A social archaeology of the late medieval English peasantry : power, community and gender.

This thesis sets out to develop an archaeological approach to the study of the
late medieval English peasantry that allows issues of power, resistance, gender
and community to be addressed. It is identified at the outset that the aims of the
majority of late medieval rural archaeology are those to do with long-term
issues of settlement development and determinations of the chronology and
function of material culture types. This thesis puts an alternative interpretive
emphasis on the material culture and documentary evidence of the period and
focuses on the ways in which detailed, contextual studies of medieval
settlements facilitate the investigation of more `social' issues.
A case-study approach is advocated and utilised here, as a central contention of
the work is that specific aspects of medieval material culture, such as, for
example, regular village plans or lordly insignia on churches, do not have one
meaning applicable throughout all contexts, and that these contextual meanings
only become clear when all the available evidence for a specific settlement is
taken into account. The focus is, therefore, on the examination of three
Yorkshire villages which contained evidence of peasant settlement, standing
buildings, as well as documentary records. In addition, the material culture and
documentary evidence of the immediate regions of these villages are
investigated in order to further contextualise the suggestions regarding the
peasants' experience of power, resistance, community and gender that are put
forward. These case studies are followed by a chapter which investigates
similar issues as they pertain to four classes of medieval material culture which
are dealt with thematically.
The thesis concludes with a discussion of the nature of gendered power among
the medieval peasantry. The importance of deconstructing deeply-entrenched
ideas about `public' and `private' as well as about the nature of power is
stressed, and an argument is advanced which suggests that when these concepts
are critiqued and the centrality of social practice to discussions of power is
acknowledged, it is possible to suggest that medieval peasant women may not have experienced gendered differences as oppressive.