Word of Mouth: Embodied Stories of Premodern Women at Work

女人，还是主人？关于前现代欧洲熟练工艺和艺术生产的新证据能揭示关于妇女工作和健康的什么信息？2019年，PI Alison Beach和国际Co-I Anita Radini是一个跨学科团队的成员，他们首次使用生物考古学的尖端技术从她的骨骼遗骸中发现了一位中世纪女性艺术家，颠覆了关于女性在艺术领域中的作用的普遍假设。在这次非凡的合作中，比奇在书籍制作方面的专业历史工作将中世纪艺术家的重复手势与拉迪尼的生物考古数据联系起来。这一发现引起了人们对一名宗教妇女的反应，她的牙石中含有青金石色素，这反映了学术界和公众对这一研究领域的巨大兴趣。《科学进展》的原创文章已被下载超过9000次，该团队的合作成果被《考古》杂志选为2019年十大发现之一。一位中世纪妇女用嘴唇塑造她那涂满颜料的画笔的形象，也激发了几部小说的灵感，甚至是获奖诗人艾琳·雷德芬（Erin Redfern）的十四行诗《艺术家》（The Artist）。“我们问问她吧，”雷德芬提议。“你是女人，还是主人？”通过人文和科学的联合力量，她回答说：我既是女人又是主人。通过扩大历史学家和考古学家之间的强大合作关系，我们将为其他前现代欧洲女性发声，并通过我们跨学科方法的多声音性，为她们的生活经历提供新颖而细致的见解。拟议的项目将恢复、背景化和综合她们的故事，提供一个前所未有的细粒度的关于修道院环境中妇女工作和职业健康的画面。在图书馆和实验室之间穿梭，我们将把历史研究与人类遗骸、实验考古学和材料分析的前沿分析结合起来，以改变我们看待欧洲过去女性的方式。通过集成多标量方法，我们将寻求回答以下主要研究问题：RQ1。在前现代的宗教团体中，妇女从事哪些技术工艺和艺术活动？工作对这些宗教妇女的身体和健康有什么影响？宗教妇女的社会文化背景是否决定了她们参加或不参加特定活动？妇女之间的不平等对她们的健康有什么影响？在询问和回答这些问题时，我们将挑战关于前现代女性艺术和经济活动的性质和范围的性别叙事（RQ1的目标）；辨别手工艺和艺术劳动留下的物理痕迹与宗教劳动留下的痕迹（例如，广泛跪地祈祷）（RQ2的目标）；评估宗教妇女在进入宗教社区之前和宗教社区内的社会不平等的证据，以及这些不平等对健康的影响（RQ3目标）Radini et al.（2019）。在牙石中发现青金石表明中世纪妇女早期参与手稿制作。科学进展5(1)。

Woman, or Master? What can new evidence for skilled craft and artistic production in premodern Europe reveal about women's work and health?In 2019, PI Alison Beach and International Co-I Anita Radini were part of an interdisciplinary team that identified a medieval female artist from her skeletal remains for the very first time using cutting-edge techniques in bioarchaeology, upending common assumptions about the role of women in art [1]. In this extraordinary collaboration, Beach's expert historical work on book production linked the repeated gestures of a medieval artist to Radini's bioarchaeological data. The remarkable response to this discovery of a religious woman with lapis lazuli pigment in her dental calculus reflects the enormous academic and public interest in this line of research. The original article in Science Advances has been downloaded over 9,000 times, and the team's collaborative work was selected as one of the Top Ten Discoveries of 2019 by Archaeology Magazine. The image of a medieval woman shaping her pigment-suffused paintbrush with her lips has also inspired several novels and even a sonnet, The Artist, by the award-winning poet Erin Redfern. "Let's ask her," Redfern proposes. "Are you Woman, or Master?" Given voice through the combined power of the humanities and science, she answers: I was both - woman and master.By extending this powerful partnership between historians and archaeological scientists, we will give voice to other premodern European women, and through the multivocality of our own cross-disciplinary approaches, provide novel and nuanced insights into their lived experiences. The proposed project will recover, contextualise, and synthesise their stories, providing an unprecedentedly fine-grained picture of women's work and occupational health in monastic contexts. Moving between the library and laboratory, we will integrate historical research with cutting-edge analysis of human remains, experimental archaeology, and materials analysis to transform the way we see women in the European past.With an integrated multiscalar approach, we will seek to answer the following primary research questions:RQ1. In what skilled craft and artistic activities did women in premodern religious communities engage?RQ2. What impact did work have on the bodies and health of these religious women?RQ3. Did the socio-cultural context of religious women determine their participation/lack thereof in particular activities? What impact did inequalities among women have on their health?In asking and answering these questions, we will challenge gendered narratives about the nature and scope of the artistic and economic activities of premodern women (objective of RQ1); discern the physical traces left by craft and artistic labour from those left by religious labour (e.g., extensive kneeling in prayer) (objective of RQ2); and evaluate the evidence for social inequality among religious women, both prior to entry and within the religious community, and the impact of those inequalities on health (objective of RQ3).[1] Radini et al. (2019). Medieval women's early involvement in manuscript production suggested by lapis lazuli identification in dental calculus. Science Advances 5 (1).