Urban Life in a Time of Crisis: Enduring Urban Lifeways in Later Medieval England (ENDURE)

ENDURE利用大量的考古数据和考古科学的创新来探究14 -15世纪的危机是如何改变城市生活方式的。气候变化、瘟疫和政治动荡导致的城市衰落一直是中世纪研究的一个关键主题。对衰退的关注掩盖了城市社区生活经历的多样性。《ENDURE》聚焦于英格兰的小城镇，询问日常生活的某些元素是否会持续，而其他元素是否会发生不可逆转的变化。中世纪社区的复原力是一个不断发展的研究领域。然而，复原力侧重于有目的的适应以保持特定的社会环境，不足以理解困难和承受、抵制或维持变化的能力方面的连续性。对耐力的强调创造了一个新的解释空间来理解中世纪危机的生活经历。ENDURE应用多标量方法来重建不同的城市生活方式。对从陶器中提取的脂质进行放射性碳定年将提供无与伦比的年代分辨率，以评估危机对城市社区的短期和长期影响。ENDURE将城镇概念化为新兴的流动组合，由人、材料、动物和植物之间的关系形成。围绕三个关键支柱（生产、商业和家庭生活），ENDURE将通过多标量方法重建这些关系，该方法结合了中世纪小城镇数百次考古发掘的大数据、历史数据和尖端科学技术。对动物遗骸的稳定同位素分析和从陶器中提取的脂质分析将产生有关生产（农业，食品加工），商业（供应）和家庭生活（烹饪，城市环境）的高分辨率数据。这种综合的概念和方法框架将揭示中世纪城市经验的多样性。

ENDURE capitalises on a critical mass of archaeological data and innovations in archaeological science to ask how urban lifeways were transformed by the 14th-15th century crises. Urban decline, the result of climate change, plague and political unrest has been a key theme in medieval studies. A focus on decline conceals the diverse lived experiences of urban communities. Focussing on the small towns of England, ENDURE asks whether some elements of everyday life persisted, whilst others were changed irreversibly. The resilience of medieval communities is a growing area of study. However, resilience, which focusses on purposeful adaptation to preserve a specific social context, is insufficient to understand continuity in terms of hardship and the ability to withstand, resist or sustain change. An emphasis on endurance creates a new interpretive space to understand lived experiences of medieval crisis. ENDURE applies a multi-scalar methodology to reconstructing diverse urban lifeways. Radiocarbon dating of lipids extracted from pottery will offer an unrivalled level of chronological resolution to assess the short- and long-term consequences of crisis for urban communities. ENDURE conceptualises towns as emergent and fluid assemblages, formed of relations between people, materials, animals and plants. Focussed around three key pillars (production, commerce and domesticity), ENDURE will reconstruct these relations through a multi-scalar methodology which combines big data derived from hundreds of archaeological excavations within medieval small towns, historical data and cutting-edge scientific techniques. Stable isotope analysis of faunal remains and analysis of lipids extracted from pottery will generate high-resolution data pertaining to production (agriculture, food processing), commerce (provisioning) and domesticity (cooking, the urban environment). This integrated conceptual and methodological framework will reveal the diversity of medieval urban experience.