Grain packing in early standard capacity measures: Evidence from the scottish dry capacity standards

Summary

The large grain measures used until at least the end of the nineteenth century for controlling the sale of dry goods have precise legal definitions in terms of smaller units of weight or capacity. They are related by experimental procedures which in the modern period have involved water determinations, but it has been appreciated that for medieval measures the medium was grain. A study of the way grain packs in such vessels has enabled the sizes of early Scottish standards to be recovered for the first time and deductions made about their evolution and use, against a background of early English practice.