in the
archaeological record, we must be alert to the anomalous, unusual and odd. 81 The
archaeology of magic is found in practices which are rarely detected in the archaeological
record, such as intentional or ‘odd’ deposits which may be hidden or involve the use of
special materials, mysterious words or symbols.
Archaeology reveals the ritual significance over the longue durée of the use of certain
natural materials and old or ‘found objects’ (objets trouvé). Such objects were employed in
medieval magic as ‘odd deposits’ buried in sacred and domestic contexts, placed with the
dead or employed in performances linked to healing, protection, fertility and technology.
How should we interpret evidence for apparent continuities in ritual practice over hundreds or
thousands of years? We must be sceptical in interpreting material evidence as proof that
ancient belief systems survived or that pagan practices persisted.82 However, it is clear that
some material practices continued after the conversion to Christianity, such as the apotropaic
use of found objects and natural materials and the creation of odd deposits. Such similarities
of practice do not necessarily constitute evidence for the direct continuity of beliefs across
time, but they perhaps indicate a longstanding, common repertoire of ritual actions. Future
research on the archaeology of magic should focus closer attention on the local experience of
the conversion process: how ritual actions took on new meanings in Christian contexts, how
they were communicated between generations, and how they were transformed over time.
80
Karen Jolly, ‘Medieval Magic: Definitions, Beliefs, Practices,’ in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. The
Middle Ages, ed. Karen Jolly et al. (London: Athlone, 2002), 1.
81
Jones, Prehistoric Materialities, 2; Brück, ‘Ritual and Rationality’; Garrow, ‘Odd Deposits and Average
Practice’.
82
Stephen Mitchell et al, ‘Witchcraft and Deep Time – a debate at Harvard,’ Antiquity 84 (2010), 864–79.
28
The archaeological documentation of medieval magic is just beginning. It is not yet
clear whether material practices were consistent across all social levels: for example, what is
the archaeological evidence for the practise of magic in castles and other elite settlements?83
What is the evidence for ‘crisis magic’: did social crises such as the Black Death lead to an
increase in common magic within local communities? There is also scope to consider love
magic in relation to material culture worn or carried on the body.84 Comparative studies are
needed between categories of medieval settlement, and within and between regions, to chart
the incidence of particular rites, their chronological currency and the relative influence of
literate magic versus traditional practices. For instance, is there broader evidence for
monasteries controlling the production of amulets in occult materials or the disposal of
weapons in water (as indicated at Whitby and in the Witham Valley)? Can we chart
additional patterns in the deliberate discard of metal artefacts and whether these practices
focused on particular points in the landscape? Study of magic in the landscape has been
accelerated by new sources of evidence, in particular the study of metal small finds that have
been reported by metal-detectorists under the terms of the UK Portable Antiquities Scheme
83
Candidates for odd deposits have been suggested at Barnard Castle, co Durham, and Nevern Castle: Caple,
‘The Apotropaic Symbolled Threshold;’ Standley, Trinkets and Charms. An important magic object recently
identified at the Dutch castle of Doornenburg – a late medieval Sigillum Dei – is likely to have originated in an
urban context and to have been reused as building material in the reconstruction of the castle after its destruction
in 1945: László Sándor Chardonnens and Jan R Veenstra, ‘Carved in lead and concealed in stone: a late
medieval Sigillum Dei at Doornenburg Castle,’ Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft 9.2 (2014), 123.
84
There is a growing literature on the material culture of love but little explicit discussion of love magic. See
Standley, Trinkets and Charms, Gilchrist, Medieval Life, Malcolm Jones, The Secret Middle Ages. Discovering
the Real Medieval World (Stroud: Sutton, 2002); Gemma Watson, ‘Medieval Mentalities and Material Culture:
The Archaeology of Courtly Love, Gender and Sexuality in London, c.1100–1500’ (MA diss., University of
Reading, 2007).
29
(from 1997).85 These data have illuminated patterns in the use of material culture in the
medieval countryside, balancing the increase in urban evidence that has resulted from the
growing number of archaeological excavations linked to commercial developments.
There is rich potential for the archaeological examination of literate magic,
particularly in the elite context of castles and monasteries. Does archaeological evidence
survive for image magic, divination and necromancy? How does the archaeological study of
monastic medicine and industry illuminate clerical attitudes at the intersection of religion,
science and magic? Can we detect a broader connection between magic, technology and
craft-working (as evidenced at San Vincenzo Maggiore)? The foundations for the
archaeology of magic have been established by working from documented associations
between objects and materials and their magic powers. A more contextual approach is now
needed, a framework which takes archaeological context and pattern as its starting point,
working from the odd, unusual and exceptional to probe the boundaries and definitions of
medieval belief.
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