Medieval Fortifications by John R. Kenyon

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 691 The author’s clear, jargon-free discussion is presented in a hand­ some, helpfully illustrated book (vol. 2 is a catalog of her primary data). Copious endnotes aid further investigation, although the lack of a bibliography is regrettable. Scholars interested in early symbolism and cognitive development and in early culture and technology, as well as students of near eastern archaeology, will find much that is useful and provocative here. Mona Phillips Dr. Phillips, art director at Phillips Stained Glass Studio for many years, received her doctorate in the history of technology and science at Case Western Reserve University. She has taught history of technology and science at Notre Dame College of Ohio, and is writing a book on the design of British megalithic monuments. Medieval Fortifications. By John R. Kenyon. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Pp. xvi + 233; illustrations, glossary, bibliography, in­ dex. $45.00. There has been of late a plethora of scholarly works on medieval fortifications. Castellogists, as they like to call themselves, have been busy. In addition to the book reviewed here, monographs by N. J. G. Pounds, M. W. Thompson, William Anderson, A. J. Taylor, D. J. Cathcart King, and Simon Pepper and Nicholas Adams have also been published in the last seven years. To these should be added at least four collections of articles and three journals, Château Gaillard, Fort, and Fortress, all of which are devoted to the study of castles and other fortifications. Almost all of these works approach the subject from the ground up, with scholarship devoted chiefly to what can be learned from libraries and archives, as well as from the many exemplars of medieval fortifications which have survived the centuries. Only John Kenyon’s Medieval Fortifications takes a detailed look at the subject from the ground down, with a study devoted chiefly to what has been learned from archaeological excavations of medieval fortifications. (Although focusing chiefly on the fortifications of England, the conclu­ sions can be applied as well to other European lands.) This not only makes it different from all the others, but it also proves to be perhaps the most useful volume on medieval defenses to have appeared yet. Medieval Fortifications is divided into four parts. The first two are devoted to a discussion of the castle, its defensive structures and its domestic structures. Part 1 is further divided into four chapters, the first discussing earth-and-timber castles, the remaining three chapters devoted to masonry castles, focusing on keeps, gateways and mural towers, and barbicans and bridges. Of these, the first chapter is the least satisfying, as it simply reiterates the inconclusive debate on what constituted the “first” fortifications in England—ringworks or motteand -bailey castles—while at the same time investigating what consti­ 692 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE tuted each of these. While thorough, as no completely extant fortifi­ cation of these types exists, Kenyon’s archaeological approach here is not novel, nor does it present any particularly new information, although his collecting of the current scholarship is useful. It is instead the latter three chapters of this first part that are most innovative and of great scholarly importance, especially for a histo­ rian of medieval technology. For although several castle keeps and mural towers still exist and have been studied, other defensive structures have vanished—barbicans and bridges—or have been altered by later renovations—gateways. For all of these, archaeological research is invaluable. And, at the same time, it is refreshing for a castellogist to approach the subject thematically instead of castle by casde. This excellent scholarship continues into Kenyon’s second part, on castle domestic structures. Traditionally, little importance has been placed on these aspects of fortifications by other authors. But Kenyon has five lengthy chapters on domestic characteristics: halls, lodgings, kitchens and allied structures, chapels, ancillary structures, and water supply, and archaeology and castle life. Nowhere has such expert research been presented before, almost all of it derived solely from archaeological investigations, and almost all of great impor­ tance for anyone seeking to discover what life truly was like in those monolithic residences. The final two sections of Medieval Fortifications are of...