Using parchment to reveal the ancient lives of livestock

A page from the York Gospels. Eraser rubbings left over from cleaning the pages of this manuscript revealed the ancient genomes of the animals used to produce the parchment. 

(Image: York Minster)

Innovative ways of utilising ancient protein and DNA analysis have revealed new information about medieval parchment and the animals from which they are made.

A group of researchers from Trinity College Dublin and the University of York have taken eraser rubbings – left over from the cleaning of medieval manuscripts – and extracted DNA and proteins from the waste. This method means that parts of the manuscript no longer need to be removed for destructive testing.

The group recently used this technique to analyse the pages of the York Gospels, an Anglo-Saxon book (c.1000 AD) containing the four Gospels of the New Testament, a letter from King Cnut, and land ownership documents. The experiment yielded some interesting results.

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Belgium's Grognon citadel and Medieval port resurfacing

The Grognon citadel, in Namur (in Wallonia, Belgium), continues to reveal its secrets, as rescue excavations began several months ago, with a view to building an underground car park at the confluence of the Meuse and Sambre rivers. Recently, archaeologists have uncovered the remains of the ramparts, a watchtower and the Grognon Gate, which were used to enter the area by ship. 

The excavations of the Grognon citadel allow us to visualize the boundaries of the district 

as it existed until the 19th century [Credit: © SPW]

"We knew that the gate was there, and also the round tower," explains Dominique Bosquet, archaeologist at the Walloon Public Service,"but the exact state of preservation, the smaller buildings adjoining it, the complexity of a building built against the rampart, then demolished and reconstructed on larger scale - all these things can only be discovered and really clarified through archaeological investigation. So we knew we were going to find this kind of thing, but not to such a degree of preservation and complexity."

"In reality," adds Raphaël Vanmechelen, also an archaeologist at the SPW,"there are four types of fortification walls and four gates, all of which are interesting because they all reflect different architectural techniques, public space design and military techniques. But it is true that the second, which can be dated precisely to the end of the 12th century, is particularly spectacular. This makes it possible to fully understand the morphology of the old quarter".

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'Lost chapel' of Westminster Palace revealed in new 3-D model

St Stephen's was built by King Edward I to be a show-case of English royal splendor.

Credit: University of York

The first dedicated House of Commons chamber, destroyed in the 1834 Palace of Westminster fire, has been reconstructed with the help of 3D visualisation technology.

The House of Commons took shape in the medieval chapel of St Stephen, formerly a place of worship for the royal family. With few traces of the original building still remaining, echoes of the life of the chapel can only be found in centuries-old documents in parliamentary and national archives.

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, art historians at the University of York have now brought St Stephen's Chapel and the Commons chamber back to life by pioneering a technique combining traditional archival research with digital reconstruction.

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