Rachel Singer

Image source: Jiří Vnouček, "The Parchment of the Codex Amiatinus in the Context of Manuscript Production in Northumbria Around the End of the Seventh Century," Journal of Paper Conservation 20 (2019): fig. 13

Medieval manuscript with a number of white spot blemishes on the right-hand side. Image source, Jiří Vnouček, "The Parchment of the Codex Amiatinus in the Context of Manuscript Production in Northumbria Around the End of the Seventh Century," Journal of Paper Conservation 20 (2019): fig. 13

A question for my #medievalsky manuscript friends: has anyone ever come across a manuscript with white spots on it, as in the image below? Or any other MS that seemed diseased? I'm particularly interested in early medieval British and Irish instances, but I'd love to hear about anything you've got!

If it helps, even I am finding it difficult to convince my undergrads that I’m young and hip

Badly drawn, grainy, blue and gold award ribbon labeled “fell for it again award”

Philly sports and I are on a break

Graphical abstract for the paper. Skeletons with male & female grave goods (sword and brooches with bead string), with arrows to a tooth showing the type of analyses & subsequent information you can get from them. First arrow goes to isotopes which tell about individual migration; strontium is linked to food and underlying soils/geology; oxygen is linked to drinking water and to the climate. The second arrow goes to DNA which informs about ancestry and relatedness. To the right is a map of Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa with a big oval of arrows to indicate movement around all areas of the map, and a map pin in England with arrows from various regions leading to it, to show that people moved from all across the map into England in the early medieval period.

🌟New Year exciting new OA paper🌟 doi.org/10.1080/0076... from myself @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social, @shakenbeck.bsky.social & TC O'Connell @cam-archaeology.bsky.social "Large-Scale Isotopic Data Reveal Gendered Migration into Early Medieval England c ad 400–1100" using #isotopes & #aDNA🧵⬇️ 1/

Thanks! They were handing them out for free at the tailgate!

Woman in eagles gear holding giant Philadelphia cream cheese

Woman wearing eagles gear and giant Philadelphia cream cheese hat

Lambeau Field lit up

Eagles vs Packers game still

Go birds 🦅🏈

Confused looking woman stands in field holding book

It’s the flattest place I’ve ever been - here I am at Edix “Hill” in 2022 feeling betrayed by the name! The book I’m holding is the excavation report, because I could not believe that what I was looking at was the “hill” in question without triple-checking the map.

Oh, thank you! That’s very kind!

Thanks, James!
FWIW, I’m the first to admit I was probably wrong about the date, lol :)

Badly drawn, grainy, blue and gold award ribbon labeled “fell for it again award”

Philly sports and I are on a break

Yes, and?

Go birds 🦅🏈

The Emotional Dimensions of Colonial Rule in the Sixteenth-Century Andes: José de Acosta, Jesuits, and Emotions During the Great Resettlement* | The Sixteenth Century Journal: Vol 56, No 2 This article examines the writings of the Jesuit José de Acosta (1540–1600) on Andean governance at the time of the Great Resettlement (a late-sixteenth-century Spanish attempt to resettle Andean peop...

An article I wrote about emotions and colonialism has just come out in The Sixteenth Century Journal - you can find it below or message me if you’d like a PDF!

The Sixteenth Century Journal: Vol 56, No 2 www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Can’t wait to read it!

Pangur Bán and his owner might disagree, lol

Louse-borne relapsing fever is an important part of early British infectious disease history since William MacArthur’s 1949 speculation that it caused the mysterious, sixth-century outbreaks often assumed to be plague. It’s therefore Enormously exciting to have new paleoscientific evidence of it!

Want to learn how a careful study of burial #archaeology can improve our understanding of past disease events, especially the First #Plague #Pandemic (6th-8th centuries)? Check the #OpenAccess article I led in this month’s issue of Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies!

lol, does it still count as East Coast bias if there’s only a 12-hour difference?

Photo of physical copy of “Burial Archaeology and the First Plague Pandemic” article

It exists in the physical world!
@merleeisenberg.bsky.social

New #SpeculumSpotlight episode!! @medievalacademy.bsky.social

The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast History Podcast · Updated Monthly · The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast brings medievalists from all professional and disciplinary tracks together to think and talk about the too-oft-unsung diversit...

My colleagues, Janet Kay, Jordan Wilson and I went on @mmapod.bsky.social to promote our new Speculum article, “Burial Archaeology and the First Plague Pandemic.” Give it a listen if you’re interested!
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Speculum | Vol 100, No 2

New issue of Speculum Vol. 100, No. 2 (2024) www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/spc/2025... @chicagojournals.bsky.social @medievalacademy.bsky.social @merleeisenberg.bsky.social
@rachelbsinger.bsky.social

NB: we’ve updated this piece since the preprint went up in 2023, so consider giving it another look even if you’ve already read that!

Burial Archaeology and the First Plague Pandemic | Speculum: Vol 100, No 2 Abstract Archaeological evidence from funerary contexts is largely ignored in current scholarship on the First Plague Pandemic, despite the important information that burials and cemeteries can provid...

New, OA article! Here my coauthors and I (led by the lovely Janet E. Kay) ponder what burial archaeology would bring to the table as we seek to understand the First Plague Pandemic (spoiler alert: we think it could contribute quite a lot!) www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Hooray, congrats!!

For folks in DC, I’m giving a talk on early Irish animal disease next week!

Please do!!

Hopefully not all of this is too early for you! It may also be worth a look in the Cambridge Urban History of Britain for a survey of the field in 2000. And Simon Keynes has a good bibliography for pre-Norman English history that you could check (I’m pretty sure it has a section on urbanism).

And finally, Simon Losby has a book chapter on “Power and Towns in Late Roman Britain and Early Anglo-Saxon England” that’s worth a look.