Seals in Medieval Wales 1200-1550
The Project
The Seals in Medieval Wales (SiMeW) project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, runs for three years from 1 September 2009. The project is based within the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University, and is supported by the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Aberystwyth - Bangor). The project team consists of Principal Investigator Professor Phillipp Schofield (Aberystwyth University), Co-Investigator Dr Sue Johns (Bangor University), and researchers Dr Elizabeth New and Dr John McEwan.
Seals have been used for authentication across different cultures and to validate documents throughout Europe and the wider world for many centuries. Medieval seals provide a special view of institutional and individual concerns and support interdisciplinary interests for today’s researchers at all levels. Seals also offer unique insight into those who used them and the context in which they were used. Yet, though a key resource, they remain an underexploited source of images and words from the past.
Seals in Medieval Wales investigates seals from across Wales and the Marches to explore aspects of medieval society and economy, politics, religion and expressions of identity in new ways. While the focus is Wales and its border, SiMeW’s scale will enable this project to inform future studies of the use of seals in the UK and beyond in terms of methodology and the interpretative content of the outputs.
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| Seal of Griffin, son of Caradoc (Gruffudd ap Caradog) | Equestrian seal of Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester | Seal of Richard Norrensis |
* Photographs reproduced with permission of the National Library of Wales.
More details on this project are available here.