CASTLES AND DEFENCE
In the first peer-reviewed article I ever published when I was a PhD student, I argued that the abandonment of the castle form of architecture cannot be simply boiled down to military changes. We need to keep warfare in mind as one of the three major castle functions: defence, administration, and residence. At the same time, we must be wary of emphasizing one of these roles over the others. Rather, we need to try to use castles as a way to get inside their medieval occupants’ heads for a truer understanding of life in the Middle Ages.
This also leads me to something I’ve been thinking a lot about since my ‘Castles’ seminar class finished up in May. Publications on castles are overwhelmingly dominated by impressive specimens. This selection bias has contributed to the historic emphasis on military purposes. Crusader castles and King Edward I of England’s Welsh castles have been stressed as exemplars of
