The Armour Archive

Continuing our wildly popular and well-attended series of sessions, we invite historians, archaeologists, theater historians and performers, and scholars of dance and music, as well as historical fencers, armorers, brewers, textile researchers, and scholars in other fields to submit papers for a unique interdisciplinary session on the insights into history that can be gained from attempts to reconstruct medieval arts, as well as the historiographical issues involved in such work. One of these sessions will be open to proposals on any topic, while the second will explore the horse in medieval culture, from veterinary agricultural practice to markers of class to saddlers' and farriers' guilds to the horse in warfare, jousts, and tournaments.

In keeping with our traditional theme of "Insights from Re-construction, Re-enactment, and Re-creation," proposals for papers should discuss either the interpretation of medieval material evidence or practical insights gained from reconstructing such artifacts, as well as how these insights modify existing scholarship or solve a research question and the historiographical issues involved therein—i.e., to what extent we can hope to play music, perform passion plays, weave cloth, brew mead, make armor, or wield swords as medieval people did, and why.

Please contact Ken Mondschein, Higgins Armory Museum, at p r o f e s s o r m o n d s c h e i n -at - k e n m o n d s c h e i n -dot- com (remove the spaces)