shoes&pattens3

Sizes and wear patłerns: social inferences

seems to shrink by no morę than c.5 per cent, whereas solvent-drying - the older method - can cause a reduction of up to c.10 per cent (pp. 138-9 and Table 22). To produce Table 19, therefore, the ‘raw’ measurements from the soles them-selves were increased by one or other of these percentages, in accordance with the conservation method used for each batch (see Table 21).

It remains quite impossible, however, to account for any shrinkage which may have occurred before conservation, when the object was still buried. John Thornton began an experiment in 1959, in which he buried in wet soil a series of oak-tanned leather strips that could be removed for measurement at intervals of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128 years (see Rhodes 1980, 101-2). This seems to have suggested that leather shrinks very rapidly at first but that the ratę decreases there-after (the strips shrank by c. 7 per cent after 4 years, by 9^XA per cent after 8 years and by 9V2 per cent after 16 years), perhaps until an overall reduction of c.10 per cent is reached. Morę recently, however, Carol van Driel-Murray has argued that Roman shoes, at least, have shrunk much less during burial than after recovery {Archaeological Leather Group Newsletter, 2, Winter 1986/7), a hypothesis that seems to be receiving generał acceptance and that would make far better sense of the present collection. If an additional factor of 10 per cent were applied to the figures already adjusted for post-excavation shrinkage, it would lead to the unexpected conclu-sion that medieval shoes were little different in size from their modem counterparts.

Yet, however much the shoes may have shrunk in absolute terms, it seems that their relative sizes have been preserved intact. It can hardly be coin-cidental that the three largest groups shown in Table 19 (from ‘Baynards Castle’, Swan Lane and Trig Lane) share a distribution of sizes that is so similar, both overall and in detail. Ali three graphs have two peaks - the higher at adult sizes 4-5, the lower at adult sizes 1-3 or 2-3 - and it is difficult to avoid the inference that these correspond to the most popular sizes of adult men’s and women’s shoes. In modem Britain nine-tenths of the adult małe population wears shoes ranging from sizes 6 to 11, and nine-tenths of the adult female population shoes ranging from 4 to 8 (Clarks Ltd. 1972, Figs. 12-13). Figures from modem France are broadly comparable: c.60 per cent of adult males

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are fitted with sizes 6-9 and c.60 per cent of adult females with sizes 4-7 (Technicuir (1980-1), Tableaux 4-5; information from Claire Symonds). Ali these statistics, both medieval and modem, would thus be consistent in indicating a difference of 2 or 3 sizes between the małe and female peaks.

If this is so, it may be possible to proceed fur-ther and to use historical data to calibrate medieval shoe measurements, as a check on the shrinkage rates estimated by empirical means. Surveys con-ducted by Clarks Ltd. over the past hundred years indicate that the average foot is growing at the ratę of one size every 20 years or so (information from Neil MacDonald). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries sizes 2-7 were most popular among men, and sizes 1-4 among women. The width of the foot has increased in proportion, so that whereas sizes D-F were most common in 1972, sizes C-E were most common in 1953 and sizes B-D in 1929 (Clarks Ltd. 1972, Table D, with additions). These figures from late Victorian England correspond broadly to those from medi-eval London as stated in Table 19, and, represent-ing as they do a population unaffected by modern dietary developments, may be as iccurate an estimate as any of the stature of the medieval population and of the original size of the shoes illustrated in this volume. And, as an additional scrap of corroborative evidence, it is impossible to overlook the information from the late lst/early 3rd-century Roman forts and civilian settlements at Saalburg, Zugmantel and Kleiner Feldburg (Table 19; after Groenman-van Waateringe 1974, Fig. 11; figures converted to modem sizes by M. Rhodes and adjusted by 10 per cent for presumed solvent-drying), where a very similar rangę of sizes has again been recorded.

Although it may be possible to identify the generał rangę of sizes befitting medieval men and women, the overlap between them and with the children’s rangę (see below) makes it much morę difficult to determine whether an indmdual shoe was wom by a man or a woman. This in tum frus-trates the attempt to distinguish specifically małe from female fashions. The present finds hint that in the 13th century the side-laced shoe was essentially a man’s shoe, whereas the Iow draw-string ankle-shoe was morę often wom by women and children (see above, p. 17), but the groups are too smali to prove this conclusively. Indeed the only styles which can reasonably be identified as