The concealed shoe is, possibly by design, shrouded in mystery. All that is known for certain on this subject is that a large number of shoes, usually old and damaged, were concealed in various, unconventional locations within buildings throughout England, and that this practice was particularly popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Other than these few facts, all other information on the subject is speculation. With no contemporaneous written sources on the practice of concealing shoes, this article will utilize the archaeological evidence in order to ascertain the motivations behind the act of concealment. An analysis of two case studies of concealed shoe caches from North Yorkshire, with a particular focus on their locations and conditions, will hopefully prove invaluable in the investigation into this unusual practice, together with an examination of the relevant folk beliefs and superstitions of the period. It will also be questioned where the concealed shoe stands in relation to our everyday classificatory systems. As a marginal, mutable object, the concealed shoe boasts a highly complex biography, calling into question the pertinence of such categories as valuable/rubbish, and particular attention will be given to the shoes’ numerous recontextualizations, from practical footwear, to apotropaic device, to archaeological artefact; transitions which I have dubbed ‘ritual recycling’.
The history of European witchcraft and magic continues to fascinate and challenge students and scholars. There is certainly no shortage of books on the subject. Several general surveys of the witch trials and numerous regional and micro studies have been published for an English-speaking readership. While the quality of publications on witchcraft has been high, some regions and topics have received less attention over the years. The aim of this series is to help illuminate these lesser known or little studied aspects of the history of witchcraft and magic. It will also encourage the development of a broader corpus of work in other related areas of magic and the supernatural, such as angels, devils, spirits, ghosts, folk healing and divination. To help further our understanding and interest in this wider history of beliefs and practices, the series will include research that looks beyond the usual focus on Western Europe and that also explores their relevance and influence from the medieval to the modern period.'A valuable series.'-Magic, Ritual and WitchcraftMore information about this series at
Loss of context is a challenge, if not the bane, of the ritual archaeologist's craft. Those who research ritual frequently encounter difficulties in the interpretation of its often tantalizingly incomplete material record. Careful analysis of material remains may afford us glimpses into past ritual activity, but our often vast chronological separation from the ritual practitioners themselves prevent us from seeing the whole picture. The archaeologist engaging with structured deposits, for instance, is often forced to study ritual assemblages post-accumulation. Many nuances of its formation, therefore, may be lost in interpretation. This article considers what insights an archaeologist could gain into the place, people, pace and purpose of deposition by recording an accumulation of structured deposits during its formation, rather than after. To answer this, the article focuses on a contemporary depositional practice: the love-lock. This custom involves the inscribing of names/initials onto a padlock, its attachment to a bridge or other public structure, and the deposition of the corresponding key into the water below; a ritual often enacted by a couple as a statement of their romantic commitment. Drawing on empirical data from a three-year diachronic site-specific investigation into a love-lock bridge in Manchester, UK, the author demonstrates the value of contemporary archaeology in engaging with the often enigmatic material culture of ritual accumulations.
Deposits are not always recovered whole; many are found broken and damaged. The obvious explanation is that such objects were accidentally broken; however, some have been interpreted as having been deliberately damaged by their depositors, a practice termed ‘fragmentation’. Objects are broken into parts and deposited incomplete, often in ways that make their missing parts starkly evident. Thus many fragmented deposits denote synecdoche. It is the position of this paper that the absent (part) is just as integral to an understanding of the whole as the present (part) is, and this notion is explored by focusing on the post-medieval concealed shoe: an item of footwear that was fragmented by being deposited within the fabric of a building without its counterpart, for reasons unbeknownst to us. Drawing on a sample of 100 examples, this paper questions why such shoes were deposited as singles (the present parts), what became of the ‘other shoe’ (the absent part), and how such consideration aids our understanding of this enigmatic custom.
This article examines the status of coins as contemporary deposits in the British Isles. With a focus on both historical and contemporary sites, from the Neolithic long barrow of Wayland's Smithy, Oxfordshire, to the plethora of wishing-wells and coin-trees distributed across the British Isles, it demonstrates the popularity of coins as ritual deposits. The author considers how they are perceived and treated by site custodians, and concludes with a case study of an archaeological excavation, the 2013 Ardmaddy Wishing-Tree Project, which recovered a large amount of contemporary coin deposits. This article does not aim to locate itself within the debates of site custodianship and accessibility, nor does it propose to address the broader dilemmas of a site's ritual continuity or resurgence. Instead, its aim is to encourage archaeologists to consider the contemporary deposit as an integral part of the ritual narrative of a site, rather than as disposable 'ritual litter'.
This paper focuses on St Nectan's Glen, Cornwall, where layers of ritual deposition imply a long history of spiritual significancean implication that is debunked by a diachronic examination of the site, which reveals a relatively recent, and conscious, crafting of the sacred. St Nectan's Glen: The Deposits The rubber duck is just one of many deposits at St Nectan's Kieve, Cornwall. 1 Here the River Trevillet, having run tranquilly through the woodland of St Nectan's Glen, becomes a sixtyfoot waterfall. This cascades down into a surprisingly placid pool below, enveloped by granite cliffs and a rocky shore, which are bedecked with a myriad of deposits, of which the rubber duck is only one example (Figure 1). Candles, some bearing Christian imagery, sit amidst scattered coins, beaded bracelets, hair accessories, and various unique deposits: an owl-shaped purse, a pair of wooden mushrooms, a water flask, and a miniature model of a Mayan pyramid, to name only some (Figure 2). Pieces of slatehundreds of themlean up against the cliff faces, their surfaces adorned with scratched initials, names, messages, Celtic symbols, even painted pictures. Others have been piled on top of each other, in or throughout the water, forming what are known in Cornwall as 'fairy stacks'. The surrounding trees and foliage are festooned with brightly-coloured ribbons, frayed strips of cloth, hair bobbles, jewellery, shoelaces, key-rings, pendants, a prism, and a smiley-faced car air-freshener. One branch is tied with a lock of somebody's hair; another has a Polo mint slipped onto it; while another is affixed with a laminated photograph of a man, the words 'well, hello there' written beneath. A plastic wallet hangs from another, containing the photograph of a dog named 'Ollie', accompanied by the words 'I miss u sooo much. .. '. Propped up against one cliff-face, sloping at a narrow gradient down into the water of the pool, is a coin-tree (Figure 3): a hardwood log, 850 cm in length, embedded with over four thousand coins. 2 The majority of the coins, which run in neat longitudinal lines with the grain of the bark, are one penny and two pence pieces, but there are some higher denominations, including four fifty pence pieces and two one pound coins. Along with the coins, the log has also been embedded with three plastic tokens (one from the Sealife Centre), a Hobgoblin beer bottle cap, a key-ring, a piece of green aventurine, and a couple of ribbons, held in place by coins. 3 St Nectan's Glen is clearly a melting pot of various depositional practices, some boasting long historiesthe deposition of coins, candles, hair, ragsand others entirely novel, such as the rubber duck and the Polo mint. Not only was the diversity of deposits noteworthy, so too were their quantities. Unfortunately, while the author recorded every item embedded into the coin-tree, no systematic attempt was made to catalogue each deposit at the site, but their numbers certainly reached the thousands. If each individual deposit signifies an individual depositor, more or less, t...
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