Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 46128
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Dempsey , Karen,
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Tending the "Contested" Castle Garden: Sowing Seeds of Feminist Thought
  • Source: Cambridge Archaeological Journal 31, 2 ( 2021): Pages 265 - 279. Available open access from Cambridge Core: http://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000463
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Journal Article
  • Subject (See Also): Devotional Practices Gardens Lay Piety Plants
  • Award Note: Feminae Article of the Month December 2022
  • Geographic Area: British Isles
  • Century: 12- 13- 14- 15- 16
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  • Abstract: Medieval women are typically portrayed as secluded, passive agents within castle studies. Although the garden is regarded as associated with women there has been little exploration of this space within medieval archaeology. In this paper, a new methodological framework is used to demonstrate how female agency can be explored in the context of the lived experience of the medieval garden. In particular, this study adopts a novel approach by focusing on relict plants at some medieval castles in Britain and Ireland. Questions are asked about the curation of these plants and the associated social practices of elite women, including their expressions of material piety, during the later medieval period. This provides a way of questioning the "sacrality" of medieval gardening which noblewomen arguably used as a devotional practice and as a means to further their own bodily agency through sympathetic medicine. [Reproduced from the Cambridge Core website: http://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000463]
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  • Author's Affiliation: University of Galway [Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow]
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 2021.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 09597743 (print); 14740540 (online)