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Medieval women's early involvement in manuscript production suggested by lapis lazuli identification in dental calculus

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Date
09/01/2019
Author
Radini, Anita
Tromp, Monica
Beach, Alison
Tong, E.
Speller, C.
McCormick, M.
Dudgeon, J. V.
Collins, M. J.
Rühli, F.
Kröger, R.
Warinner, C.
Keywords
CC Archaeology
D111 Medieval History
DAS
BDC
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Abstract
During the European Middle Ages, the opening of long-distance Asian trade routes introduced exotic goods, including ultramarine, a brilliant blue pigment produced from lapis lazuli stone mined only in Afghanistan. Rare and as expensive as gold, this pigment transformed the European color palette, but little is known about its early trade or use. Here, we report the discovery of lapis lazuli pigment preserved in the dental calculus of a religious woman in Germany radiocarbon-dated to the 11th or early 12th century. The early use of this pigment by a religious woman challenges widespread assumptions about its limited availability in medieval Europe and the gendered production of illuminated texts.
Citation
Radini , A , Tromp , M , Beach , A , Tong , E , Speller , C , McCormick , M , Dudgeon , J V , Collins , M J , Rühli , F , Kröger , R & Warinner , C 2019 , ' Medieval women's early involvement in manuscript production suggested by lapis lazuli identification in dental calculus ' , Science Advances , vol. 5 , no. 1 , eaau7126 . https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau7126
Publication
Science Advances
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau7126
ISSN
2375-2548
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
This work was supported by the Max Planck Society, the Leverhulme Trust (through a Leverhulme prize to C.S.), the Mäxi Foundation Zurich (to F.R.), and the National Science Foundation (BCS-1516633 to C.W.).
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/19412

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