Make-up of the City

Thursday 3 September - 4 PM

Rachel Spros

AMGC-MARI

ABSTRACT: The ‘Make-up of the City’ project focusses on the city of Ieper (Belgium, West-Flanders), one of the most important textile-producing centres of Europe in the 13^th century, though, losing much of its significance in the following centuries. Despite extensive historical research, the knowledge of how urban societies actually evolved and functioned remains fragmentary. In 2018, the St. Nicholas parish’s medieval cemetery, dating from the 13^th to early 17^th centuries, was excavated. Out of the 1,200 individuals that were found, about 500 will be analysed using stable isotope analysis to reveal their diets and mobility patterns. Beside the already commonly used carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium isotopes at AMGC, new in-house methodologies for hydrogen and sulphur will be developed to make sure the historical questions about Ieper can be answered from as many points of view as possible and provide new information on the make-up of medieval cities.