The lexis of cloth and clothing in Britain c. 700 - 1450: origins, identification, contexts and change

The Project will assemble and catalogue the words used to describe cloth and clothing, textile manufacture and dress accessories in the British Isles in the medieval period. It will encompassing Old and Middle English, Medieval Latin, Anglo-Norse, Anglo-Norman/French, Welsh, Old Irish and Cornish together with foreign loan words introduced through sources such as trade and religion. It will analyse and compare the uses of the words in texts, seeking to identify the original meaning of garment-names, the sources of the vocabulary and developments in the meaning of the terms. Some vocabulary may be re-defined as a result of the study, and medieval concepts for textile trade and manufacture will be expressed in modern terms.

The Project will produce a searchable database which will be released on the world wide web and maintained by The University of Manchester. It will be illustrated from text, and also from medieval art and surviving artefacts, and the relationship between these sources of evidence will be analysed critically. The Project aims to combine the highest academic standards of investigation with an accessible end-product. The database will facilitate research into: historical and comparative language; costume history, and its relationship to economic and social history; and material culture. It will provide a unique reference resource by examining the interrelationship of the geographically close, but linguistically disparate, parts of Britain as well as their European context. It will direct researchers to interdisciplinary material which is often missed by scholars because it is compartmentalized into specialist areas.

The raw data and tables will be stored by AHDS and made available on request. Papers and prototypes will be presented at the Society for English Historical Linguistics Conference and Medieval Congresses at Leeds and Kalamazoo; articles will be offered for publication to journals including Art History, Textile History and Medieval Clothing and Textiles.

The investigators will continue beyond this Project to produce a reference-book and CD using material extracted from the database.