The Smiling Abbot: Rediscovering a Unique Medieval Effigial Slab

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Archaeological Journal on 06/11/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00665983.2017.1366705The article reports on a newly re-discovered fragment of a recumbent effigial slab commemorating Abbot Hywel (‘Howel’), most likely an abbot of the Cistercian house of Valle Crucis, near Llangollen (Denbighs.). The slab was probably carved very early in the fourteenth century, and could have covered the abbot’s burial place. The stone was dislocated and fragmented at an unknown point in the abbey’s history, and most likely removed from the site during the nineteenth-century clearance of the abbey ruins. It was briefly reported on in 1895 and has been lost to scholarship subsequently. If indeed from Valle Crucis, the stone is the only known effigial slab commemorating a Cistercian abbot from Wales, and a rare example from Britain. Given that few similar Cistercian abbatial monuments have been identified from elsewhere, the ‘Smiling Abbot’, although only a fragment, is a significant addition to the known corpus of later medieval mortuary monuments. The article discusses the provenance, dating, identification and significance of the monument, including the abbot’s distinctive smile. The stone sheds new light on mortuary and commemorative practice at Valle Crucis Abbey in the early fourteenth century

The Lost Tombs of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and his Son William Herbert, Earl of Huntingdon, in Tintern Abbey

The tombs of William Herbert, earl of Pembroke (d. 1469), his son William Herbert, earl of Huntingdon (d. 1491) and their wives, were lost after the dissolution of Tintern Abbey. A distant relative, Sir Thomas Herbert of Tintern (d. 1682), provided drawings of them in a family history, the ‘Herbertorum Prosapia’. Much doubt has been cast on the accuracy of these drawings. This article considers the career of Sir Thomas Herbert and the accuracy (or otherwise) of some of his other work; outlines the lives of the earlier Herberts; and concludes that, while the drawings are clearly not totally accurate, they may have some basis in fact or in local tradition

Archaeodeath as digital public mortuary archaeology

Since 2013, I have been writing an academic WordPress weblog (blog) – Archaeodeath: The Archaeology and Heritage of Death & Memory. In earlier publications, I have published preliminary reflections on the benefits of Archaeodeath as ‘digital public mortuary archaeology’ (DPMA), considering how it affords a mode of open-access public dissemination of mortuary archaeology, and a venue for debating and critiquing the archaeology and heritage of death and memory (Meyers and Williams 2014; Williams and Atkin 2015). Building on these discussions, this chapter reviews five-and-a-half years of the Archaeodeath blogging to the end of 2018, presenting the character of the blog’s content and its reception, identifying challenges and limitations of the medium, and (equally significantly in understanding its utility) considering key decisions regarding how I choose not to deploy this blog. I identify Archaeodeath as more than outreach or engagement, but as a digital platform increasingly both integral to, and transforming, my academic teaching and research practice

Monuments and commemoration in the Diocese of Llandaff, c.1200-c.1540.

This thesis is concerned with the commemoration of the dead in the diocese of Llandaff in the pre-Reformation period, a subject about which little has hitherto been written. It takes as its focus monumental effigies, and also considers other, non-monumental forms of commemoration, such as chantries, obits and lights. The aims of the study have been to build up a picture of the nature of the commemorative culture of the region and how this changed over time, looking in particular at the patronal group, production, and secular narratives, and how south-east Wales compares to other regions of Wales and England. Due to the paucity of written documentation the monuments themselves have been treated as the main sources of primary evidence and much weight has been placed on the identification of the materials from which they have been made. Some clear conclusions can be drawn from the study. The monumental culture of south-east Wales is shown to differ from that of England in several ways, most notably the much lower numbers of memorials of all kinds, monumental and otherwise. Chronological discrepancies in patterns of patronage between the diocese and parts of England are also revealed. Despite these differences, however, the diocese of Llandaff is seen to be substantially similar in its commemorative culture to other regions in several respects, most obviously the form and style of its monuments. Significant observations have been made regarding the influence of Welsh political, social and economic circumstances on the patronage of monuments and other forms of commemoration, a feature which is particularly notable from c.1400

Public portraits, private lives: human images on Byzantine and Crusader ceramics from Cyprus

Roman Provinces, Middle Ages and Modern Perio

Death, commemoration and patronage in fourteenth-century Oxfordshire: the chantry chapels at Cogges, Witney and Ducklington

This inquiry concerns a cluster of sculpturally-embellished chantry chapels in Oxfordshire at the neighbouring parish churches of Cogges, Witney and Ducklington. Each is distinguished by a fine funerary monument and other, high-quality carvings—sacred and profane—in the Decorated style. The fabric is much battered and the monuments no longer identify those they commemorate but they testify nonetheless to imaginative, even unique image programmes, expressing patronal concerns in highly individual ways. Furthermore, the ‘tomb-scape’ in each case includes proximity to a medieval charnel crypt, where the bones of the parish dead were cared for until Judgement Day, an overlooked feature of commemoration at parish church level. The phenomenon of the chantry (at its height between 1250 and 1350) coincides with the ornate Decorated period in English ecclesiastical architecture. Both have been explored in terms of aesthetic, social and religious expression. However, gentry foundations in rural parish churches remain under-researched. The study operates in this gap, taking up the challenge of studying incomplete, undocumented material and demonstrating the value of researching parish-level art. The methodology is holistic and multi-disciplinary, applying art-historical approaches that foreground the surviving fabric, combined with archival research and reference to recent trends in archaeology and social history. The study sites are shown to demonstrate different models of patronage: male, female, individual, familial and corporate. They reveal the influence of devotional books and demonstrate a sophisticated relationship with liturgy as well as a concern for social display. Innovative Decorated techniques (such as combining figure sculpture with window tracery) usually associated with great churches are employed to good effect, employing light, location and sightlines to amplify meaning, serving the interests of both patron and parish in tailor-made ways. The findings contribute to our understanding of Decorated-era chantry provision in Oxfordshire in particular, and to the field of commemoration studies more generally

St Peter's, Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire

St Peter's, Barton-upon-Humber, is a redundant medieval church in the care of English Heritage. As a result of a major program of research carried out between 1978 and 2007, it is now the most intensively studied parish church in the UK. Excavations between 1978 and 1984 investigated most of the interior of the building, as well as a swathe of churchyard around its exterior. At the same time, a stone-by-stone record and detailed archaeological study of the fabric and furnishings of the church was undertaken, continuing down to 2007. The twin aims of the project were to understand the architectural history and setting of this complex, multi-period building (Volume 1, Parts 1 and 2) and to recover a substantial sample of the population for palaeopathological study (Volume 2). An extensive program of historical and topographical research also took place in order to set the archaeological evidence firmly in context

Memorials and commemoration in the parish churches of late medieval York.

The commemoration of individuals in the parish churches of late medieval York was primarily embodied in chantdes, funerary monuments and windows, although other forms, such as misericordes and roof bosses, were also included. This thesis is based on the evidence of late sixteenth- to late eighteenth-century antiquarians who visited the parish churches and noted monuments, windows and other church fittings, most of which no longer exist. In addition the thesis uses medieval testamentary and other documentary evidence as well as surviving visual evidence to flesh out a portrait of the commemorated, particularly with regard to their professional and social activities. Chapter 1 introducest he topic and discussesth e limits of the thesis,r eviews the secondary literature on the topic and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the primary evidence, i. e. the antiquarian evidence, the medieval documentary evidence and the surviving visual material. Chapter 2 sets the parish churches into their historical context and discusses the origins, development and decay of the church fabrics. Chapter 3 discusses general problems of dating and identification, the mechanics of commemoration, and the heraldic evidence; it then analyzes the evidence regarding the commemorated to indicate the social categories involved in parish church commemoration, their activities over the late medieval period and what factors they had in common; it discusses absent social groups; it places commemoration into context by discussing the objects which were found in the late medieval churches and by analyzing testamentary evidence of bequests to parish churches as wells as to friaries and the Minster; the chapter concludes with an overview of commemorative genres over time. Chapter 4 discusses the visual components of monuments and windows and their development over time; the use of status symbols in commemorative panels; the iconography of heraldry and merchants' marks; the role of inscriptions and scrolls; and the way in which all the different components of memorials worked together. Chapter 5 concludes the thesis with some observations about the interaction of religious and secular aims in the memorials and with suggestions for further study. Two appendices are also included - the first contains a full transcription of the antiquarian evidence on a church-by-church basis; the second lists the names of the commemorated alphabetically and each entry includes biographical notes and details of their commemoration in the parish churches