Social Defense: The Construction of Late Medieval Societal and Spatial Boundaries in Newcastle upon Tyne and York

Summary

In anthropology, the "body" is a culture-specific concept often defined as separate from the mind, and during the nineteenth century was used in the study of non-Western cultures to better understand "the other." This paper investigates the application of the "body" concept to late medieval urban landscapes by examining how social hierarchy was organized and defined within town walls. The northern British towns of Newcastle and York are used as case studies: both were founded as Roman garrisons geographically bounded by rivers, were home to the four major medieval religious brotherhoods, and had hospitals close to, if not located within, their walls. Combining archaeological and historical data, social boundaries within the spatial constraints of a "walled" environment will be examined through the primary social institutions of monasteries, hospitals, and guilds, and how the construction and maintenance of those implicit boundaries intersected with the explicit defensive functions of the walls themselves.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• Landscape: Finding an Effective Scale in Urban Archaeology

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 530