The Polish Key, what's in a Name? (Archaeological Values of the PAS Database III)

PAS, Anti-Polish revisionists
 or just careless?

Looking at the potential out-of-place artefacts in the PAS database, I searched for 'Poland'. I'll deal with the coin finds later together with the Bulgarian ones, but I came up with something else in the 'Keys(locking)' category... oh boy.

Let's start with a fact. Since the mid to late 1960s, there have been numerous excavations in British medieval towns, from the 1970s and 1980s we have available all sorts of publications of the finds from these sites (and also in adjacent areas of the continent, for example here). Keys are not particularly uncommon finds in urban deposits in particular, and there they will be closely and securely stratified. Although I stopped doing finds specialist work when I came to Poland, I am pretty sure there's a wealth of published information in the English-language literature on Medieval keys. Lots. Sixty years of discoveries and publications, nothing to sneeze at.

So how come when you look  at this lump of stuff on the Internet that is often hailed as the biggest (and therefore 'best') online public database of archaeological finds, you can find a gem like this (PUBLIC-231258):

"Two keys with tubular loops on the bow are published in Ward Perkins 1940 (reprinted 1967, London Museum Medieval Catalogue): no.13 p140 (Aldgate) and no.14 p.141 (London), both Type VI, illustrated on plate XXIX. Ward Perkins suggests that the loop is for suspension as 'is well illustrated on the brass of Archbishop Jacobus de Sonno at Gnezen, Poland 1480; and the late date of this example, coupled with the elaborate form of bow which it often accompanies, indicate that this feature probably belongs to the 15th century.' Similar examples are on the database as WMID-4299E1, DUR-1F4252 and DENO-12B187"

Then compare that with the record of WMID-4299E1, the  "Two keys..." text is there, apparently exactly the same, but underneath are quoted 16 parallels, all from the PAS database. Then take a look at DUR-1F4252 where again we have been presented with what seems to be the identical "Two keys" text and then juist one parallel from the PAS database... It's not going to be a surprise then, that DENO-12B187...has... yes, you guessed it, the exact same "Two keys..." text and 15 of the 16 parallels from the PAS database.  Note that only one of those four entries actually uses the "references cited" field to give (something like) the full reference to the cited work, but two of them confusingly assert "no references cited so far". Eh? The lack of consistency is notworthy - that's why the records were supposed to be verified.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the 'research' that has gone into at least some of these database entries by four PAS recorders is only of the 'scissors and paste' type, and the cross referencing between entries on the same database suggests where that research was done.

Sixty years of small find publishing from Medieval sites all over the UK have therefore been totally ignored in favour of a quick glance at Ward Perkins' war-time catalogue of a single museum collection as it existed seventy years ago and its reference to an exotic piece of iconographic evidence half a continent away. (Even the Museum of London itself has a lot more keys now than it did in the 1930s, and not a few of them have, I think, already been published.) I think back in the 1970s and 1980s when I was doing finds work, Ward Perkins was still just about acceptable as a reference (though hopefully not the only one), today, I was rather hoping British finds studies would have moved on from that by now. This is even more disturbing if you think that it is the PAS database itself that some archaeologists are going to consult as one of their sources ofup-to-date information on artefacts and their typology (see here too). Otherwise, what's the point of having it?

I am of course equally interested in this Polish connection. Let's take a look at the phrase: 'well illustrated on the brass of Archbishop Jacobus de Sonno at Gnezen, Poland 1480...'. What an odd way to put it. It comes over as downright revisionist, especially when you know that the online database has no national borders. I am sitting in Poland reading it and wondering if the people that compiled it have any understanding or cultural sensitivity.

The four texts we are looking at were written by PAS staff between 2010 and 2016. Just two weeks ago, Poland celebrated 100 years of independence, so I would like to know why a Bishop in a Polish cathedral city is referred to as "Jacobus de Sonno" when he has a perfectly suitable name in modern talk. Here the PAS recorders have all obviously just copied and pasted something from a seventy-year old book, apparently without understanding (but probably under the impression that citing something exotic-sounding makes them appear 'erudite'),

First things first. The British finds experts of the PAS seem to think they are quoting a real name in Medieval Latin. In the documents referring to the Archbishop that died in 1480, both manuscript and printed, we find it was Jacobus de Sienno. So the name given by Ward Perkins and copied by the PAS is for some reason corrupt. 

Secondly there is a problem with this monument (part of it - a bit without a key - is shown here).  It is relocated and not now in the side chapel where that archbishop was buried. The problem is that tomb had two different monuments, a floor slab above the actual internment and this brass. While I understand the stone floor slab (now destroyed) can be dated to the archbishop's lifetime, the brass is of unknown date and purpose. This is quibbling, but it cannot be assumed that all monuments of this type must date to the precise time of death - as indeed other tombs in this very same church show very well. 

Anyhow, in modern talk, the churchman is normally referred to as Jakub of Sienno (skipping the issue of how Polish 'Jakub' in fact translates into English 'James' when it is the Saint of that name). Sienno is a small town in the south of Mazovian voivodship. I do not think it was ever called 'Sonno' (though have not the will to find out how the open ghetto there until it was liquidated in October 1942 was called in official German documents during the Occupation - I'd prefer not to contemplate that).  

But thirdly, and even more annoying, is how contemporary archaeologists are referring to the cathedral city, the seat of the first Polish rulers. 'Gnezen' is the German name. At the time of the publication of Ward Perkins' work, the city had (after 123 years of Poland not existing on the maps) been in independent Poland since October 1918, when it was called Gniezno. The name was changed back to the German one under the brutal Nazi occupation of Poland 1939-1945 when it was part of Reichsgau Wartheland. Presumably therefore Ward Perkins was following Nazi nomeclature in 1940. But today's writers using English? The town became Gniezno again when it was liberated by the Red Army on 21 January 1945 and remains Gniezno now. That's what it should be called by English writers. Terms such as Breslau, Stettin and Danzig (used for Wroclaw, Szczecin and Gdańsk) have here an emotive weight - in the same way as the term Auschwitz is used in a certain context for a location next to Oświęcim (and Birkenau instead of Brzezinka). 

So the FLOs should have pointed out that "seventy years ago, Ward Perkins stated that this form of key is well illustrated on the brass of Archbishop Jakub of Sienno in Gniezno, Poland who died in 1480...' . It is a shame that they cannot follow this with a more enlightening 'and now more modern research in excavated layers in urban deposists at.... has shown that...'

If you look at what the PAS themselves say, Ward Perkins' seventy-year old catalogue is used in  some 666 database entries. Thank goodness that Wheeler's 1930 catalogue in the same series was only used four times. 

The kind of archaeology that tends to be done with PAS 'data', that is lots of dot-distribution maps of emblemic arrtefacts all too frequently interpreted in ethnic terms is precisely the mode that was (only just) still fashionable when Ward Perkins was proof-reading his Medieval Catalogue and Nazi troops were occupying 'Gnezen'. The rest of the world has moved on from there, but in some aspects, PAS seems stuck in a timewarp.