Daniel L. Smail

This project lays the groundwork for a documentary archaeology of things from later medieval Europe. An enormous quantity of records has survived from this period. Scattered across this imposing mass are innumerable references to an extraordinary array of household possessions, ranging from tools and crockery to furniture, garments, art objects, and jewelry. These are the textual counterparts to the tangible things found in museum collections and archaeological sites. Focusing on late medieval household inventories, DALME is developing a virtual collection of textual things that will complement online museum collections and other resources. The DALME collection, which will feature many tens of thousands of items, will be of value to many fields of humanistic inquiry, ranging from material culture and fashion history to archaeology, art history, and religious studies.