My fascination with the life course began when I was writing about the relationship between gender and age in archaeology (Gilchrist 1999). I was amused to discover that my age at that time – 33 – was considered to be the ‘ideal’ age by medieval people, the spiritual and intellectual peak of life. Many years, life events and other books have intervened, and I am 46 years old as I put the finishing touches to this manuscript. I am less amused to report that the age of 46 is regarded as the threshold to ‘old age’ by medieval authors and modern osteologists alike! This reflection demonstrates two key points about the life course: perceptions of age are culturally constructed and historically specific, while the individual experience of age is framed by personal circumstances.

The opportunity to bring this project to fruition came with the award of a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. Their support provided the rare luxury of time to read widely across disciplines and to address areas of medieval archaeology that I have not considered in detail previously. For the past 25 years I have focused principally on the archaeology of medieval religious and elite settlements, particularly on spatial and buildings archaeology. More recently my research has interrogated the themes of the body and material culture, especially in relation to medieval burial. In this volume I shift my attention to the archaeology of medieval rural and urban settlements, highlighting the material culture associated with the ordinary folk of medieval England.