Searching the Library

Sorting the documents

General searches

The search page displays 24 random examples from the library as a default. This is to encourage users to explore the library’s contents that they may not have expected. However, there are several functions on this page to facilitate different approaches to searching the library in order to find extracts, narrow results, or find related extracts. You may:

• Find specific keywords or people using the text boxes at the top of the main search page
• Narrow the extracts on the main search page using the filters on the left-hand menu
• Find related extracts by clicking on a relevant extract, going to the ‘Full Record’ and using the right-hand menu to find similar or related extracts

Keyword search – this is a text box where you can type in any keywords you want to search for within the library.

• You can use double quotation marks to search for a specific phrase e.g. “silver white”
• You can use multiple groups of quotation marks to search for multiple specific phrases e.g. “silver white” “silver gilt”
• You can filter the results using the menu on the left-hand side of the search page
• You can find similar documents using the right-hand side menu on the ‘Full Record’ page of a particular document.

Looking for specific people

• Deceased Name – you can start typing in a (sur)name or title in the box, or you can click the ‘binoculars’ icon to the right of this search box. This will bring up a list of all the names available in the library which you can scroll down and click on or begin typing in a (sur)name or title in the box at the top of the list to filter results. Unnamed individuals are listed as ‘None’ or ‘Anonymous’.
• Persons Involved – you can start typing in a (sur)name or title in the box, or you can click the ‘binoculars’ icon to the right of this search box. This will bring up a list of all the names available in the library which you can scroll down and click on or begin typing in a (sur)name or title in the box at the top of the list to filter results. ‘Person Involved’ refers to those who were named in an extract as being involved in an exhumation or investigation but were not the deceased.

• Random - this is the default setting and results appear in no particular order.
• Publication Date – this sorts results from the earliest to the latest publication date. You can use the filters in the right-hand menu of the search page to narrow results to a particular century or year of publication as well.
• Document ID – this refers to the unique index number assigned to every library extract. This option puts the Document IDs in chronological order from lowest to highest.

Filtering search results

Document Information

Account Type – This filter lists the different types of sources and genres the extracts have been taken from which are available in the library. Most of these are self-explanatory but the following are explained:

• (Auto)biography - a written account of a person’s life (biography); if written by the person themselves it is an autobiography (memoir). Biographies of saints are listed separately under ‘Hagiography’.
• Academic Article - an essay or piece of scholarship written in an academic style and published in an academic journal or through a learned society etc.
• Advertisement - an announcement in a newspaper, magazine, book, poster or another source promoting a product or event.
• Catalogue Entry - an entry listed in a catalogue or survey of sites or monuments.
• Charter - a written grant or licence from an authority (e.g. monarch) defining the rights and privileges of a particular group, such as burial rights and fees for a specific church.
• Chronicle - a type of history, popular in the medieval period, where events and episodic stories are generally related in chronological order.
• Church Records - a general category for documents created by or for a church or cathedral or the Church or Kirk as an institution.
• Compendium - a compilation of different sources, topics, genres or essays bound into a single volume or book which is not a catalogue, gazetteer, magazine, newspaper, or journal.
• Correspondence - a written correspondence between two or more people, such as letters and memos.
• Court Records - records created by or for a judicial or Court system.
• Diary - an individual’s personal, usually chronological, record of events, experiences, and information they deemed relevant to them.
• Epitaph - a phrase, poem, or tribute written for the dead, usually for a specific person. This may be inscribed on a gravestone or memorial or published in a text.
• Financial Record - a document recording financial activities, such as receipts, accounting records, rates of pay or reimbursement etc. These might include fees and expenses for moving a body, building a tomb, paying a gravedigger and other monies spent on burial management.
• Gazetteer - directories which present information in the context of describing places or locations
• Guidebook - a book of information about a place aimed at visitors or tourists, such as cathedral or church guidebooks. They may be organised in chronological order of events or by areas within a place.
• Hagiography - material relating to the life or actions of a saint.
• Historia - a general category for historical sources which do not fit other specific categories, this includes pseudo-histories which are not wholly accurate or factual but were written as if they were, or were believed to be, by the author.
• Hymn - a Christian song of praise, usually sung by a congregation during churches services.
• Legislation - Laws and Acts passed by a ruler or government of a nation.
• Literary - sources which were knowingly written as fiction such as poems, plays, novels, short stories etc.
• Magazine - a periodical publication containing articles, news, stories, and illustrations (fiction and non-fiction, prose and poetry), often on a particular subject or aimed at a particular readership. May require a subscription.
• News Article - a non-fictional report of current events at local, regional, national, or international scale and interest to inform and educate a readership.
• Pamphlet - a cheaply printed publication often widely circulated amongst the public on a particular topic. Often makes a strong political and/or religious argument.
• Report - a detailed account of an excavation, tomb-opening, or some other technical investigation that was published as a report.
• Reviews - a category for book reviews or newspaper reviews etc.
• Saga - a type of medieval prose narrative, often lengthy, which may include real, imagined, and embellished events and people.
• Sermon - a talk given to a congregation during a church service based on interpreting and applying a passage or topic from the Bible.
• State Papers - documents created to advise or inform the State or record State decisions and actions.
• Theological Treatise - an essay discussing a theological idea or position.
• Visit/Observation - a record of a site visit or observation that is not detailed enough to be characterised as a ‘report’ and does not fit the other categories listed here. It may be a casual observation or something mentioned briefly in passing.
• Will - a legal (written) declaration outlining how a person wants their property or estate to be dispersed (e.g. sold, inherited, divided, given away) after their death.

'Any category appended with '- undisturbed' signifies a reported instance in which human remains have been identified, found, or otherwise located but not interacted with in the course of activity undertaken by the account.

Coverage Era - General ‘eras’ can be selected for those wanting to focus on key periods of distinction.

• Medieval - documents start from the 7th century AD until approximately 1500-1550.
• Modern - documents are from 1901 onwards.
• Postmedieval - documents are from 1500-1550 up to 1900.

The date ranges from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) were applied to divide ‘medieval’ (AD410-1539) from ‘postmedieval’ (AD1500–1900) and from 'modern' (AD1901-onwards) so both textual and archaeological evidence could be categorised temporally in the same way for HRDL. As the Reformation process began in the early decades of the 16th century, (hence the 1500–1539 overlap in the PAS schema), texts written or published in 1500–1539 were collated under ‘Postmedieval’ unless they clearly related to the topics in the medieval sub-corpora, which meant the thematic groupings often transcended a strict medieval/postmedieval divide. You can use the ‘century of publication’ filter to narrow a search within a period.

Evidence Type - At launch there are two values for this field, allowing users to separate content taken from descriptive text accounts and those derived from archaeological reports:

• Archaeological - records that include key information from archaeological excavation reports and standardised with controlled vocabularies.
• Textual - written records from historical archives and primary sources but not modern excavation reports.

Narrative Type - Three options are listed. These are not based on word count but categorised in relative terms compared to similar types of account (genre, media) and/or subject. Narrative type applies to the extract in the library not the whole document it was taken from.

• Anecdotal - those passages containing more information than a ‘passing reference’ but not as much as a ‘detailed account’, these extracts contain key ideas and information but may not mention specific details or give an explanation or context for what is mentioned.
• Detailed account - the longer accounts which have a high-level detail about the process of an exhumation or investigation of archaeological human remains, or a lengthy explanation of a particular idea, strategy, debate, or argument etc.
• Passing Reference - the shortest entries in the library which may only be a sentence or two and usually lack detail. These might include a brief mention in a chronicle or footnote.

Document Details

Subject - This lists the most common types of people that have been exhumed archaeologically, especially saints, royals, nobility, clergy, criminals, military people, laity (secular individuals who don’t belong to the other categories), and charnel (large collections of human bones kept on church ground). Where a type of person is not the subject of the extract, the main topic is listed instead e.g. ‘theology’ or ‘supernatural’ events.

Site Name - This lists all the sites mentioned in the extracts in alphabetical order.

Original Language - This lists the language(s) in which the extract or document was originally written. These versions are not included in the main library and cannot be accessed using the library’s search options - however, collections sorted by their original languages will be made available to download separately in a future update. Modern translations have either been sourced or translated by the project team.

Century of Publication - This filters the century of publication for the printed source from which the extracts were taken (not necessarily the century it was written).

Publication Year - This filters the year or date-range for when the extracts were initially produced or published for more specific searching and can be used to narrow-down results if a ‘century of publication’ has been selected first.

Extract Creator - This lists the people who have created collections of extracts and can be used to filter search results.

Gender of Deceased - This refers to the gender of the human remains as reported in the original extract. ‘Gender’ has been used rather than ‘sex’ as the ability to identify biological sex from human remains accurately is a largely mid-20th century development. The majority of the authors and investigators in the library’s corpus were using cultural ideas, local histories, and gender stereotypes familiar to them to interpret human remains. We have not attempted to identify whether the authors and investigators were accurate or inaccurate, and many of these bodies have long-since been lost, reburied, or destroyed and therefore cannot be re-examined with modern methods.

• Commingled - where male and female human remains have been found buried or mixed together. The original authors’ interpretations or assumptions are recorded, which may not have been accurate.
• Female - a female individual is mentioned, indicated by their name, their known burial location, and/or interpretation of their remains and accoutrements. The original authors’ interpretations or assumptions are recorded, which may not have been accurate.
• Female [multiple] - as ‘Female’ above but used when multiple females are mentioned
• Male - a male individual is mentioned, indicated by their name, their known burial location, and/or interpretation of their remains and accoutrements. The original authors’ interpretations or assumptions are recorded, which may not have been accurate.
• Male [multiple] - as ‘Male’ above but used when multiple males are mentioned
• None - this account does not feature examples of human remains
• Unspecified - human remains were found but no sex, gender, or name was mentioned in the account.

Related Records - Where multiple extracts have come from the same source (e.g. the same book or catalogue), these extracts can be grouped together using this filter. The format of the entries in this filter is: ‘Surname_Year_ShortTitleofSource’ with ‘Surname’ being the surname of the source’s author or editor, or name of the source database; ‘Year’ being the year of extract’s publication (not necessarily the year it was written); and a shortened version of the title of the source material.