shoes&pattens8

8

Shoes and Pattens

morę accurately. But sińce these fragments are all very smali and, being unconserved, have often shrunk abnormally, in practice most of the evi-dence presented here was taken from the regis-tered finds. Each of these was catalogued in an abbreviated but systematic manner so that the records could be transferred to a Computer and lists of, say, all 14th-century front-laced boots or all 12th-century ankle-shoes with vamp stripes could easily be obtained. This madę it possible to summarise the contents of each site assemblage and to isolate the best examples for illustration as representatives of their type. Such an approach has been engendered by the sheer size of the collection and the need to publish it economically, but copies of the fuli catalogues, of both bulk and registered finds sorted by site and archaeological phase (Fig. 2), may be obtained on written appli-cation to the Archives Assistant at the Museum of London. The original records and the shoes them-selves are permanently stored in the Museum where, similarly, they may be examined by prior arrangement.

Definitions of nearly all the terms used in this volume may be found in the Glossary (pp. 123- 5). All dimensions are in millimetres and the ‘length’ or ‘width’ should be regarded as the maximum length or width overall. Except where stated otherwise, the linę illustrations are reproduced at a scalę of one third. In the graphs of shoe sizes the current ‘actual’ measurements have been increased by 10 per cent in the case of solvent-dried shoes and 5 per cent for freeze-dried to allow for shrinkage, but as shown below (p. 139) this is a purely nominał average figurę. The summary tables of shoe types have been compiled from the registered shoe catalogues, but it should be noted that for the sake of comparability some of the smaller loose fragments - buckle-straps and reinforcement-pieces, in particular - have been omitted when they are not attached to a shoe itself.