The archaeology of late monastic hospitality.

This thesis examines the role of a distinctive group of monastic buildings, those constructed
for the use of visitors, placing them in the distinctive cultural settings of the monastery and
the surrounding secular landscape. It reconsiders the applicability of the inside/outside,
secular/monastic dichotomy, which tends to imply restriction of access to the house, and
examines human behaviour in and around visitors' structures, in the form of ritualized
hospitality. It is thus concerned with the recursive relationships between monastic and
secular cultures, and between individuals negotiating power through their manipulation and
structuring of space.
This thesis employs an explicitly archaeological research agenda and recording methodology
which explores the evidence at both extensive and intensive levels. An extensive survey of
surviving gatehouse remains was undertaken to examine the apparent `liminal' role of these
structures. At the intensive level, detailed building recording was undertaken on two
complexes, at Stoneleigh Abbey and Gloucester Cathedral, whose primary function was to
provide hospitality to outsiders. These are used as primary case studies, and are
supplemented by textual, pictorial, and landscape evidence in order to investigate what
monastic hospitality was, in what manner it was expressed, and how it was experienced