Is that...teeth? Is that...a jawbone? Is that a hominin fossil in the floor tile?

Yes, yes, and yes. I wrote about the discovery of a very human-like fossil in someone's hallway floor.

theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

Did Charlemagne kick-start the European glass industry? A fascinating study.

Exciting news for all members of the Canadian Branch of Richard III Society . As part of the centenary celebrations, we are running the Ricardian NameGame. Find places, buildings, streets with a Ricardian connection & send them in for fabulous prizes. Details at richardiii.ca/branch-news/

📚 This World Book Day, April 23, reflect on the place stories and paper have in preserving our collective memory with Oana Suteu Khintirian's BEYOND PAPER → bit.ly/BeyondPaperDoc #NFB

Steven Van Impe 📚 PhD Heleen Wyffels I'm also working on a list of sister printer teams who identified themselves by any sort of label (the Aaltsz sisters in Amsterdam, the Rogissart sisters in The Hague, the Phalèse sisters in Antwerp, etc.) so if anyone has any examples (esp. non-Low Countries) do let me know!

A serious methodological question for all medievalists should be how to engage w/ legal material (tracts, law codes etc) productively. Listen to the latest episode of The Medieval Irish History Podcast for some discussion from the Irish perspective! Early Irish Maynooth Maynooth University open.spotify.com/episode/4qjGwH…

Anyone up for a crowd-sourced Google sheets list of ‘BL MSS for which we (i.e., contributors to the list) have photos’?

The latest achievement of Liturgica Poloniae is out: the article on the 12th-c. manuscript once thought to have been lost during WW2! We unravel its connections between the Empire and Poland, and provide a catalogue description of Beinecke MS 883. #twitterstorians #medievaltwitter

A game of chess c. 1330:

uurl.kbr.be/2143075
 
Ms. 9347-48 KBR, ‘Liber secretorum fidelium crucis’ by Marino Sanudo, is an odd duck in the Burgundian library: Philip the Good acquired it from the Countess of Hainaut, upon stripping her of her lands and titles (and books).

Two rams butting heads together for this week's cartoon. This is from a grammar text dated to the 13th century copied in France. It is Petrus Helias' Summary of Priscian. Petrus was from Poitiers and lived in the 12th century. Priscian lived in the early 6thC. (WCL F99 95v)

Let's have some more colour. A few weeks ago I sourced fresh madder root from Natures Rainbow which allowed me to experiment with extracting the famous red and making it suitable for use on paper.

The morning commute, now with blossom.

Clearing out my old paperwork and just found the manuscript images I used for my phd. Low-res scans of microfiches. This was the best that existed. I’ve never felt more aware of how much the field has changed.

My choice of 20th-century novels set in Cambridge - murder mysteries do seem to be a theme. Luckily there's an excellent free exhibition all about British crime fiction on at Cambridge University Library until 24 August 2024. More details here:
lib.cam.ac.uk/murderbythebook

TFW you find a much more comfortable bed, but it’s already spoken for 😑

Buon compleanno, Roma! Today 2777

Who are you looking at?

There has been a library at Rochester Cathedral since at least 1082. By 1122 the catalogue of the Priory Library contained as list of 93 volumes. Only 5 of these volumes from the original library are held by us today.

Time for another round of Extreme Cataloguing... [TNA STAC 10/9]

My therapist: Don’t worry, Merovingian cursive is not real, it can’t hurt you

Merovingian cursive: