Slashdot Mirror
Blue Gems In Teeth Illuminate Women's Hidden Role In Medieval Manuscripts (abc.net.au)
brindafella writes: The jaw bone of a woman who died around 1000-1200 AD has specks of precious lapis lazuli (mineral) in the plaque of her teeth. This indicates that this woman would have licked the brush used in preparing precious illuminated manuscripts at the women's monastery in Dalheim in western Germany. The study by researchers from German-based Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and Britain's University of York showed that women, as well as men, were part of the production of the valuable manuscripts. "The researchers said this challenged long-held beliefs that women had played little role in the European Middle Ages in producing literary and written texts which came largely from religious institutions," reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "Researcher Christina Warinner said this finding from the 11th century was unprecedented in showing more women were literate, educated and encouraged to read at that time."
I don't see why this implies literacy or even real education - many male monks were barely able to do more than copy what was in front of them and lots of priests in non-Italian countries could read out texts to their congregations without actually understanding Latin.
Manuscripts were produced in production lines - does someone assembling radiator grills for Ford know how to design a car?
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
how much can be extrapolated starting from a few blue flecks on an old tooth.
A woman in a woman's monastery wrote manuscripts? Who would have thought..
"The researchers said this challenged long-held beliefs that women had played little role in the European Middle Ages in producing literary and written texts which came largely from religious institutions,"
So the long help belief was that women's monasteries, which they obviously knew existed, just sat there twiddling their thumbs? I suspect people are projecting their modern biases pretty damn hard there. Back then life was hard, and it is pretty solid common sense that gender was much LESS of an issue, as survival was a little higher up the priority list.
There would seem to be a lot of navel-gazing going on here, and very little common sense being applied, on both sides given that a few flecks on a single jawbone would hardly be statistically significant either.
Doesn't stop them applying the spin cycle to it though it seems.
"Researcher Christina Warinner said this finding from the 11th century was unprecedented in showing more women were literate, educated and encouraged to read at that time."
All that from flecks in a single jawbone. Impressive(ly spun)
The evidence clearly indicates her to be the original blue tooth inventor. But, as usual, they demote her to be a mere copyist while some man will be credited with the "invention" of blue tooth.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's already a known fact that women in monasteries worked as copyist and miniaturist.
Case in point, the following https://art.thewalters.org/det... is a work of noun Claricia, in 12th - 13th century.
And this is a list of female copyists: http://edu.let.unicas.it/womed... from year 750 to 1550.
Note: the attribution to a male or to a female is difficult because copyist and miniaturist rarely signed their works, especially in the earlier centuries. One can try to trace the monastry of production of the manuscript but, quite often, monastries hosted both friars and nuns in separate wings of the same complex of buildings. So, even this method is not guaranteed to ascertain the gender of the miniaturist / copyist.