Placing Medieval Markets in Their Landscape Context

Principal investigator: Eljas Oksanen with Michael Lewis
Level: Desk based assessment

Through GIS mapping this project has analysed finds data associated with medieval market sites and travel routes. It has investigated differences between finds assemblages at rural or at commercially actives sites, and analysed the dating and chronological breakdown of objects in the database. This shows that there is an apparent correlation between the PAS finds distribution and commercial sites, with 19.3 per cent of medieval objects being found within approximately 1 km of a known market. A major research goal has been to develop methodologies for examining economic developments at a local level through interdisciplinary approaches that combine PAS archaeological material with documentary sources. The project team has conducted several case studies of major find concentrations near market settlements, which have shown that, for example, variations across time of single coin finds in the PAS database can correlate with changes in local economic patterns suggested by the record evidence.

Audit data

• Created: 8 years ago
• Created by: Michael Lewis