Harvard Initiative for the Science of the Human Past

Joanna Story (University of Leicester), Manuscripts and Molecules: A New Project to Analyze the Parchments of the Earliest English and Irish Books, ca. 600–900 C.E, with comments by Daniel Lord Smail (Harvard University) and Christina Warriner (Harvard University). Co-sponsored by the Harvard Initiative for the Science of the Human Past (SoHP) and the Committee on Medieval Studies.

The Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels exemplify the distinctive “Insular” handwriting and decoration developed between ca. 600 and 900 CE in books made in England and Ireland—and in English and Irish missionaries’ monasteries in Europe. Scholars have studied the scripts, magnificent artwork, and texts of these “Insular” manuscripts more than what they were physically made from, especially the skins used for the pages. Professor Story will explore how these materials reveal hidden information about where manuscripts were made, how they traveled, and what they tell us about early medieval book production and animal husbandry. Using new methods such as biocodicology and ancient DNA analysis, she shows how a manuscript can be read not only as text and art, but also as biological evidence—once part of an ancient herd of cows or a flock of sheep.