The Medieval Ritual Landscape: Archaeology, Material Culture and Lived Religion

中世纪仪式景观项目将为了解英国中世纪(公元前1000-1600)的日常宗教提供新的线索。将从不同的尺度(宏观的国家和跨国尺度以及微观的区域视角)分析补充的考古证据来源(出土文物和金属发现)，以阐明中世纪人如何表达他们自己的宗教机构，这在很大程度上没有书面来源的记录。该项目将采用跨学科研究框架，结合考古学、历史学和数字人文学的方法，揭示宗教生活的物质习俗如何与性别、家庭和社区相结合。它将考虑信仰随时间的变化以及对社会危机和宗教转型的回应，如黑死病和漫长的宗教改革，以深刻的时间视角看待普通中世纪人的宗教信仰和机构。它将通过对三个区域案例研究(肯特、诺福克、北约克郡)的详细背景研究，考虑仪式实践和宗教认同的区域差异，选择这些案例与欧洲大陆进行直接比较。它将把英国的证据与荷兰和丹麦的公共遗迹数据进行比较，以评估中世纪西北欧在多大程度上共享宗教物品和仪式实践的共同曲目。该项目将挖掘英国中世纪公共遗迹数据的潜力(PAS记录的超过325,000件中世纪遗迹，便携式文物学计划)，并开创性地对欧洲公共遗迹进行跨国分析，与整个欧洲的考古公民科学相关。它将建立一个中世纪宗教手工艺品的综合数据库，包括公共发现物(金属探测物)和出土的考古证据，以便能够进行创新的空间统计分析，绘制中世纪景观中的仪式做法图。该项目将利用地理信息系统测绘技术，询问宗教物品与聚落和景观中的自然或文化特征之间的空间关系，以及可能发现的可能发现的聚集物，这些发现可能揭示故意“放置的沉积物”和对早期仪式景观的再利用。随着时间的推移，将通过使用蒙特卡洛模拟的概率“主动性”分析来考虑变化，以测试宗教物质文化中与社会和人口趋势有关的模式，如教区的发展、朝圣、黑死病和宗教改革。社会网络分析将用于阐明和比较朝圣纪念品和其他宗教物品流通的区域模式。我们将审问中世纪的文本资料，以更深入地了解谁进行了仪式实践，出于什么原因，在什么空间，以及关于这些世俗实践的神职人员的态度和评论。将从丹麦(DIME，奥胡斯大学)和荷兰(PAN，阿姆斯特丹Vrije大学)的公共遗迹记录计划中收集比较的见解，除了库涅拉项目(Radboud University，NL)的中世纪朝圣者纪念品丰富的数据集。MERit将提供平行的影响线和产出，涉及i)中世纪的日常宗教；ii)今天公共遗物的使用和意义，惠及学术界以外的受益者，包括：公民科学家、遗产专业人员、公众和便携式文物计划。我们将与博物馆和保护区文物联络官(FLO)合作，建立一个由公民考古学家组成的合作小组，与他们共同制作文物记录指南和创造性的文物传记方法。考古考古系统将从与该项目的伙伴关系中获得长期利益，包括互惠知识交流，以提高未来考古遗址记录、数据清理和考古考古系统网站遗留材料的质量。

The Medieval Ritual Landscape Project (MeRit) will shed new light on everyday religion in the English Middle Ages (c.1000-1600 CE). Complementary sources of archaeological evidence (excavated artefacts and metal-detected finds) will be analysed at different scales (macro-scale national and transnational, and micro-scale regional perspectives) to illuminate how medieval people expressed their own religious agency, largely unrecorded by written sources. The project will adopt an interdisciplinary research framework, combining archaeological, historical and digital humanities approaches, to reveal how the material practices of lived religion intersected with gender, family and community. It will consider changes in belief over time and in response to social crises and religious transitions, such as the Black Death and the long Reformation, taking a deep time perspective on the religious beliefs and agency of ordinary medieval people. It will consider regional variation in ritual practices and religious identity, through detailed contextual studies of three regional case studies (Kent, Norfolk, North Yorkshire), selected to provide direct comparisons with continental Europe. It will place the English evidence in comparative perspective with Dutch and Danish public finds data, to evaluate the extent to which medieval north-western Europe shared a common repertoire of religious objects and ritual practices.The project will unlock the potential of English medieval public finds data (over 325,000 medieval finds recorded by the PAS, the Portable Antiquities Scheme) and pioneer transnational analysis of European public finds, with relevance to archaeological citizen science across Europe. It will create an integrated database of medieval religious artefacts, including both public finds (metal-detected objects) and excavated archaeological evidence, to enable innovative spatial-statistical analyses to map ritual practices in the medieval landscape. The project will employ GIS mapping techniques to interrogate spatial relationships of religious objects in relation to settlements and natural or cultural features in the landscape, as well as potential clustering of finds that may reveal intentionally 'placed deposits' and the reuse of earlier ritual landscapes. Change over time will be considered through probabilistic 'aoristic' analyses using Monte Carlo simulation, to test patterns in religious material culture in relation to social and demographic trends, such as the development of parishes, pilgrimage, the Black Death, and the Reformation. Social Network Analysis will be used to elucidate and compare regional patterns in the circulation of pilgrim souvenirs and other religious objects. We will interrogate medieval textual sources to gain deeper understanding of who conducted ritual practices, for what reasons and in what spaces, as well as clerical attitudes and commentaries on these lay practices. Comparative insights will be gleaned from public finds recording schemes in Denmark (DIME, Aarhus Universitet) and the Netherlands (PAN, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), in addition to the rich data set for medieval pilgrim souvenirs from the Kunera Project (Radboud Universiteit, NL).MeRit will deliver parallel strands of impact and outputs addressing i) everyday religion in the Middle Ages; and ii) the use and significance of public finds today, to reach beneficiaries beyond academia, including: citizen scientists, heritage professionals, the public and the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Working with museums and PAS Finds Liaison Officers (FLOs), we will establish a partnership group of 'citizen archaeologists' with whom we will co-produce finds recording guides and creative approaches to object biographies. The PAS will gain long-standing benefits from partnership with the project, including reciprocal knowledge exchange to improve the quality of future medieval finds recording, data cleaning, and legacy materials for the PAS website.