title: Bawdy badges and the Black Death : late medieval apotropaic devices against the spread of the plague.
abstract: This thesis examines a large corpus of enigmatic pilgrimage badges dating from roughly 1350-1500 CE. The badges were brought to light during archaeological excavations of water sites throughout the Schelde Estuary in the Netherlands, the riverbanks of the Seine in France, and the Thames in England. A small selection of the iconography of the corpus includes: ambulant vulvas on stilts, winged and crowned pudenda pilgrims complete with pilgrims' staffs and rosaries, couples having sex, and ambulan