Research undertaken at Ghent University (UGent) reveals that there was more light in people’s homes in the late Middle Ages than previously assumed. ‘People could create enough light to work indoors even at night,’ explains archaeologist Natan Heidbüchel. He travelled to heritage park Bokrijk to carry out his research that included making old skool medieval candles.
‘Many people have this idea of the Middle Ages that literally it was a very dark period. This picture gets reinforced by TV series after TV series. Just think of Game of Thrones, where a lot of dark medieval settings pop up. I wondered if it was really that dark indoors in this period,’ explains Natan Heidbüchel, who has now graduated in archaeology at UGent with an MA thesis on this subject.
‘The biggest problem for my research was the fact that light only exists in the present. This, of course, does not make it easy for an archaeologist, who normally relies on the study of traces preserved in the soil. I therefore devised my own method of reconstructing light.’
Heidbüchel researched historical sources, looked at paintings and miniatures to estimate light levels and also got to work himself. ‘I made candles like they did in the Middle Ages, using flax and beeswax or tallow. The latter is actually animal fat; making the candle created a terrible stench.’ Heidbüchel experimented with candles to measure light intensity.
Medieval dwellings in Bokrijk as a test site
The archaeologist travelled to Limburg heritage site Bokrijk, where some late medieval-style houses can be found and there he conducted tests. ‘I opened and closed shutters. Weather and sun orientation also played a role. There were stained-glass windows and windows with oiled linen. People not only used candles, but also oil lamps.’
‘I was able to establish that the average late medieval man was certainly adequately able to light his home. He could carry out all kinds of everyday activities and crafts, not only during the day, but also at night. That sheds a completely different light on what we until now thought.’
Heidbüchel's thesis ‘The role of light in 15th-century town houses’ won the Jacques Nenquin Prize for the best archaeological master's thesis at the universities of Brussels (VUB) and Ghent (UGent). A publication on the research, which he produced with doctor Maxime Poulain and Professor Wim De Clercq, was named best article of the year by the leading professional journal ‘Medieval Archaeology’.