Reused Timber and Woodland Management in Western Suffolk

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Reinvent, Reclaim, Redefine: Considerations of "Reuse" in Archaeological Contexts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper investigates the social context of timber reuse in late medieval and early modern timber-framed buildings. The data for this survey are centered around the town of Bury St. Edmunds, a market town in western Suffolk surrounded by rural farmsteads and villages. In the mid-sixteenth century there was a major shift in regional landownership due to the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The land, including woodlands went from being managed by the local abbey, a large institution, to multiple, smaller landlords. I examined 30 buildings from the rural and urban areas around Bury St. Edmunds, with construction phases dating from 1400 to 1700. Within these 30 buildings, there were 48 construction phases, and there was evidence of reused timber in 20 of them. However, the patterns of reuse observed in the survey do not necessarily relate to a lack of proximity to woodland. Historical documents indicate that timber was restricted by landlords throughout the period, both during and after the abbey’s control of the land. Thus, this paper argues that the patterns of reuse observed in the survey indicate a long-standing building practice that developed in response to existing woodland management practices and subsequently intensified in later periods.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Reinvent, Reclaim, Redefine: Considerations of "Reuse" in Archaeological Contexts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39033.0