Cloth, glass and stone: Innovation and cultural connections in the Middle Ages
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CORDIScovery podcast- Episode #26 - Cloth, glass and stone: Innovation and cultural connections in the Middle Ages
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:38:19
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery. Hello. Welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. The objects we have around us tell us much about who we are, what we can manufacture, what's considered desirable, what we can afford, what we can produce and export, and our trade routes. The past is shadowy, but the objects that mattered to the societies that came before us illuminate those who produced and used them in the same way.
00:00:38:22 - 00:01:05:04
Abigail Acton
So this episode we're considering cloth, glass and stone and what they reveal about innovation and cultural connections in the Middle Ages. What can textile production in Romano Byzantine Egypt tell us about that culture? Who wove what and how glass is a demanding medium, both technologically and logistically, and how it was used in Byzantine and Islamic cultures, shines a light pun fully intended on their esthetics and innovations.
00:01:05:06 - 00:01:26:17
Abigail Acton
The way glass was used reveals cultural dynamics, as do the medieval headstones in the Western Balkans. What do these weathered stones tell us about how different cultures in this period lived alongside each other? hoping to piece together the puzzle of medieval socio economic history, are all three guests whose work has been supported by the EU's horizon 2020 program.
00:01:26:19 - 00:01:39:00
Abigail Acton
Nadine Schibille is senior research scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research. Nadine is interested in the geopolitical, socio cultural and artistic dimensions of glass in the first millennium CE. Hello, Nadine.
00:01:39:02 - 00:01:40:12
Nadine Schibille
Hello, everybody.
00:01:40:14 - 00:01:50:24
Abigail Acton
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert is a postdoc researcher at the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on the material culture of Egypt from the Ptolemaic to the early Arab period. Hello, Maria.
00:01:51:03 - 00:01:53:04
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
Hello, Abigail. Hello, everyone.
00:01:53:08 - 00:02:10:01
Abigail Acton
Saša Čaval is a research fellow at the University of Reading, UK. Sasha's research incorporates archeological and anthropological perspectives to study multicultural societies, whether in the medieval Western Balkans or the colonial and post-colonial Indian Ocean. Welcome, Saša .
00:02:10:03 - 00:02:13:16
Saša Čaval
Thank you very much, Abigail. Thank you for having me.
00:02:13:18 - 00:02:25:24
Abigail Acton
Nadine. Glass roots trace is mandatory and wide development in the production, trade, and consumption of glass between the seventh and 12th centuries. So can I ask you what makes glass such an interesting material in this period?
00:02:26:01 - 00:02:50:13
Nadine Schibille
Well, glass is interesting because, glass wasn't really traveled, and sometimes were very, very long distances. What I mean by that is that glass was produced in only a very few places. So the production in France. And from there it was traded, to all the corners of the Mediterranean. And by analyzing the glass. So the chemical composition of glass reflects the primary production location.
00:02:50:13 - 00:02:58:09
Nadine Schibille
So we can literally trace the movement of this material. Let me explain. I should probably say something about, material itself.
00:02:58:15 - 00:02:59:20
Abigail Acton
Please do.
00:02:59:22 - 00:03:27:18
Nadine Schibille
So Roman and medieval, early medieval glass is a sort of lens so they can bounce, which means it's a mixture of silica in the form of sand and a flexing agent to bring down the mountain temperature. The flexing agent has changed over time. But the main flexing agents throughout the Roman period and, well, the first millennium, in fact, was a mineral source of soda that was collected from salt lakes in northern Egypt.
00:03:27:20 - 00:04:03:12
Nadine Schibille
So this mixture of sand and soda was fuzed in large tank furnaces at a temperature of about 1000°C. Now, not every sand source is suitable, and we need clean soda sources. So just restrict your possibilities as to where you can actually collect these raw materials. So as a result of this, these technical and material requirements, the production of glass from its raw materials was concentrated in a very, very few, locations on the Lebanon coast, which is nowadays.
00:04:03:14 - 00:04:21:07
Nadine Schibille
And Palestine, Israel and in northern Egypt. And as I said before, from there it was then traded throughout the Mediterranean. Now the production of glass was huge. I'm talking here about, glass blocks that were formed in one sitting, so to speak, in the order of 10 to 30 tons.
00:04:21:09 - 00:04:42:21
Abigail Acton
It's also absolutely fascinating because, you know, you see this beautiful glass and one appreciates. I think one sees it as sort of so delicate and small because the objects sometimes are quite small. I'm thinking of sort of beautiful domestic objects and so on, but they're not the concept of such vast quantities being produced like that. But that must have been so technologically advanced.
00:04:43:00 - 00:04:46:17
Abigail Acton
It must have been a a massive engineering feat.
00:04:46:19 - 00:05:13:15
Nadine Schibille
Absolutely. So it is. Glass can be considered one of the, well, the earliest synthetic manmade material that was produced on an industrial scale. I mean, from Italy, we have furnaces that reach temperatures in the same range, but, it is it is quite demanding in many, many ways. And then these blocks of glass are these huge, massive blocks with broken up and then traded again.
00:05:13:17 - 00:05:26:02
Nadine Schibille
Glass is relatively heavy. So we have shipwrecks that carry 2 to 3 tons of glass. To Constantinople, for instance. So, you know, it is it is a fascinating material.
00:05:26:04 - 00:05:31:15
Abigail Acton
And what sort of period would that sort of trade be taking place when you say shipwrecks and such? What sort of period?
00:05:31:17 - 00:06:03:05
Nadine Schibille
That's a very good question. And again, very fascinating, thing about glass. We have shipwrecks with, at that glass as the main cargo already during the late Bronze Age. Well, this said not quite in these amounts, but still already quite significant. Certainly during the Roman period, we have several shipwrecks, many of them, sank off the southern coast of France, for instance, and still, during the early Islamic period.
00:06:03:07 - 00:06:15:13
Nadine Schibille
So it's going on the sort of large scale production. And this separation between private production and secondary production is still a continues until the late first millennium, possibly into the 11th century.
00:06:15:15 - 00:06:23:17
Abigail Acton
I see, why so many of France is that because we've discovered them of France, or because the coast is treacherous?
00:06:23:19 - 00:06:34:07
Nadine Schibille
Actually, that's I don't know, but, there's certainly a lot of glass coming in into France and Marseilles, for instance, was an important port city. And during the Roman period. So.
00:06:34:09 - 00:06:37:11
Abigail Acton
Right. So it's actually proportionate to how much is actually coming in.
00:06:37:13 - 00:06:48:07
Nadine Schibille
Exactly. And, at the same time, I assume that many, many shipwrecks haven't been really discovered yet, so there's still plenty to explore. Archeologically I think so, yeah.
00:06:48:07 - 00:06:58:15
Abigail Acton
So there may be more elsewhere as well. Indeed. And how did different cultures explore and use glass? What can that tell us about the interplay between them? The trade routes, for example, and other dynamics of exchange.
00:06:58:17 - 00:07:24:01
Nadine Schibille
I think in order to really answer this question, we should probably go step back and ask why glass in the first place? Because we are seeing how difficult it is. So why go through all the trouble to produce glass? Now, I think partially answer probably lies, with the material and optical properties of glass, which, were used and exploited for utilitarian as well as artistic purposes.
00:07:24:02 - 00:07:55:17
Nadine Schibille
So glass can be shaped almost infinitely. It offers a wide range of colors, many more and much more luminous than, for instance, natural stone and glass can be transparent, translucent, or completely opaque, so it has a wide range of applications in a way. So, and as an example, I think the most obvious property of glass is probably its transparency, which ultimately inspired, the use of glass for windows.
00:07:55:17 - 00:08:19:00
Nadine Schibille
So window glass. During the Roman period, the earliest example that we have dates to the first century, and it is often said that the invention of window glass was connected to construction of the large Roman bath houses so that, you know, for instance, for instance, in Rome. Now, these Roman glasses, window glasses are usually not strongly colored.
00:08:19:00 - 00:08:56:02
Nadine Schibille
Their bluish or greenish greenish, which is the result of the impurities of censors. And they are not entirely transparent, like modern, window glass, but more translucent. Now, the invention of, strongly colored window glass belongs to the Middle Ages, and it's usually associated with ecclesiastical context in the Latin West. And this is this offers a remarkable, some remarkable insights into the differences between cultures, because in the Byzantine Empire, the window glass tends to be only weakly colored.
00:08:56:03 - 00:09:24:09
Nadine Schibille
Yeah. And we have strongly colored mosaic decorations. And in Islamic world, we have both we have strongly colored window glass and mosaics. So again, very interesting dimension in terms of the artistic use of glass and which is probably to a certain extent, related to concepts of the divine and interaction of glass with light. So whether light is transmitted or whether it's reflected.
00:09:24:12 - 00:09:30:14
Nadine Schibille
So there are many, many different dimensions that, feed into the use of, of glass.
00:09:30:16 - 00:09:54:12
Abigail Acton
And well, so I have two questions that are coming to my mind. I'll start I'll continue with the question that feeds on from what you're saying, but then I've got a question that throws back to what you said something earlier. What does the, what innovations came about due to the esthetic imperatives? In other words, if a certain culture really needed to make a certain type of of mosaic, did they?
00:09:54:12 - 00:09:58:22
Abigail Acton
They must have a presume, have have come up with methods of doing so.
00:09:58:24 - 00:10:34:09
Nadine Schibille
I'm not sure whether, you would call this innovation as such, but mosaics are quite fascinating because, mosaics are considered a quintessentially Byzantine art form, even if they are found in Islamic contexts. Here they are often said to be the work of Byzantine artists. An excellent case in point is the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, which was constructed and decorated with mosaics at the beginning of the eighth century, and Islamic textual sources claim that the material, as well as the artists, came from the Byzantine Empire.
00:10:34:14 - 00:11:06:00
Nadine Schibille
Now, I've analyzed, thousands mosaics right from the Great Mosque, and I can tell you that these textual sources are not grounded in reality. The majority of material came from Egypt at the time. And Egypt at the time was part of the caliphate. So these textual sources are fabricated, and they serve a certain purpose to evoke a Christian Roman heritage, and in so doing, to reinforce prestige and supremacy in a way.
00:11:06:05 - 00:11:35:03
Nadine Schibille
So the use of mosaics in the Islamic world, in certainly in, in context of mosques, was certainly, deliberate and politicized choice. Yes. No question about that. So it's a question of what does it actually mean rather than innovations. That said, about a century, a century and a half later, in the ninth century, we have interesting changes in the architectural esthetics of, in the Islamic world.
00:11:35:05 - 00:11:56:24
Nadine Schibille
So here we suddenly have a change away from mosaics and, more towards the use of glass tiles. Even entire floors were covered in glass tiles. And Samarra in Iraq, as an example, a very good example. What I invented new decorations made from glass.
00:11:57:01 - 00:12:16:24
Abigail Acton
Interesting. The other question I had in my mind, going back to what you said, right? Relatively near the start of our interview, you mentioned that these great big blocks were created and then broken down for transportation and for sale. So just maybe this is a stupid question. So an artisan would receive chips basically, and what rebuilt it and then rework it?
00:12:17:01 - 00:12:45:18
Nadine Schibille
Exactly. This is a very important point actually. Something I should stress. We have to separate primary production and secondary production. So the primary production was from this very large scale. And then it was broken up into chunks. So one, two, three kilos or something like that. And these arrived in secondary workshops where the glass was remounted, colored and shaped into artifacts and the other thing that's, interesting secondary workshops we can find everywhere.
00:12:45:22 - 00:12:54:16
Nadine Schibille
So primary look at primary production is concentrated secondary a working is sort of egalitarian, so to speak.
00:12:54:18 - 00:13:01:05
Abigail Acton
Yeah. No, that's very interesting. I don't know why I never thought of that. I had in my mind that, that the two were sort of done in the same place. Fascinating.
00:13:01:10 - 00:13:05:13
Nadine Schibille
This is true for later periods. So we're really talking about first millennium.
00:13:06:09 - 00:13:13:06
Nadine Schibille
Things changed at the turn of the second millennium. And, where we start having regional primary production.
00:13:13:11 - 00:13:18:23
Abigail Acton
Yes, I see, does anyone have any questions for Nadine on this fascinating material? Yeah, Maria.
00:13:19:00 - 00:13:35:16
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
Actually, I'm really happy that, maybe it's not a question, but the comment, that Nadine, told her about this nine center esthetic, changes because we can see exactly the same phenomenon in, in clothing.
00:13:35:18 - 00:13:51:11
Abigail Acton
That's very interesting. So there are close parallels between the two media. Maria MONTEX considers Egyptian society through its economy and material culture, using the monastic environment as an example. Why did you select this period and location as the focus of your study?
00:13:51:13 - 00:14:32:23
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
I consider the period from the forth to eight century, very important, for Egyptian, social, economic and political. History, we can see all kind of changes, starting with the division of Roman Empire, the Persian occupation, and at the end, the Arab conquest and all this, phenomena you can observe also in, economic life, but also in the development of some techniques and organization of work.
00:14:33:00 - 00:15:15:04
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
I have chosen monastic movement as example, because the daily life of monks, I was very close to the, the in the life of the late population. And we have many sources that can provide us information about this. That's mean, half of excavated sites in Egypt from this period is monastic, has monastic character. And, concerning religious sources, almost a quarter of the papyri and all structure written in Greek and Coptic came also from this media.
00:15:15:06 - 00:15:26:07
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
What we know about monks, it's really useful to study economic life and production in Byzantine and early Arab Egypt, and.
00:15:26:07 - 00:15:33:04
Abigail Acton
With the two particular types of, of monastic activity, of of ways of living monastic cultures at that period.
00:15:33:10 - 00:15:48:01
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
The monastic life was organized in various way. The monks could live completely alone as hermits or many hermits who were organized in the semi, and the heretic communities.
00:15:48:03 - 00:15:49:20
Abigail Acton
And what does semi and heretic mean?
00:15:49:24 - 00:16:36:06
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
Dutchman is still, they still living like, hermits that turn in, separate places, but some task, some, especially religious life and part of economics were organized for all community. And what is also interesting that monks could also live together if the well organized monasteries. And we know that, it was the division between the men and women communities, but sometimes we have also mixed sex communities, what we call congregation.
00:16:36:08 - 00:16:43:06
Abigail Acton
Right. I see so that's the structure of the communities that you were considering for the purposes of your research, do we know much about this.
00:16:43:06 - 00:16:43:18
Nadine Schibille
Period's.
00:16:43:18 - 00:16:48:11
Abigail Acton
Textile production and, what new information has been revealed by your work?
00:16:48:11 - 00:17:18:06
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
And it's very interesting to see the different kind of community organized in different way. The, production of textiles. What do we know that if it was, mixed sex communities, it's usually the women, spinning and provide the, threads for the linen tunics for the men, but men wool the, linen tunics, but not woolen.
00:17:18:10 - 00:17:19:11
Abigail Acton
Oh. How interesting.
00:17:19:13 - 00:17:57:18
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
Although wool production was concentrated in the women monasteries, a they send the products to the men. And it's also very interesting if we are talking about organization, how they send. If it was the short distance, it was, on donkey or dromedary, but for the long distance they used ships. They construct a special ships to track the, products from the women monasteries to the men monasteries from the same congregation.
00:17:57:20 - 00:18:12:01
Abigail Acton
So it wasn't a question that the men didn't have the skill. It was simply that men didn't choose to weave wool or it wasn't appropriate. And so they had to face the logistical problems of transportation rather than the men just weaving the wool. Or was it that they didn't know how.
00:18:12:03 - 00:19:09:16
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
It is the gender question in this kind of communities? Everything was organized at in the lay population. That's men. Usually the girls learned at home already from the young age, spinning and basic weaving. So when they came, I became a nun. They have all their own capacity to to do this job. Concerning the men, we have no information about involving of the men in the domestic production, what we know about the professional weavers who were the men or women, and in this case it was, high qualified weavers working, producing, usually specialized or mass production clothing, men and women, they respect, if I can say, the common habit in the society, but in the
00:19:09:16 - 00:19:18:06
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
only men communities we find that also the spindles and other proofs that the men could spin also.
00:19:18:09 - 00:19:41:03
Abigail Acton
So they would rather have to transport the materials that they were producing long distances by boat than simply have the, the men create their own textile. So that's very interesting as a, a statement on, on, on the culture of the monastic societies sought to reflect so, so accurately the, the lace societies around them that they would they would go through that logistical inconvenience.
00:19:41:03 - 00:19:45:09
Abigail Acton
Can I ask you you mentioned spindles. What are the technologies did you find that they used?
00:19:45:10 - 00:20:05:05
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
We have also some trace of the weaving on the monastic sides. And, what is interesting that in no one region of Egypt, eastern tip, modern times, in the monastic context, we find many pits and the enter parts us it's.
00:20:05:07 - 00:20:10:22
Abigail Acton
And how would that work, Maria? What would what would the loom pit be? You put a loom in a hole. How does that work?
00:20:11:02 - 00:20:19:20
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
You put a special loom in the hole. And in this case they use also a roof to fix the beams of the loom.
00:20:20:01 - 00:20:22:02
Abigail Acton
Okay. So it was suspended.
00:20:22:04 - 00:20:22:23
Nadine Schibille
Yeah.
00:20:23:00 - 00:20:23:10
Abigail Acton
Okay.
00:20:23:10 - 00:20:40:06
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
I see probably this loom pits connected to the kind of mass production for the monks, but also for the population on this region for all this, necessary products to, to funerary.
00:20:40:08 - 00:20:48:22
Abigail Acton
That's very interesting. Thank you. My other guests tell me, do you have any questions that you would like to ask Maria? So, yes. Nadine, what would you like to ask?
00:20:48:24 - 00:21:05:17
Nadine Schibille
I find it strange that I mention highly interesting. And one of my questions would be whether, you know, and this might be not a shared question, but whether there is, what do you know anything about the monastic lives in other parts of the Byzantine Empire or the Western world as well?
00:21:05:19 - 00:21:40:15
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
The turn out we have no the same kind of sources and, as one point. And another point is that Egyptian church has been separate from the Byzantine church in the fifth century and follow another way of development. And if you compare the, way of life of the monks in Egypt with those from, Syria or, Asia minor, it's not the same.
00:21:40:17 - 00:22:05:02
Abigail Acton
Sasha. So, miss address, the social features of the medieval Western Balkans funerary phenomenon erected over 500 years ago. There locally known as statue. Yes, I could could you tell us a little bit about these stones and why they interest you? I'm particularly fascinated by the what they highlight about the multicultural society of that period, because this is really what we're considering here, the interplay between cultures.
00:22:05:04 - 00:22:36:07
Saša Čaval
So, yeah, we are talking about salvation later period. Late, medieval, so 12th to 16th centuries. And these are the tombstones erected in a society that included at least three religious denominations, five ethnicities, and a dynamic and a diverse system of governments. And as such, they have, an immense potential to reveal societal features of the media for communities that erected them, because we don't know much about them.
00:22:36:09 - 00:22:54:24
Saša Čaval
And although the region is inherently known as a place of obstinate and incapacity compatible ethnic and religious identities, I believe actually opposite. I believe that stage two were not a dividing, but a unifying element in that world.
00:22:55:01 - 00:23:09:11
Abigail Acton
What do the stones tell you? I mean, I can see why you'd be interested in them, because they're used by all the cultures. What people buried together and from different, different religions. They were they buried in the same areas. And. And how did that change?
00:23:09:11 - 00:23:42:07
Saša Čaval
So the religions we are talking about is the Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism. And then we have a locally developed Bosnian church, which was proclaimed heretic in the 13th century, and then later in the 15th century, US we also have Islam. So the burials of those three Christian communities might be in the same place, but we are not sure.
00:23:42:09 - 00:24:09:08
Saša Čaval
So wherever we have churches that are either Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches, and we assume that, people buried there were of the same religion, but we also have many places where we don't have any kind of, let's say, religious elements telling us about the specific denomination I see. So there's still a lot of questions and not a lot of questions.
00:24:09:10 - 00:24:16:17
Abigail Acton
And I it's fascinating. You said it's basically like opening a new book and, and, and having the first chapter and seeing all the other chapters to come that you haven't read yet.
00:24:16:19 - 00:24:30:05
Saša Čaval
Exactly. And we're talking about Europe in the 21st century. It's fascinating. And we don't have to go to, you know, I don't know, to the moon, to the universe when you have so many unanswered questions here.
00:24:30:07 - 00:24:41:04
Abigail Acton
Yeah, right in front of us and tell me, so what were you actually doing with regards to the to the stones. So you were trying to, to to look at the inscriptions? I guess they were very badly weathered. How did you go about that?
00:24:41:06 - 00:25:10:09
Saša Čaval
Not a lot of people know that there are over 72,000 of 60. So of these tombstones scattered in the landscape of Western Balkan countries, but predominantly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they are some of them are decorated and, let's say a tiny percentage, a little over half a percent also have inscriptions, engraved inscriptions. And these also convey the social purity.
00:25:10:11 - 00:25:34:03
Saša Čaval
So although the language is local, the epitaphs are returning two scripts, either in Glasgow, I think, or in Bosnian Cyrillic, which were both established in 99th century, and both are today extinct. So in this digital age today we used, of course, digital approach to record based inscriptions. We initially used RTI.
00:25:34:08 - 00:25:35:23
Abigail Acton
And what is RTI.
00:25:36:00 - 00:26:29:16
Saša Čaval
Reflectance transformation imaging. How does that work? I just take a lot of photographs on the various angles from different positions and with different light exposures, and then using specific software, we were able to clearly see what was written on these stone systems. However, as states are still lying and scattered in the landscape, exposed to all weather conditions and natural processes, and have been for about 6 to 800 years already, this inscriptions became thoroughly eroded, often to the level of ela to being illegible, so the RTI didn't work on such tombstones, so fortunately moderate technology offers solutions for such problems and in collaboration with shut down scan method from Slovenia, we used a handheld
00:26:29:16 - 00:26:37:18
Saša Čaval
3D scanner. It was a like a pilot, test gauge. And we start. We scanned eight tombstones.
00:26:37:20 - 00:26:38:24
Abigail Acton
How did that come out?
00:26:39:01 - 00:27:03:12
Saša Čaval
So we scanned eight tombstones, fought with slightly visible engravings, and fought with only with decorations. And then against specific software and various fees and resolution and showed us what an effective method this is. We found that actually six of those eight states have inscriptions, and the other two had more decorations that was visible to us even with RTI.
00:27:03:17 - 00:27:18:06
Saša Čaval
So having such a great result, we are now in process of finding of applying for funding to buy such a scanner so that we could use it on every state, on every tombstone that we will come across in our future work.
00:27:18:08 - 00:27:29:18
Abigail Acton
I think it must be very conclusive. I think it must be one of those things where you do one and you're, you know, you've had a full day and you're absolutely exhausted. And you keep thinking to yourself, one more, just one more, just that one over there.
00:27:29:20 - 00:27:32:02
Abigail Acton
You must be very hard to stop.
00:27:32:04 - 00:27:57:23
Saša Čaval
Exactly. And also, you know, we were we are excavating usually in summer. Nice weather, hot. But this hand-held scanner doesn't work in very lit environments. So what we did, we woke up at 4:00 so that we could be at the site at dawn. And then some people went home at 3:00, and they came back to decide at 8:00 so that we could use them.
00:27:58:00 - 00:28:04:13
Saša Čaval
You know, the nature, the natural elements to get as much as possible from those scans.
00:28:04:18 - 00:28:15:11
Abigail Acton
That's excellent. And it sounds like it's going to be something that could be used by many other researchers for completely different, different reasons. Yeah. Super. Your work was interrupted by the pandemic. Sasha.
00:28:15:13 - 00:28:16:07
Saša Čaval
Yeah.
00:28:16:13 - 00:28:23:14
Abigail Acton
So how are you hoping to build on what you've achieved so far? And what are you actually hoping to discover? What is all this going to actually tell you?
00:28:23:16 - 00:28:55:02
Saša Čaval
So the pandemic stop us halfway through our research, but we were fortunate enough to have at least half of our planned work executed. So we adapted to the situation. We changed the order of our work, the workflow. So we did most of our analysis in this, I don't know, let's say quiet time. A year and a half, the human remains were studied in details them all them in molecular, molecular, molecular analysis, the botany.
00:28:55:02 - 00:29:18:18
Saša Čaval
This archeology performed. And so now so now I'm pleased to say we also secured the funding to continue where we were stopped in March 2020 and also to expand our research to answer some other questions which were actually which actually arose while we were doing the first, let's say the first year of our research.
00:29:18:24 - 00:29:21:06
Abigail Acton
And may I ask you what one such question might be?
00:29:21:11 - 00:29:27:01
Saša Čaval
So, for example, where are the settlements, that is, people buried on the city left? Yes.
00:29:27:01 - 00:29:32:10
Abigail Acton
That's interesting. If you've got a whole load of tombstones, where did they where did they come from exactly?
00:29:32:10 - 00:29:53:02
Saša Čaval
Know where to do so. So usually you'll have houses or settlements, but you don't have burial places. And here it's the reverse. We have many. We have over three thousands of sites of, you know, burial places, but we didn't know where people lived. So, for example, this is just a basic one. Yeah.
00:29:53:04 - 00:29:56:17
Abigail Acton
How interesting. Yes, that isn't a very obvious question. That's very interesting.
00:29:56:19 - 00:29:57:21
Saša Čaval
Yeah.
00:29:57:23 - 00:30:02:05
Abigail Acton
And that's my question to you. Let's see if the other guests have any questions for you. Yes.
00:30:02:05 - 00:30:14:19
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
I would like to ask you what we know exactly about the kind of burial that's been. And there are some clothes or any equipment in this, towns.
00:30:14:21 - 00:30:43:15
Saša Čaval
So the whole burial is made from underground structure. And, of course, these big stones on top. So these are big, large stones. Larger than, human form heavy, let's say the average, weight is about 3000 tons. But we also have stones that went up to 25 tons. And, so these those are all skeletal burials, people who are buried either in shroud.
00:30:43:17 - 00:31:12:15
Saša Čaval
There were some elements of wooden coffins found or because, let's say large a part of this of the geographical region is cast. So there was a lot of stone available. So they were kind of built tombs, tombs inside. So you have, I don't know, let's say a wall with two, three levels without any, mortar inside.
00:31:12:19 - 00:31:49:00
Saša Čaval
And then we also have natural stone that, comes out in, in, thin slices, which were either used as the sides or maybe just a couple of, let's say the coffin area, which was then, you know, had a pile of soil on top. And then on top of that was this fake tombstone, some basic questions that, for example, within archeology, within Europe, we actually don't need to ask anymore because they have been answered here, are still open.
00:31:49:02 - 00:31:59:15
Saša Čaval
So that's, I think, a fascinating thing about this heritage being so understudied and so close to, you know, to the heart of Europe, let's say.
00:31:59:17 - 00:32:05:24
Abigail Acton
Yes. Absolutely. And I'm really glad that you managed to secure that extra funding in that. And you'll be digging even deeper, if I may use.
00:32:09:03 - 00:32:14:06
Abigail Acton
That one was accidental. The shine a light at the beginning was that one was accidental.
00:32:14:08 - 00:32:14:20
Abigail Acton
Well, listen.
00:32:14:20 - 00:32:34:05
Abigail Acton
Thank you very, very much, all of you, for a very interesting conversation. I think that, that it's, it's, I think particularly fascinating to take three such basic, materials of everyday life and look at how they were used and, and what that can show us about the societies concerned. So I want to thank you very much for your time today.
00:32:34:07 - 00:32:35:08
Nadine Schibille
Thank you so much.
00:32:35:13 - 00:32:36:13
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
Thank you.
00:32:36:15 - 00:32:43:03
Saša Čaval
Thank you, Abigail, and thank you to my colleagues as well. It was fascinating to hear your stories, narratives.
00:32:43:05 - 00:32:44:11
Abigail Acton
It was indeed.
00:32:44:13 - 00:32:49:08
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
I hope that we can continue after finishing.
00:32:49:10 - 00:32:50:03
Nadine Schibille
Oh, perfect.
00:32:50:23 - 00:33:12:00
Abigail Acton
If you're interested in what other EU funded projects are doing in the field of archeology and anthropology, the Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects such as these. Funded by the horizon 2020 program, articles and interviews explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains, so whether you're into photonics or phytoplankton, there's something there for you.
00:33:12:02 - 00:33:35:05
Abigail Acton
Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you! Drop us a line editorial@cordis.europa.eu. Until next time.
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:38:19
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery. Hello. Welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. The objects we have around us tell us much about who we are, what we can manufacture, what's considered desirable, what we can afford, what we can produce and export, and our trade routes. The past is shadowy, but the objects that mattered to the societies that came before us illuminate those who produced and used them in the same way.
00:00:38:22 - 00:01:05:04
Abigail Acton
So this episode we're considering cloth, glass and stone and what they reveal about innovation and cultural connections in the Middle Ages. What can textile production in Romano Byzantine Egypt tell us about that culture? Who wove what and how glass is a demanding medium, both technologically and logistically, and how it was used in Byzantine and Islamic cultures, shines a light pun fully intended on their esthetics and innovations.
00:01:05:06 - 00:01:26:17
Abigail Acton
The way glass was used reveals cultural dynamics, as do the medieval headstones in the Western Balkans. What do these weathered stones tell us about how different cultures in this period lived alongside each other? hoping to piece together the puzzle of medieval socio economic history, are all three guests whose work has been supported by the EU's horizon 2020 program.
00:01:26:19 - 00:01:39:00
Abigail Acton
Nadine Schibille is senior research scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research. Nadine is interested in the geopolitical, socio cultural and artistic dimensions of glass in the first millennium CE. Hello, Nadine.
00:01:39:02 - 00:01:40:12
Nadine Schibille
Hello, everybody.
00:01:40:14 - 00:01:50:24
Abigail Acton
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert is a postdoc researcher at the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on the material culture of Egypt from the Ptolemaic to the early Arab period. Hello, Maria.
00:01:51:03 - 00:01:53:04
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
Hello, Abigail. Hello, everyone.
00:01:53:08 - 00:02:10:01
Abigail Acton
Saša Čaval is a research fellow at the University of Reading, UK. Sasha's research incorporates archeological and anthropological perspectives to study multicultural societies, whether in the medieval Western Balkans or the colonial and post-colonial Indian Ocean. Welcome, Saša .
00:02:10:03 - 00:02:13:16
Saša Čaval
Thank you very much, Abigail. Thank you for having me.
00:02:13:18 - 00:02:25:24
Abigail Acton
Nadine. Glass roots trace is mandatory and wide development in the production, trade, and consumption of glass between the seventh and 12th centuries. So can I ask you what makes glass such an interesting material in this period?
00:02:26:01 - 00:02:50:13
Nadine Schibille
Well, glass is interesting because, glass wasn't really traveled, and sometimes were very, very long distances. What I mean by that is that glass was produced in only a very few places. So the production in France. And from there it was traded, to all the corners of the Mediterranean. And by analyzing the glass. So the chemical composition of glass reflects the primary production location.
00:02:50:13 - 00:02:58:09
Nadine Schibille
So we can literally trace the movement of this material. Let me explain. I should probably say something about, material itself.
00:02:58:15 - 00:02:59:20
Abigail Acton
Please do.
00:02:59:22 - 00:03:27:18
Nadine Schibille
So Roman and medieval, early medieval glass is a sort of lens so they can bounce, which means it's a mixture of silica in the form of sand and a flexing agent to bring down the mountain temperature. The flexing agent has changed over time. But the main flexing agents throughout the Roman period and, well, the first millennium, in fact, was a mineral source of soda that was collected from salt lakes in northern Egypt.
00:03:27:20 - 00:04:03:12
Nadine Schibille
So this mixture of sand and soda was fuzed in large tank furnaces at a temperature of about 1000°C. Now, not every sand source is suitable, and we need clean soda sources. So just restrict your possibilities as to where you can actually collect these raw materials. So as a result of this, these technical and material requirements, the production of glass from its raw materials was concentrated in a very, very few, locations on the Lebanon coast, which is nowadays.
00:04:03:14 - 00:04:21:07
Nadine Schibille
And Palestine, Israel and in northern Egypt. And as I said before, from there it was then traded throughout the Mediterranean. Now the production of glass was huge. I'm talking here about, glass blocks that were formed in one sitting, so to speak, in the order of 10 to 30 tons.
00:04:21:09 - 00:04:42:21
Abigail Acton
It's also absolutely fascinating because, you know, you see this beautiful glass and one appreciates. I think one sees it as sort of so delicate and small because the objects sometimes are quite small. I'm thinking of sort of beautiful domestic objects and so on, but they're not the concept of such vast quantities being produced like that. But that must have been so technologically advanced.
00:04:43:00 - 00:04:46:17
Abigail Acton
It must have been a a massive engineering feat.
00:04:46:19 - 00:05:13:15
Nadine Schibille
Absolutely. So it is. Glass can be considered one of the, well, the earliest synthetic manmade material that was produced on an industrial scale. I mean, from Italy, we have furnaces that reach temperatures in the same range, but, it is it is quite demanding in many, many ways. And then these blocks of glass are these huge, massive blocks with broken up and then traded again.
00:05:13:17 - 00:05:26:02
Nadine Schibille
Glass is relatively heavy. So we have shipwrecks that carry 2 to 3 tons of glass. To Constantinople, for instance. So, you know, it is it is a fascinating material.
00:05:26:04 - 00:05:31:15
Abigail Acton
And what sort of period would that sort of trade be taking place when you say shipwrecks and such? What sort of period?
00:05:31:17 - 00:06:03:05
Nadine Schibille
That's a very good question. And again, very fascinating, thing about glass. We have shipwrecks with, at that glass as the main cargo already during the late Bronze Age. Well, this said not quite in these amounts, but still already quite significant. Certainly during the Roman period, we have several shipwrecks, many of them, sank off the southern coast of France, for instance, and still, during the early Islamic period.
00:06:03:07 - 00:06:15:13
Nadine Schibille
So it's going on the sort of large scale production. And this separation between private production and secondary production is still a continues until the late first millennium, possibly into the 11th century.
00:06:15:15 - 00:06:23:17
Abigail Acton
I see, why so many of France is that because we've discovered them of France, or because the coast is treacherous?
00:06:23:19 - 00:06:34:07
Nadine Schibille
Actually, that's I don't know, but, there's certainly a lot of glass coming in into France and Marseilles, for instance, was an important port city. And during the Roman period. So.
00:06:34:09 - 00:06:37:11
Abigail Acton
Right. So it's actually proportionate to how much is actually coming in.
00:06:37:13 - 00:06:48:07
Nadine Schibille
Exactly. And, at the same time, I assume that many, many shipwrecks haven't been really discovered yet, so there's still plenty to explore. Archeologically I think so, yeah.
00:06:48:07 - 00:06:58:15
Abigail Acton
So there may be more elsewhere as well. Indeed. And how did different cultures explore and use glass? What can that tell us about the interplay between them? The trade routes, for example, and other dynamics of exchange.
00:06:58:17 - 00:07:24:01
Nadine Schibille
I think in order to really answer this question, we should probably go step back and ask why glass in the first place? Because we are seeing how difficult it is. So why go through all the trouble to produce glass? Now, I think partially answer probably lies, with the material and optical properties of glass, which, were used and exploited for utilitarian as well as artistic purposes.
00:07:24:02 - 00:07:55:17
Nadine Schibille
So glass can be shaped almost infinitely. It offers a wide range of colors, many more and much more luminous than, for instance, natural stone and glass can be transparent, translucent, or completely opaque, so it has a wide range of applications in a way. So, and as an example, I think the most obvious property of glass is probably its transparency, which ultimately inspired, the use of glass for windows.
00:07:55:17 - 00:08:19:00
Nadine Schibille
So window glass. During the Roman period, the earliest example that we have dates to the first century, and it is often said that the invention of window glass was connected to construction of the large Roman bath houses so that, you know, for instance, for instance, in Rome. Now, these Roman glasses, window glasses are usually not strongly colored.
00:08:19:00 - 00:08:56:02
Nadine Schibille
Their bluish or greenish greenish, which is the result of the impurities of censors. And they are not entirely transparent, like modern, window glass, but more translucent. Now, the invention of, strongly colored window glass belongs to the Middle Ages, and it's usually associated with ecclesiastical context in the Latin West. And this is this offers a remarkable, some remarkable insights into the differences between cultures, because in the Byzantine Empire, the window glass tends to be only weakly colored.
00:08:56:03 - 00:09:24:09
Nadine Schibille
Yeah. And we have strongly colored mosaic decorations. And in Islamic world, we have both we have strongly colored window glass and mosaics. So again, very interesting dimension in terms of the artistic use of glass and which is probably to a certain extent, related to concepts of the divine and interaction of glass with light. So whether light is transmitted or whether it's reflected.
00:09:24:12 - 00:09:30:14
Nadine Schibille
So there are many, many different dimensions that, feed into the use of, of glass.
00:09:30:16 - 00:09:54:12
Abigail Acton
And well, so I have two questions that are coming to my mind. I'll start I'll continue with the question that feeds on from what you're saying, but then I've got a question that throws back to what you said something earlier. What does the, what innovations came about due to the esthetic imperatives? In other words, if a certain culture really needed to make a certain type of of mosaic, did they?
00:09:54:12 - 00:09:58:22
Abigail Acton
They must have a presume, have have come up with methods of doing so.
00:09:58:24 - 00:10:34:09
Nadine Schibille
I'm not sure whether, you would call this innovation as such, but mosaics are quite fascinating because, mosaics are considered a quintessentially Byzantine art form, even if they are found in Islamic contexts. Here they are often said to be the work of Byzantine artists. An excellent case in point is the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, which was constructed and decorated with mosaics at the beginning of the eighth century, and Islamic textual sources claim that the material, as well as the artists, came from the Byzantine Empire.
00:10:34:14 - 00:11:06:00
Nadine Schibille
Now, I've analyzed, thousands mosaics right from the Great Mosque, and I can tell you that these textual sources are not grounded in reality. The majority of material came from Egypt at the time. And Egypt at the time was part of the caliphate. So these textual sources are fabricated, and they serve a certain purpose to evoke a Christian Roman heritage, and in so doing, to reinforce prestige and supremacy in a way.
00:11:06:05 - 00:11:35:03
Nadine Schibille
So the use of mosaics in the Islamic world, in certainly in, in context of mosques, was certainly, deliberate and politicized choice. Yes. No question about that. So it's a question of what does it actually mean rather than innovations. That said, about a century, a century and a half later, in the ninth century, we have interesting changes in the architectural esthetics of, in the Islamic world.
00:11:35:05 - 00:11:56:24
Nadine Schibille
So here we suddenly have a change away from mosaics and, more towards the use of glass tiles. Even entire floors were covered in glass tiles. And Samarra in Iraq, as an example, a very good example. What I invented new decorations made from glass.
00:11:57:01 - 00:12:16:24
Abigail Acton
Interesting. The other question I had in my mind, going back to what you said, right? Relatively near the start of our interview, you mentioned that these great big blocks were created and then broken down for transportation and for sale. So just maybe this is a stupid question. So an artisan would receive chips basically, and what rebuilt it and then rework it?
00:12:17:01 - 00:12:45:18
Nadine Schibille
Exactly. This is a very important point actually. Something I should stress. We have to separate primary production and secondary production. So the primary production was from this very large scale. And then it was broken up into chunks. So one, two, three kilos or something like that. And these arrived in secondary workshops where the glass was remounted, colored and shaped into artifacts and the other thing that's, interesting secondary workshops we can find everywhere.
00:12:45:22 - 00:12:54:16
Nadine Schibille
So primary look at primary production is concentrated secondary a working is sort of egalitarian, so to speak.
00:12:54:18 - 00:13:01:05
Abigail Acton
Yeah. No, that's very interesting. I don't know why I never thought of that. I had in my mind that, that the two were sort of done in the same place. Fascinating.
00:13:01:10 - 00:13:05:13
Nadine Schibille
This is true for later periods. So we're really talking about first millennium.
00:13:06:09 - 00:13:13:06
Nadine Schibille
Things changed at the turn of the second millennium. And, where we start having regional primary production.
00:13:13:11 - 00:13:18:23
Abigail Acton
Yes, I see, does anyone have any questions for Nadine on this fascinating material? Yeah, Maria.
00:13:19:00 - 00:13:35:16
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
Actually, I'm really happy that, maybe it's not a question, but the comment, that Nadine, told her about this nine center esthetic, changes because we can see exactly the same phenomenon in, in clothing.
00:13:35:18 - 00:13:51:11
Abigail Acton
That's very interesting. So there are close parallels between the two media. Maria MONTEX considers Egyptian society through its economy and material culture, using the monastic environment as an example. Why did you select this period and location as the focus of your study?
00:13:51:13 - 00:14:32:23
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
I consider the period from the forth to eight century, very important, for Egyptian, social, economic and political. History, we can see all kind of changes, starting with the division of Roman Empire, the Persian occupation, and at the end, the Arab conquest and all this, phenomena you can observe also in, economic life, but also in the development of some techniques and organization of work.
00:14:33:00 - 00:15:15:04
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
I have chosen monastic movement as example, because the daily life of monks, I was very close to the, the in the life of the late population. And we have many sources that can provide us information about this. That's mean, half of excavated sites in Egypt from this period is monastic, has monastic character. And, concerning religious sources, almost a quarter of the papyri and all structure written in Greek and Coptic came also from this media.
00:15:15:06 - 00:15:26:07
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
What we know about monks, it's really useful to study economic life and production in Byzantine and early Arab Egypt, and.
00:15:26:07 - 00:15:33:04
Abigail Acton
With the two particular types of, of monastic activity, of of ways of living monastic cultures at that period.
00:15:33:10 - 00:15:48:01
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
The monastic life was organized in various way. The monks could live completely alone as hermits or many hermits who were organized in the semi, and the heretic communities.
00:15:48:03 - 00:15:49:20
Abigail Acton
And what does semi and heretic mean?
00:15:49:24 - 00:16:36:06
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
Dutchman is still, they still living like, hermits that turn in, separate places, but some task, some, especially religious life and part of economics were organized for all community. And what is also interesting that monks could also live together if the well organized monasteries. And we know that, it was the division between the men and women communities, but sometimes we have also mixed sex communities, what we call congregation.
00:16:36:08 - 00:16:43:06
Abigail Acton
Right. I see so that's the structure of the communities that you were considering for the purposes of your research, do we know much about this.
00:16:43:06 - 00:16:43:18
Nadine Schibille
Period's.
00:16:43:18 - 00:16:48:11
Abigail Acton
Textile production and, what new information has been revealed by your work?
00:16:48:11 - 00:17:18:06
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
And it's very interesting to see the different kind of community organized in different way. The, production of textiles. What do we know that if it was, mixed sex communities, it's usually the women, spinning and provide the, threads for the linen tunics for the men, but men wool the, linen tunics, but not woolen.
00:17:18:10 - 00:17:19:11
Abigail Acton
Oh. How interesting.
00:17:19:13 - 00:17:57:18
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
Although wool production was concentrated in the women monasteries, a they send the products to the men. And it's also very interesting if we are talking about organization, how they send. If it was the short distance, it was, on donkey or dromedary, but for the long distance they used ships. They construct a special ships to track the, products from the women monasteries to the men monasteries from the same congregation.
00:17:57:20 - 00:18:12:01
Abigail Acton
So it wasn't a question that the men didn't have the skill. It was simply that men didn't choose to weave wool or it wasn't appropriate. And so they had to face the logistical problems of transportation rather than the men just weaving the wool. Or was it that they didn't know how.
00:18:12:03 - 00:19:09:16
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
It is the gender question in this kind of communities? Everything was organized at in the lay population. That's men. Usually the girls learned at home already from the young age, spinning and basic weaving. So when they came, I became a nun. They have all their own capacity to to do this job. Concerning the men, we have no information about involving of the men in the domestic production, what we know about the professional weavers who were the men or women, and in this case it was, high qualified weavers working, producing, usually specialized or mass production clothing, men and women, they respect, if I can say, the common habit in the society, but in the
00:19:09:16 - 00:19:18:06
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
only men communities we find that also the spindles and other proofs that the men could spin also.
00:19:18:09 - 00:19:41:03
Abigail Acton
So they would rather have to transport the materials that they were producing long distances by boat than simply have the, the men create their own textile. So that's very interesting as a, a statement on, on, on the culture of the monastic societies sought to reflect so, so accurately the, the lace societies around them that they would they would go through that logistical inconvenience.
00:19:41:03 - 00:19:45:09
Abigail Acton
Can I ask you you mentioned spindles. What are the technologies did you find that they used?
00:19:45:10 - 00:20:05:05
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
We have also some trace of the weaving on the monastic sides. And, what is interesting that in no one region of Egypt, eastern tip, modern times, in the monastic context, we find many pits and the enter parts us it's.
00:20:05:07 - 00:20:10:22
Abigail Acton
And how would that work, Maria? What would what would the loom pit be? You put a loom in a hole. How does that work?
00:20:11:02 - 00:20:19:20
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
You put a special loom in the hole. And in this case they use also a roof to fix the beams of the loom.
00:20:20:01 - 00:20:22:02
Abigail Acton
Okay. So it was suspended.
00:20:22:04 - 00:20:22:23
Nadine Schibille
Yeah.
00:20:23:00 - 00:20:23:10
Abigail Acton
Okay.
00:20:23:10 - 00:20:40:06
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
I see probably this loom pits connected to the kind of mass production for the monks, but also for the population on this region for all this, necessary products to, to funerary.
00:20:40:08 - 00:20:48:22
Abigail Acton
That's very interesting. Thank you. My other guests tell me, do you have any questions that you would like to ask Maria? So, yes. Nadine, what would you like to ask?
00:20:48:24 - 00:21:05:17
Nadine Schibille
I find it strange that I mention highly interesting. And one of my questions would be whether, you know, and this might be not a shared question, but whether there is, what do you know anything about the monastic lives in other parts of the Byzantine Empire or the Western world as well?
00:21:05:19 - 00:21:40:15
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
The turn out we have no the same kind of sources and, as one point. And another point is that Egyptian church has been separate from the Byzantine church in the fifth century and follow another way of development. And if you compare the, way of life of the monks in Egypt with those from, Syria or, Asia minor, it's not the same.
00:21:40:17 - 00:22:05:02
Abigail Acton
Sasha. So, miss address, the social features of the medieval Western Balkans funerary phenomenon erected over 500 years ago. There locally known as statue. Yes, I could could you tell us a little bit about these stones and why they interest you? I'm particularly fascinated by the what they highlight about the multicultural society of that period, because this is really what we're considering here, the interplay between cultures.
00:22:05:04 - 00:22:36:07
Saša Čaval
So, yeah, we are talking about salvation later period. Late, medieval, so 12th to 16th centuries. And these are the tombstones erected in a society that included at least three religious denominations, five ethnicities, and a dynamic and a diverse system of governments. And as such, they have, an immense potential to reveal societal features of the media for communities that erected them, because we don't know much about them.
00:22:36:09 - 00:22:54:24
Saša Čaval
And although the region is inherently known as a place of obstinate and incapacity compatible ethnic and religious identities, I believe actually opposite. I believe that stage two were not a dividing, but a unifying element in that world.
00:22:55:01 - 00:23:09:11
Abigail Acton
What do the stones tell you? I mean, I can see why you'd be interested in them, because they're used by all the cultures. What people buried together and from different, different religions. They were they buried in the same areas. And. And how did that change?
00:23:09:11 - 00:23:42:07
Saša Čaval
So the religions we are talking about is the Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism. And then we have a locally developed Bosnian church, which was proclaimed heretic in the 13th century, and then later in the 15th century, US we also have Islam. So the burials of those three Christian communities might be in the same place, but we are not sure.
00:23:42:09 - 00:24:09:08
Saša Čaval
So wherever we have churches that are either Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches, and we assume that, people buried there were of the same religion, but we also have many places where we don't have any kind of, let's say, religious elements telling us about the specific denomination I see. So there's still a lot of questions and not a lot of questions.
00:24:09:10 - 00:24:16:17
Abigail Acton
And I it's fascinating. You said it's basically like opening a new book and, and, and having the first chapter and seeing all the other chapters to come that you haven't read yet.
00:24:16:19 - 00:24:30:05
Saša Čaval
Exactly. And we're talking about Europe in the 21st century. It's fascinating. And we don't have to go to, you know, I don't know, to the moon, to the universe when you have so many unanswered questions here.
00:24:30:07 - 00:24:41:04
Abigail Acton
Yeah, right in front of us and tell me, so what were you actually doing with regards to the to the stones. So you were trying to, to to look at the inscriptions? I guess they were very badly weathered. How did you go about that?
00:24:41:06 - 00:25:10:09
Saša Čaval
Not a lot of people know that there are over 72,000 of 60. So of these tombstones scattered in the landscape of Western Balkan countries, but predominantly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, they are some of them are decorated and, let's say a tiny percentage, a little over half a percent also have inscriptions, engraved inscriptions. And these also convey the social purity.
00:25:10:11 - 00:25:34:03
Saša Čaval
So although the language is local, the epitaphs are returning two scripts, either in Glasgow, I think, or in Bosnian Cyrillic, which were both established in 99th century, and both are today extinct. So in this digital age today we used, of course, digital approach to record based inscriptions. We initially used RTI.
00:25:34:08 - 00:25:35:23
Abigail Acton
And what is RTI.
00:25:36:00 - 00:26:29:16
Saša Čaval
Reflectance transformation imaging. How does that work? I just take a lot of photographs on the various angles from different positions and with different light exposures, and then using specific software, we were able to clearly see what was written on these stone systems. However, as states are still lying and scattered in the landscape, exposed to all weather conditions and natural processes, and have been for about 6 to 800 years already, this inscriptions became thoroughly eroded, often to the level of ela to being illegible, so the RTI didn't work on such tombstones, so fortunately moderate technology offers solutions for such problems and in collaboration with shut down scan method from Slovenia, we used a handheld
00:26:29:16 - 00:26:37:18
Saša Čaval
3D scanner. It was a like a pilot, test gauge. And we start. We scanned eight tombstones.
00:26:37:20 - 00:26:38:24
Abigail Acton
How did that come out?
00:26:39:01 - 00:27:03:12
Saša Čaval
So we scanned eight tombstones, fought with slightly visible engravings, and fought with only with decorations. And then against specific software and various fees and resolution and showed us what an effective method this is. We found that actually six of those eight states have inscriptions, and the other two had more decorations that was visible to us even with RTI.
00:27:03:17 - 00:27:18:06
Saša Čaval
So having such a great result, we are now in process of finding of applying for funding to buy such a scanner so that we could use it on every state, on every tombstone that we will come across in our future work.
00:27:18:08 - 00:27:29:18
Abigail Acton
I think it must be very conclusive. I think it must be one of those things where you do one and you're, you know, you've had a full day and you're absolutely exhausted. And you keep thinking to yourself, one more, just one more, just that one over there.
00:27:29:20 - 00:27:32:02
Abigail Acton
You must be very hard to stop.
00:27:32:04 - 00:27:57:23
Saša Čaval
Exactly. And also, you know, we were we are excavating usually in summer. Nice weather, hot. But this hand-held scanner doesn't work in very lit environments. So what we did, we woke up at 4:00 so that we could be at the site at dawn. And then some people went home at 3:00, and they came back to decide at 8:00 so that we could use them.
00:27:58:00 - 00:28:04:13
Saša Čaval
You know, the nature, the natural elements to get as much as possible from those scans.
00:28:04:18 - 00:28:15:11
Abigail Acton
That's excellent. And it sounds like it's going to be something that could be used by many other researchers for completely different, different reasons. Yeah. Super. Your work was interrupted by the pandemic. Sasha.
00:28:15:13 - 00:28:16:07
Saša Čaval
Yeah.
00:28:16:13 - 00:28:23:14
Abigail Acton
So how are you hoping to build on what you've achieved so far? And what are you actually hoping to discover? What is all this going to actually tell you?
00:28:23:16 - 00:28:55:02
Saša Čaval
So the pandemic stop us halfway through our research, but we were fortunate enough to have at least half of our planned work executed. So we adapted to the situation. We changed the order of our work, the workflow. So we did most of our analysis in this, I don't know, let's say quiet time. A year and a half, the human remains were studied in details them all them in molecular, molecular, molecular analysis, the botany.
00:28:55:02 - 00:29:18:18
Saša Čaval
This archeology performed. And so now so now I'm pleased to say we also secured the funding to continue where we were stopped in March 2020 and also to expand our research to answer some other questions which were actually which actually arose while we were doing the first, let's say the first year of our research.
00:29:18:24 - 00:29:21:06
Abigail Acton
And may I ask you what one such question might be?
00:29:21:11 - 00:29:27:01
Saša Čaval
So, for example, where are the settlements, that is, people buried on the city left? Yes.
00:29:27:01 - 00:29:32:10
Abigail Acton
That's interesting. If you've got a whole load of tombstones, where did they where did they come from exactly?
00:29:32:10 - 00:29:53:02
Saša Čaval
Know where to do so. So usually you'll have houses or settlements, but you don't have burial places. And here it's the reverse. We have many. We have over three thousands of sites of, you know, burial places, but we didn't know where people lived. So, for example, this is just a basic one. Yeah.
00:29:53:04 - 00:29:56:17
Abigail Acton
How interesting. Yes, that isn't a very obvious question. That's very interesting.
00:29:56:19 - 00:29:57:21
Saša Čaval
Yeah.
00:29:57:23 - 00:30:02:05
Abigail Acton
And that's my question to you. Let's see if the other guests have any questions for you. Yes.
00:30:02:05 - 00:30:14:19
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
I would like to ask you what we know exactly about the kind of burial that's been. And there are some clothes or any equipment in this, towns.
00:30:14:21 - 00:30:43:15
Saša Čaval
So the whole burial is made from underground structure. And, of course, these big stones on top. So these are big, large stones. Larger than, human form heavy, let's say the average, weight is about 3000 tons. But we also have stones that went up to 25 tons. And, so these those are all skeletal burials, people who are buried either in shroud.
00:30:43:17 - 00:31:12:15
Saša Čaval
There were some elements of wooden coffins found or because, let's say large a part of this of the geographical region is cast. So there was a lot of stone available. So they were kind of built tombs, tombs inside. So you have, I don't know, let's say a wall with two, three levels without any, mortar inside.
00:31:12:19 - 00:31:49:00
Saša Čaval
And then we also have natural stone that, comes out in, in, thin slices, which were either used as the sides or maybe just a couple of, let's say the coffin area, which was then, you know, had a pile of soil on top. And then on top of that was this fake tombstone, some basic questions that, for example, within archeology, within Europe, we actually don't need to ask anymore because they have been answered here, are still open.
00:31:49:02 - 00:31:59:15
Saša Čaval
So that's, I think, a fascinating thing about this heritage being so understudied and so close to, you know, to the heart of Europe, let's say.
00:31:59:17 - 00:32:05:24
Abigail Acton
Yes. Absolutely. And I'm really glad that you managed to secure that extra funding in that. And you'll be digging even deeper, if I may use.
00:32:09:03 - 00:32:14:06
Abigail Acton
That one was accidental. The shine a light at the beginning was that one was accidental.
00:32:14:08 - 00:32:14:20
Abigail Acton
Well, listen.
00:32:14:20 - 00:32:34:05
Abigail Acton
Thank you very, very much, all of you, for a very interesting conversation. I think that, that it's, it's, I think particularly fascinating to take three such basic, materials of everyday life and look at how they were used and, and what that can show us about the societies concerned. So I want to thank you very much for your time today.
00:32:34:07 - 00:32:35:08
Nadine Schibille
Thank you so much.
00:32:35:13 - 00:32:36:13
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
Thank you.
00:32:36:15 - 00:32:43:03
Saša Čaval
Thank you, Abigail, and thank you to my colleagues as well. It was fascinating to hear your stories, narratives.
00:32:43:05 - 00:32:44:11
Abigail Acton
It was indeed.
00:32:44:13 - 00:32:49:08
Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert
I hope that we can continue after finishing.
00:32:49:10 - 00:32:50:03
Nadine Schibille
Oh, perfect.
00:32:50:23 - 00:33:12:00
Abigail Acton
If you're interested in what other EU funded projects are doing in the field of archeology and anthropology, the Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects such as these. Funded by the horizon 2020 program, articles and interviews explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains, so whether you're into photonics or phytoplankton, there's something there for you.
00:33:12:02 - 00:33:35:05
Abigail Acton
Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you! Drop us a line editorial@cordis.europa.eu. Until next time.
The objects we have around us tell us much about who we are: what we can manufacture, what is considered desirable, what we can afford, what we can produce, and export, and our trade routes. The past is shadowy but the objects that mattered to the societies that came before us illuminate those who produced and used them in the same way. So, this episode we are considering cloth, glass and stone, and what they reveal about innovation and cultural connections in the Middle Ages. What can textile production in Romano-Byzantine Egypt tell us about that culture? Who wove what, and how? Glass is a demanding medium, both technologically and logistically, and how it was used in Byzantine and Islamic cultures shines a light on their aesthetics and innovations. The way glass was used reveals cultural dynamics as do the medieval headstones in the Western Balkans. What do these weathered stones tell us about how different cultures in this period lived alongside each other? These and other questions are explored by this episode’s three guests: Nadine Schibille, the principal investigator on the GlassRoutes project which investigated the geopolitical, sociocultural and artistic dimensions of glass in the first millennium CE. Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert, the principal investigator on the MONTEX project, which considered the culture surrounding textile use and production in Egypt from the Ptolemaic to the early Arab period. And, Saša Čaval, whose project SOLMUS looked at the social features of the medieval burial stones in the Western Balkans, erected over 500 years ago, locally called stećci.
Happy to hear from you!
If you have any feedback, we’re always happy to hear from you! Send us any comments, questions or suggestions to the usual email address, editorial@cordis.europa.eu.
Keywords
CORDIScovery, CORDIS, Middle Ages, medieval, societies, glass, stećci, stone, cloth, textile