Summary of Sybil Campbell Lecture, 29th October 2009

Medieval Women and the Care of the Family: the Archaeology of Life, Death and Magic

Roberta Gilchrist FBA, FSA
University of Reading; Leverhulme Major Research Fellow 2007-10

This year’s lecture considered how medieval archaeology can shed new light on the private lives of medieval women, using archaeology to reveal the deeply held beliefs and intimate practices that surrounded life and death in a medieval family.  The source material comprised the archaeology of English settlements and cemeteries dating from the 12th to the 15th century, drawing comparisons between devotional practices in medieval domestic and mortuary spheres.

It was proposed that certain materials and objects were used for the care and protection of the family during life and death. Connections were drawn with charms used in the practice of traditional folk magic, and with occult materials more associated with medieval ‘natural magic’. Certain animals, plants and minerals were considered by medieval people to possess special properties, some manifest and some resulting from the ‘occult’ power of nature. It was suggested that three main categories of ‘magical’ item occurred in medieval graves and domestic contexts: 1) healing charms and protective amulets; 2) objects believed to possess ‘occult’ natural power; and 3) ‘antique’ items. The first two types are attested categories of medieval magic; the third was suggested on the basis of the archaeological evidence of medieval burials.

Amulets are worn on the body or kept in the home to preserve against affliction; the principal medieval types comprise textual amulets, charms and consecrated objects.  Archaeological examples of textual amulets include the possible remains of two birthing amulets written on parchment and interred in female graves. Charms include jewellery and other objects with magical inscriptions, such as the names of the Three Magi, used as a charm to ward off sudden death. Such charms are found in considerable numbers in the home, but were only rarely deposited in graves. Consecrated objects include pilgrims’ badges and papal bullae, the latter detached from indulgences and circulated as amulets.  The pilgrim souvenirs recovered from domestic contexts show a strong correlation with shrines venerated by women for their connection to childbirth, such as Aachen, which held a relic of ‘the holy nightgown’, which was said to have been worn by the Virgin at the conception and birth of Christ.

Occult materials comprised fossils, stones and gems that were perceived to have special healing or protective properties. In graves, white stones of quartz or granite were prized, while objects carved from jet, coral or amber were better represented in domestic contexts. Jet was considered to be efficacious in childbirth, while coral was highly valued for offering protection to infants and young children from the evil eye. Antiquities deposited in graves may also have been considered to possess occult properties, especially Roman coins and beads.  Medieval graves provide sealed archaeological contexts in which grave goods can be directly associated with individual bodies that can be aged and sexed.  On this basis, it is possible to detect a correlation in the use of ‘magic’ objects and materials especially for the young, and perhaps also for the physically disabled. In contrast, ‘old’ items excavated from medieval households were interpreted as family heirlooms that may have circulated for only two or three generations before being discarded. Examples included objects possibly connected with marriage, such as women’s headdresses, and chests and coffers that were typically given as wedding gifts. By opening up the question of heirlooms, we begin to see connections between the lifecycles of people and things.

Charms, amulets and objects of special materials, such as jet and coral, provide insight to the material practices of life course rituals and thresholds – especially birth, marriage and death. Archaeological evidence of the home and grave shows the extent to which religious devotion and ‘magic’ were combined in medieval popular belief, and connected with family memory. Magic rooted religion in everyday life, in folk memory and in protecting and healing the family.  Perhaps most significantly, magic provided the opportunity for women to engage directly with the divine through their own agency, without the need for the intercession of priests.

For further details see R Gilchrist (2008), Magic for the dead: the archaeology of magic in medieval burials, Medieval Archaeology 52, 119-59.