Parchment manuscripts provide a window into the medieval world, long the subject of close textual criticism, cultural, and artistic analysis, they have informed our understanding of developments in aesthetics, state, law, religion, and commerce. This session aims to promote the field of biocodicology which documents the often overlooked biological and craft record contained within parchment, revealing the entangled histories of agricultural innovation, the craft of parchment production, and book culture in Europe. Talks in this session will be of both a theoretical and practical nature in their analysis of parchment manuscripts as an invaluable biological and craft record.
Organisers Sarah Fiddyment & Matthew Teasdale
Joanna Story, School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester
Carla Soto, BioArCh - Department of Archaeology, University of York
Jiri Vnoucek, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York