The forgotten role of women in medieval arts: reading answers

A team of archaeologists recently and unexpectedly revealed direct archaeological evidence of the involvement of medieval women in the production of manuscripts. This challenges the widespread assumptions that men were the sole producers of books throughout the period in European history known as the Middle Ages (600–1500 AD). They did so by identifying particles of blue pigment in the fossilised dental plaque of a medieval woman as lapis lazuli, an extremely valuable stone at the time. The findings are the first of their kind and strongly suggest it will be possible to increase the profile of ancient female artists in the historical and archaeological record by analysing their dirty teeth.

This discovery was made possible by applying technological advances in the field of archaeological science to a little-studied deposit on teeth known as tartar, which is mineralised dental plaque. In most societies today, oral hygiene practices are part of our daily routine, meaning that dental plaque is regularly removed and doesn’t have a chance to build up on our teeth. This was not the case in the past. Plaque built up and mineralised over the course of people’s lives. This solid deposit has unique archaeological potential. A key characteristic of dental plaque is that while it forms it has the ability to entrap a wide range of microscopic and molecular debris that enters a person’s mouth. When dental plaque hardens and becomes tartar, it can entomb these particles and molecules for hundreds or thousands of years – potentially even millions.

The majority of scholarly work conducted on ancient tartar has been centred on what people ate but, besides taking in food, the human mouth is subject to a constant influx of particles of different types directly from the environment. Tree and grass pollen, spores, cotton fibres, medicinal plants and micro-charcoal have all been reported among the finds from this type of dental analysis. Despite such promising evidence, the value of tartar as environmental evidence has not, so far, been much exploited.

The team analysed the skeletal remains of a female individual, known as B78, who lived in the 11th–12th century. She was buried in the grounds of a former women’s monastery in Dalheim, Germany, that is in ruins today but was occupied by various religious groups for around a thousand years. They found well over 100 bright blue particles, in the form of small crystals and individual flecks, scattered throughout the tartar which was still preserved on her teeth. Her skeletal remains had not indicated anything particular about her life, besides a general indication that she probably did not do any hard labour. The blue particles were unlike any other discovery – firstly because of their colour, and secondly because of their sheer number.

To be sure about the nature of the particles of bright blue powder trapped in the woman’s tartar, a range of microscopy techniques were used. All techniques provided the same results: the blue specks were lazurite, the blue portion of the lapis lazuli stone, a substance more precious than gold in Medieval Europe. Afghanistan was the only source of the stone at the time, and the preparation of the pigment took great skill.

So how did particles of this precious material end up deposited on this woman’s teeth? A variety of reasons were possible, from painting to accidental ingestion during pigment preparation, or even the consumption of the powder as a medicine. But the way in which the blue particles were found in her tartar – single flecks in different areas – pointed to repeated exposure, not a single intake. And creating a vivid blue pigment from lapis lazuli required an Arabic method of oil flotation that did not appear in European artists’ manuals until after the 15th century. This all suggests that it’s more likely that this ultramarine pigment was brought into the region as a finished product for use by artists.

The most likely explanation, then, is that this was an artist who repeatedly used her lips to make a fine point on the end of her brush in order to paint intricate detail on manuscripts. This finding suggests that women were more involved in the production of books throughout the Middle Ages than tends to be thought. Before the 12th century fewer than one per cent of the books that still remain can be traced to the work of women. Additionally, artists are largely invisible in both the historic and archaeological records as they rarely signed their work before the 15th century and, until now, there have been no known skeletal markers directly associated with producing art. The work strongly points to the possibility of using microscopic particles entombed in ancient tartar to track the artists of ancient times. It also suggests that it may be possible to track other ‘dusty’ crafts using this method and thereby reveal the invisible workforce behind many forms of art.