Personal Objects and Personal Stories: Some Medieval Finds from Southampton

This chapter presents a preliminary discussion of a selection of personal objects from Southampton, in the context of the evidence provided by inventories and wills.

Specifically, it introduces the list of goods seized from the merchant Richard Pafford in 1404 and examines the archaeological evidence for dress accessories and items associated with courtship excavated from sites in the town in the 1970s. Of particular significance is a worked ivory tablet cover featuring a hawking scene.
Southampton is one of the most extensively excavated medieval towns in England,.

However, other than the published report on Southampton’s pottery, its material culture remains an understudied resource. Recently, the material possessions of Southampton households have been drawn into focus through the study of the corpus of wills from the town and the novel interdisciplinary analysis of the material world of a prominent 15th century resident, Roger Machado (Watson 2016; Woolgar 2023). My aim in this paper is to begin to develop a thematic approach to the material culture of Southampton’s medieval households, focussing particularly on issues of identity and courtship.

The excavated artefacts from Southampton are not fully published. Those recovered from excavations between 1953 and 1969, including the important group from Cuckoo Lane, are published in catalogue form (Platt and Coleman-Smith 1975; see also Brown 2018). The objects excavated during excavations by Oxford Archaeology between French Street and High Street (referred to as ‘The French Quarter’) are published in summary form within the site report (Brown and Hardy 2011). However, finds from the excavation campaigns of the 1970s, including the examination of Bull Hall, Westgate Street (SOU25),1 a site on High Street (SOU105), West Hall (SOU110), St Michael’s House (SOU122) and sites along Upper Bugle Street (SOU123–5), remain unpublished, despite forming the basis of Brown’s (2002) examination of Southampton’s medieval pottery. It is these finds which form the basis of this chapter, although it should be noted that there are other important collections within the town warranting examination, including the large excavations at York Buildings (SOU175), undertaken in the 1980s.

The paper begins with a brief summary of the material and archival basis for understanding the material culture of Southampton households, before focussing on two themes in detail; the evidence for dress and identity and that for courtship.