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Introduction
The medieval finds assemblage from Low Petergate is a remarkable and
important collection. The bulk of the material derives from one hundred
to one hundred and fifty years of activity, the equivalent of no more
than four or five working generations of York's medieval inhabitants.
It is also a well-dated sequence, beginning in the second half of the
13th century and continuing into the early 15th century, with the bulk
of the evidence belonging to the 14th century. All the datable material
- the pottery, ceramic building materials, artefact types - and the independent
dendrochronological dates, agree on this dating.
The site is also remarkably free from the contamination of residual material
churned up from earlier levels by later ground disturbances. This is rare
on an urban site and is especially so in York, where over 2000 years of
human endeavour have usually resulted in a large residual component to
any post-Roman assemblage. This makes the Low Petergate assemblage a very
useful snapshot of 14th-century York.
The sequence of medieval buildings was apparently occupied by artisans
involved in a number of crafts and larger scale industries. The domestic
life of their families is also glimpsed through their household waste,
food debris and broken everyday items. This assemblage offers a rare opportunity
to associate particular crafts with individual properties, and to chart
the changes in activities over four or five generations. While it can
never be stated with certainty that all material excavated on a property
relates to activities carried out there, there is a patterning of the
debris which is interesting. Excavations carried out fifty years ago by
Peter Wenham (Wenham 1972) on parts of the same and adjoining properties
went down deeper into post-Roman and Roman deposits and encountered similar
material of medieval and Norman date. This adds a useful, wider, chronological
perspective to the development of these industries as described below.
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