Introduction

Abstract

This book, as well as the sessions organised at the Annual Meetings of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) that preceded it (see Preface), are inspired by the phenomenon that aspects of medieval material culture from across Europe are linked by a certain uniformity. Whilst the period between AD 1000 and 1550 is considered here, this homogeneity of material culture is most apparent from the thirteenth century onwards. Prior to Stefan Krabath’s monumental work of 2001, “Die hoch- und spätmittelalterlichen Buntmetallfunde nördlich der Alpen” (High and late Medieval non-ferrous metal finds north of Alps), few studies had attempted to analyse small finds (specifically non-ferrous metal objects) from a pan-European perspective. More than twenty years on, we are in a very different place, especially because of the many thousands of new finds that have come to light, largely due to metal-detecting. As a result, there is a ‘renaissance’ in the study of archaeological small finds, especially in terms of understanding the relationships between find types, their distribution and what they can tell us about past landscapes. Even so, scholarly attitudes towards such finds are inconsistent across Europe, moulded by modern thinking, boundaries created by language and culture, as well as diverse research traditions.