Medieval Oxford Jewry

The Haaretz website has an interesting report about an excavation in Oxford that has revealed for the first time in this country archaeological evidence for specifically Jewish occupation of a house site in the medieval period. Although there are of course surviving properties known from records to have been owned by Jews, both in Oxford and, most famously, in Lincoln, this is evidence drawn from animal bones and cooking pits. The site of the household in St Aldate’s, known to have been home to part of the Oxford Jewish community before 1290, appears to have been clearly kosher from the absence of food residues of swine and other ‘unclean’ species from the diet of the one-time occupants.

The article can be seen at Archaeologists identify medieval Jewish homes in Oxford – by what’s not there