Wearing the medieval ritual landscape: religious belief and ritual activity expressed by Scottish dress accessories

Prosser, Lydia

Wearing the medieval ritual landscape: religious belief and ritual activity expressed by Scottish dress accessories

Resource type

Abstract

Creator (person)

Prosser, Lydia

Date published

August 23, 2024

Abstract

Objects that were worn as part of dress had an important role in the enactment and perpetuation of medieval ritual and belief. Such items reflected participation in broad traditions and well as denoting access to ritual behaviour that was sometimes restricted, for instance to those of episcopal rank, or members of a guild whose identity was firmly situated in Christian theology and iconography. Focusing on dress accessories allows us to consider how ritual landscapes were embodied at a personal level, displaying as they do the physical marks of touch and wear, and alluding to individual interpretations of general practice and deviation from expected behaviour. Scotland is often left out of general discussions of late medieval material culture and Scottish objects are frequently interpreted with the presumption that the meanings they reflected merely mimicked trends across Western Europe, especially England. Yet, Scotland itself was not a homogenous entity. Geographical realities bred distinctions between the rural Highlands and Islands, which retained long-established connections with Ireland and Scandinavia, and the Lowlands with its burghs and trade links with the Low Countries. Factors such as war with England and the lack of a university in Scotland until the fifteenth century impacted the movement of craftspeople and the transmission of ideas such as belief in the beneficial properties ascribed to gemstones. This paper will put Scotland firmly in the centre, championing the largely-untapped evidence of Scottish metal-detected finds and using Scottish sources to explore how ritual belief was expressed through dress accessories from the twelfth century to the fifteenth. Chronological and regional trends will be explored and a number of examples presented where a uniquely Scottish character can be identified. This research supplements the EMF network’s broad aim of assembling a more nuanced picture of similarity and difference in portable material culture across Europe