Medieval Ship Graffiti in English Churches: Interpretation and function

摘要

In early 2010 a community archaeology project was established to undertake the very first large-scale survey of surviving medieval graffiti inscriptions in English churches. The multiaward winning Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey has to date recorded over 26,000 individual inscriptions from Norfolk alone, and the project has now expanded to include the counties of Lincolnshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Kent, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and East Sussex, with plans in place to expand the project to include the whole of England.1 Although the project has discovered a number of nationally important individual inscriptions, the main advantage of such a wide-ranging survey has been the ability to study particular types of graffiti inscriptions within a far wider context than has previously been possible. One of the most obvious topics for research has been the easily identifiable graffiti type that has come to be known as ‘ship graffiti’.2 At the time of writing the survey has already indentified in excess of 300 individual ship graffiti from across the country, with many more examples undoubtedly awaiting discovery. This short article represents just a few of the findings of the survey work so far undertaken, suggests possible interpretations and functions for a number of these inscriptions and highlights areas of future research upon the subject.