Wharram Percy Digital Archive
Stuart Wrathmell, 2012. (updated 2022) https://doi.org/10.5284/1000415. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © Wharram Research Project, English Heritage unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
Primary contact
Dr
Stuart
Wrathmell
Divisional Manager, Heritage
West Yorkshire Archive Service
PO Box 5
Nepshaw Lane South
Morley
LS27 0QP
England
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 1031
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000415
- How to cite using this DOI
Project Overview
Wharram Percy is unquestionably the best known deserted medieval village site in Britain. A Scheduled Monument in the Guardianship of English Heritage, it lies on the northern edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, some 18 miles (29 km) to the north-east of York and about 7 miles (11 km) south-east of the town of Malton (SE 8583 6436). Though presently in the District of Ryedale and county of North Yorkshire, it was until the 1970s - and had been since its first appearance in documentary records - part of the East Riding of Yorkshire. Archaeological excavation by the Wharram Research Project began here in 1950 and continued until 1990, under the auspices of the Deserted Medieval Village Research Group (now the Medieval Settlement Research Group). Funding during the later stages of excavation and for the whole of the post-excavation analysis and publication phases has been provided by English Heritage and its predecessor bodies.
At a time when archaeological investigation is still dominated by large-scale, continuous commercial operations, the Wharram field project's longevity can be misleading. Work was carried out for only a few weeks each year, and the need to backfill partly excavated sites at the end of each season, and re-excavate at the start of the next, further impeded progress. The four decades saw the equivalent of less than three years' continuous excavation, and the areas of the village that were investigated amounted to just under 10,000 sq.m, representing about 6.5% of the Scheduled area. Furthermore, not all the excavations reached chalk bedrock or clay 'natural': those in the areas of the Vicarage and Farmstead, set on a terrace in the valley, were mainly taken down only as far as late medieval levels.
In the context of these relatively limited explorations, the quantity of artefacts and faunal material so far recovered from the site is even more remarkable. Wharram has produced just over 220,000 fragments of animal bone and over 75,000 sherds of pottery. The number of iron objects excluding nails is over 4,000, and there are almost 2,000 non-ferrous metal objects. These are exceptional quantities when compared with the artefact assemblages from comparable rural settlement excavations in northern England.
Given the quantities of material recovered, and the operating environment of the Project - short summer seasons of work supervised by archaeologists whose livelihoods depended on quite different jobs held in other parts of the country - it is perhaps understandable that the process of analysis and publication has taken as long as the fieldwork. By 1990 numerous summary discussions of the excavations had appeared in journals and books, but the extent of definitive publication was very limited: two Society for Medieval Archaeology monographs, three slim volumes in the York University Archaeological Publications series, and one British Archaeological Report (Wharram I - VI). The 1990s saw much progress in the sorting and analysis of finds and the preparation of archive reports, but only one definitive report emerged in that decade (Wharram VII).
The post-excavation and publication programme was re-engineered in 1997-8, with the preparation of an Updated Project Design based on the methodology of English Heritage's Management of Archaeological Projects (MAP2: 1991). For the first time a comprehensive list of tasks, timescales, contributors and costs was developed, with a view to publishing a further six definitive reports on the excavations, all to appear in the York University series. The proposed monographs were to focus, like the earlier ones, on the main unpublished excavation areas: the South Manor Area, the North Manor Area, the Pond and Dam, the Churchyard, the Plateau sites, and the Vicarage and Post-medieval Farmstead. A seventh 'Synthesis' volume was also proposed, though inevitably its content could not yet, in 1998, be clearly envisaged.
In the event English Heritage and its (then) Ancient Monuments Advisory Committee decided that the Plateau sites did not really provide a coherent focus of interest for a separate publication. It was agreed that the northernmost Plateau site should be added to the North Manor Area volume (as it concerned a further element of the Roman-British settlement), and that the rest should, where appropriate, be integrated into the other volumes, particularly the Synthesis; the remainder of the Plateau data would be prepared to Archive Report level. The Committee also advised that proposals to carry out detailed analysis on the site's early prehistoric worked flint should be withdrawn, and that publication of 18th and 19th-century material should be minimal.
The excavation data still requiring publication in 1998 could have been dealt with in several different ways, the most obvious being the creation of chronologically arranged or thematic volumes. The principal reason such alternatives were not adopted was what would now be termed 'risk management': every excavation area report, including its artefact and environmental analyses, would have had to be completed before the first of the volumes could be produced. A gap in publication lasting seven or eight years or more might have damaged the credibility of the post-excavation and publication project; it would certainly have been much harder to persuade a wide range of contributors to maintain the flow of reports. Furthermore, if funding had, for some unanticipated reason, ceased before the final excavation area report had been completed, the project would have had precious little to show for its efforts other than an extensive and very interesting archive.
The decision to prepare volumes that focus on particular major excavation areas has not, however, prevented them from being aligned with more general topics and themes: the South Manor Area (Wharram VIII) was central to discussions about the Middle Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian settlement, and the North Manor Area (Wharram IX) to the Late Iron Age and Roman settlement; the Water Resources volume (Wharram X) focused on environmental and other organic evidence from the pond and dam, and the Churchyard (Wharram XI) on the large assemblage of human skeletal material. The Vicarage and Post-medieval Farmstead volume (Wharram XII) was effectively a report on the entire settlement at Wharram Percy from the early 16th to the early 19th centuries. The final volume (Wharram XIII) attempts to chart the chronological development of settlement at Wharram and in neighbouring communities from prehistoric times to the 16th century.
The thirteen definitive excavation reports amount in total to over 3,000 pages contributed by more than 130 authors and specialists. Yet in most cases the volumes present only summary records of the analytical work carried out during their preparation. This was the first reason for the decision to disseminate extensive sets of unpublished data though the Archaeology Data Service: access to datasets such as the village-wide records of medieval pottery and faunal remains would otherwise have been at best very restricted, and at worst lost completely during the continual upgrading of computer software and hardware. The second reason relates to the content of Wharram XIII. Though this volume draws on the results of the excavations on the Plateau, it does not provide definitive reports on them, for reasons noted above. These reports are, instead, included here, along with other unpublished technical reports and catalogues which support the discussions and debates contained in Wharram XIII.
It is hoped that researchers will make use of the datasets presented here to explore and re-evaluate the product of over sixty years of investigation and analysis. In doing so, they will have the published volumes as a guide to the thinking of those of us who were involved in that long and often tortuous process; and they will have the site archives and the artefacts themselves, housed at English Heritage's store at Helmsley, North Yorkshire, to carry their research forward into new phases of analysis and debate.
