This Professional Development Fellowship allows an historian of technology to acquire hands-on training in the design and technology of early gunpowder weaponry from Robert D. Smith, Head of Conservation of the Royal Armouries in the United Kingdom. The Royal Armouries offers not only a definitive collection of artifacts, it also offers an extensive library, state-of-the-art tools for non-destructive analysis, and an expert staff. In this setting the PI will learn about the weapons themselves and will also conduct a research project on the role of such weapons in the Hundred Years War and, more generally, on the origins, development and impact of western European gunpowder weapons during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
