Introduction:Quantifying the English Archive: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Administrative and Social Histories of Medieval England

The special issue “Quantifying the English Archive: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Administrative and Social Histories of Medieval England” showcases recent developments in the application of quantitative and digital methodologies to medieval administrative records. This introduction provides a brief overview of scholarship from the last fifty years that used numerical data derived from written texts to reveal new information about daily life in medieval England. It then summarizes the major findings and contributions of the six articles in the issue, each of which employs quantitative analysis of archival records to study previously under-explored communities, places, and institutions.