Why a Medieval Woman Had Lapis Lazuli Hidden in Her Teeth

[kbot]

Wow........... fascinating article. I've always been fascinated by illuminated manuscripts. This study gives a whole new look at how they were created.......

Snippet:

What Anita Radini noticed under the microscope was the blue—a brilliant blue that seemed so unnatural, so out of place in the 1,000-year-old dental tartar she was gently dissolving in weak acid.

It was ultramarine, she would later learn, a pigment that a millennium ago could only have come from lapis lazuli originating in a single region of Afghanistan. This blue was once worth its weight in gold. It was used, most notably, to give the Virgin Mary’s robes their striking color in centuries of artwork. And the teeth that were embedded with this blue likely belonged to a scribe or painter of medieval manuscripts.

Who was that person? A woman, first of all. According to radiocarbon dating, she lived around 997 to 1162, and she was buried at a women’s monastery in Dalheim, Germany. And so these embedded blue particles in her teeth illuminate a forgotten history of medieval manuscripts: Not just monks made them. In the medieval ages, nuns also produced the famously laborious and beautiful books. And some of these women must have been very good, if they were using pigment as precious and rare as ultramarine.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... th/579760/

[Riddick]

Fascinating! Her plaque gave her profession away.

If she was brushing & flossing regularly we may never have known

[kbot]

Just imagine what our bodies will show to researchers down the line.......