Archaeological window glass from Cistercian Abbeys: Developing a new method from a selection of relevant excavations throughout Europe

Although historical and art historical evidence shows an interesting contemporary practice in glazing, profound archaeological research into the flat glass and lead cames of medieval windows has not yet been undertaken. The purpose of this research project is to create a methodology to compare and evaluate archaeological window glass (collections). The archaeological window glass from Cistercian monasteries throughout Europe will be used as the central research topic.For this we will focus in particular on the Belgian site of the Abbey of the Dunes, Koksijde (County of Flanders), with its exceptional window glass collection. This collection contains around 15 000 fragments of stained and plain window glass. The dating ranges from 13th century to 1578. The principal aim is to place this collection in its context with other Cistercian sites, preferably within the context of the Clairvaux filiation.Specific information about the dating range, the number of fragments, the typology and the historical importance of the sites will lead to a final and limited selection of sites from a geographical area that is as large as possible. The selected sites will hopefully represent sites all over Europe, from the north of England down to Cyprus and from Portugal to Sweden.