Here you can find resources created through the MeRit project to help guide and inspire research into the medieval ritual landscape.
These will continue to be added as the project progresses.
-
MeRit database
A key research outcome of the project is a database of medieval religious material culture in England, comprising both objects recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and artefacts recovered from archaeological investigations.
During its set-up phase in summer of 2023, the project developed the framework for a relational database combining structured information on a rich variety of archaeological objects relating to and expressing lived religious practice, ranging from pilgrim souvenirs and everyday items with religious inscriptions to finds whose depositional contexts hint at ritual or spiritual meanings.
Some 1 million public and Citizen Science-generated finds from all periods, including over 330,000 medieval finds (c. 1000-1600 CE) recovered across England and Wales and recorded by the PAS, have been imported into the database at its initial set-up phase and form the basis for investigating long-term processes and diachronic patterns in religious behaviour.
These records will be further examined, edited and enriched, and combined with our second critical source of finds data from archaeological excavation reports and grey literature from three regional case study areas that will be digitized during the course of the project.
We will also bring in select object datasets from north-western Europe, such as the products of public finds recording schemes in Denmark (DIME) and the Netherlands (PAN), to enhance international perspectives, particularly important for themes such as pilgrimage and the spread of saints’ cults.
At the end of the project the data will be deposited with the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) as a free Open Access database with built-in mapping and data visualisation tools to form a new resource for the study of medieval lived religion.
-
Find Recording Guides
The Finds Recording Guides (FRGs) are technical guides intended for Portable Antiquities Scheme staff and volunteers. They provide guidance on how to record objects on the Scheme’s database. MeRit aims to produce new FRGs relating to the medieval ritual landscape.