Dental Archaeology

[Daphne Eftychia Arthur]

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/the-woman-with-lapis-lazuli-in-her-teeth/579760/

"Why a Medieval Woman Had Lapis Lazuli Hidden in Her Teeth
An analysis of dental plaque illuminates the forgotten
history of female scribes."

Looking at teeth from the 11th or 12th Century ("According to
radiocarbon dating, she lived around 997 to 1162, and she was buried at
a women's monastery in Dalheim, Germany.")

From the article:

| Radini and her co-author, Christina Warinner, did not set out to study
| the production of illuminated manuscripts. Radini, now at the
| University of York, was initially interested in starch granules in
| tartar as a proxy for diet, and Warinner, a microbiome researcher at
| the Max Planck Institute, wanted to study the DNA of ancient oral
| bacteria. But the blue particles were too striking to ignore.

and

| "For a medieval historian," she adds, "this kind of clear material
| evidence of something from the life of an individual person is so
| extraordinary."

[n***@panix.com]

Post by Daphne Eftychia Arthur
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/the-woman-with-lapis-lazuli-in-her-teeth/579760/
"Why a Medieval Woman Had Lapis Lazuli Hidden in Her Teeth
An analysis of dental plaque illuminates the forgotten
history of female scribes."
| "For a medieval historian," she adds, "this kind of clear material
| evidence of something from the life of an individual person is so
| extraordinary."

I like some of the stuff in the NPR article -
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/09/683283982/a-blue-clue-in-medieval-teeth-may-bespeak-a-womans-artistry-circa-1-000-a-d

Especially a point made by Professor Alison Beach that despite work done in the last few decades about female contributions to book production, the "image of the monk as the producer of books is very central and very resilient."

That image is incomplete, and this find provides more evidence of that.

Alexandre

PS And in a blatant plug, a friend and I noticed that there were no Mastodon instances with any sort of medieval or reenactment slant. So we started one. If federated social media platforms are at all an interest, I encourage you to check out https://medievalist.masto.host/about/more
------------
Jeff Berry - http://www.aspiringluddite.com - food, musings, etc.
"I don't need TV when I got T-Rex" - Mott the Hoople