IMAGE: A - obsidian in rocks formed during the eruption; B, C - obsidian boulders ( "bombs "), differing in color and shape.
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Credit: Ekaterina V. Doronicheva et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 2018
Research group from Russia and the United States analyzed samples of
obsidian volcanic glass in Kabardino-Balkaria. It turned out that more
than 70 thousand years ago, Neanderthals transferred this mineral to
distances up to 250 kilometers and used it to manufacture tools. These
findings help to understand how populations from different regions
communicated in antiquity. The study was supported by the Russian
Science Foundation and is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
When volcanoes erupted, the ejected lava hardens formed a mixture of
various minerals, including obsidian. In the Stone Age, the ancient
people used this material extensively to create tools. In fact, we use
it even now: in surgery, for the manufacture of dark glass and jewelry.
The elemental composition of obsidian is unique not only for each
volcano, but also for each eruption. This makes it possible to determine
precisely the specific archaeological site, where particular obsidian
sample originated from.
According to earlier studies, in the Paleolithic in Central Europe
and the Caucasus, obsidians were actively transferred from one
settlement to another, and over time the distance of its transportation
increased from 100 to more than 700 kilometers.
Scientists from the non-profit organization "Laboratory of
Prehistory" analyzed the elemental composition of obsidian samples from
various Neanderthals ites of the Central and North-Western Caucasus,
which were found during several expeditions. The obsidian composition
turned out to be almost identical for many tools, which indicates their
common origin. New data also indicates that obsidian was transported
over more than 250 kilometers from sources in the Central Caucasus to
the North-West Caucasus during the Middle Paleolithic. At the same time,
new studies show that the Central Caucasus populations cultural
tradition differed from the Neanderthals of the North-West Caucasus. So
archaeologists have yet to figure out how the interaction between these
different Neanderthals groups was build in this period.
Scientists also found that in the Upper Paleolithic, people
transported obsidians from the Elbrus region and the South Caucasus to
the Mezmay cave, which is located in the North-West Caucasus. The length
of migration was 250 and 450 kilometers respectively. The researchers
suggest that in the Upper Paleolithic there was already a developed
social network between groups of people from different regions.
"The study of cultural areas, the impact of innovations and
mechanisms for the dissemination of new technologies is one of the most
important tasks of modern research. Our work reliably shows the
existence of connections of the population of different regions in
antiquity. These results can be widely used in university lectures, as
well as in modern textbooks for middle and high school. Also, the
results of recent studies can be used in the design of expositions of
museums and thematic exhibitions," summarizes Ekaterina Doronicheva, one
of the authors of the work, Ph.D., research associate of the
"Laboratory of Prehistory".
Researchers from the
Max-Planck-Institute for the Science of Human History and the University
of Helsinki have analyzed the first ancient DNA from mainland Finland.
As described in Nature Communications, ancient DNA was
extracted from bones and teeth from a 3,500 year-old burial on the Kola
Peninsula, Russia, and a 1,500 year-old water burial in Finland. The
results reveal the possible path along which ancient people from Siberia
spread to Finland and Northwestern Russia.
Researchers found the earliest evidence of Siberian ancestry in
Fennoscandia in a population inhabiting the Kola Peninsula, in
Northwestern Russia, dating to around 4,000 years ago. This genetic
ancestry then later spread to populations living in Finland. The study
also found that people genetically similar to present-day Saami people
inhabited areas in much more southern parts of Finland than the Saami
today.
For the present study, genome-wide genetic data from 11 individuals
were retrieved. Eight individuals came from the Kola Peninsula, six from
a burial dated to 3,500 years ago, and two from an 18th to 19th century
Saami cemetery. "We were surprised to find that the oldest samples
studied here had the highest proportion of Siberian ancestry," says
Stephan Schiffels, co-senior author of the study, of the Max Planck
Institute for the Science of Human History.
The other three individuals analyzed for the study came from a water
burial in Levänluhta, Finland. Levänluhta is one of the oldest known
burials in Finland in which human bones have been preserved. The bodies
were buried in what used to be a small lake or a pond, and this seems to
have contributed to exceptionally good preservation of the remains.
Siberian ancestry persists today
The study compared the ancient individuals not only to each other,
but also to modern populations, including Saami, Finnish and other
Uralic language speakers. Among modern European populations, the Saami
have the largest proportion of this ancient Siberian ancestry.
Worldwide, the Nganasan people, from north Siberia, have the largest
proportion of ancient Siberian ancestry.
"Our results show that there was a strong genetic connection between
ancient Finnish and ancient Siberian populations," says Thiseas
Lamnidis, co-first author of the study, "suggesting that ancient
populations from Siberia may have also shared a subsistence strategy,
languages and/or cultural behaviours with Bronze Age and Iron Age Finns,
despite the large geographical distance." Ancient Finnish populations
possibly lived a mobile, nomadic life, trading and moving over a large
range, with far-reaching contacts to other populations.
People found in Levänluhta, Finland, most resemble modern-day Saami
The researchers found that the population in Levänluhta was more
closely related to modern-day Saami people than to the non-Saami Finnish
population today.
"People closely related to the Saami inhabited much more southern
regions of Finland than the Saami do today," explains Kerttu Majander,
co-first author, of the University of Helsinki and the Max Planck
Institute for the Science of Human History. Interestingly, a recent
linguistic study suggested that the place names around Levänluhta trace
back to Saami languages.
"This is the first exploration of ancient DNA from Finland and the
results are very interesting," states Schiffels. "However more ancient
DNA studies from the area will be necessary to better understand whether
the patterns we've seen are representative of Finland as a whole."
The study was conducted as a collaboration between the
SUGRIGE-project (Universities of Helsinki and Turku), and the Max Planck
Institute for the Science of Human History. The archaeological
materials and expertise were provided by the Peter the Great Museum of
Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) and the Levänluhta-project
with the Finnish Heritage Agency.
Some of the world's oldest cave
paintings have revealed how ancient people had relatively advanced
knowledge of astronomy. Animal symbols represent star constellations in
the night sky, and are used to mark dates and events such as comet
strikes, analysis from the University of Edinburgh suggests.
Credit: Alistair Coombs
Some of the world's oldest cave paintings have revealed how ancient people had relatively advanced knowledge of astronomy.
The artworks, at sites across Europe, are not simply depictions of
wild animals, as was previously thought. Instead, the animal symbols
represent star constellations in the night sky, and are used to
represent dates and mark events such as comet strikes, analysis
suggests.
They reveal that, perhaps as far back as 40,000 years ago, humans
kept track of time using knowledge of how the position of the stars
slowly changes over thousands of years.
The findings suggest that ancient people understood an effect caused
by the gradual shift of Earth's rotational axis. Discovery of this
phenomenon, called precession of the equinoxes, was previously credited
to the ancient Greeks.
Around the time that Neanderthals became extinct, and perhaps before
humankind settled in Western Europe, people could define dates to within
250 years, the study shows.
The findings indicate that the astronomical insights of ancient
people were far greater than previously believed. Their knowledge may
have aided navigation of the open seas, with implications for our
understanding of prehistoric human migration.
Researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Kent studied
details of Palaeolithic and Neolithic art featuring animal symbols at
sites in Turkey, Spain, France and Germany.
They found all the sites used the same method of date-keeping based
on sophisticated astronomy, even though the art was separated in time by
tens of thousands of years.
Researchers clarified earlier findings from a study of stone carvings
at one of these sites -- Gobekli Tepe in modern-day Turkey -- which is
interpreted as a memorial to a devastating comet strike around 11,000
BC. This strike was thought to have initiated a mini ice-age known as
the Younger Dryas period.
They also decoded what is probably the best known ancient artwork --
the Lascaux Shaft Scene in France. The work, which features a dying man
and several animals, may commemorate another comet strike around 15,200
BC, researchers suggest.
The team confirmed their findings by comparing the age of many
examples of cave art -- known from chemically dating the paints used --
with the positions of stars in ancient times as predicted by
sophisticated software.
The world's oldest sculpture, the Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel
Cave, from 38,000 BC, was also found to conform to this ancient
time-keeping system.
This study was published in Athens Journal of History.
Dr Martin Sweatman, of the University of Edinburgh's School of
Engineering, who led the study, said: "Early cave art shows that people
had advanced knowledge of the night sky within the last ice age.
Intellectually, they were hardly any different to us today.
"These findings support a theory of multiple comet impacts over the
course of human development, and will probably revolutionise how
prehistoric populations are seen."
IMAGE: These artifacts found in China are among
the nearly four dozen that reflect the Levallois technique of
toolmaking. In a paper published Nov. 19 in Nature, researchers date
these artifacts...
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Credit: Marwick et al.
New analysis of artifacts found at a South China archaeological site
shows that sophisticated tool technology emerged in East Asia earlier
than previously thought.
A study by an international team of researchers, including from the
University of Washington, determines that carved stone tools, also known
as Levallois cores, were used in Asia 80,000 to 170,000 years ago.
Developed in Africa and Western Europe as far back as 300,000 years ago,
the cores are a sign of more-advanced toolmaking -- the "multi-tool" of
the prehistoric world -- but, until now, were not believed to have
emerged in East Asia until 30,000 to 40,000 years ago.
With the find -- and absent human fossils linking the tools to
migrating populations -- researchers believe people in Asia developed
the technology independently, evidence of similar sets of skills
evolving throughout different parts of the ancient world.
The study is published online Nov. 19 in Nature.
"It used to be thought that Levallois cores came to China relatively recently with modern humans," said Ben Marwick,
UW associate professor of anthropology and one of the paper's
corresponding authors. "Our work reveals the complexity and adaptability
of people there that is equivalent to elsewhere in the world. It shows
the diversity of the human experience."
Levallois-shaped cores -- the "Swiss Army knife of prehistoric
tools," Marwick said -- were efficient and durable, indispensable to a
hunter-gatherer society in which a broken spear point could mean certain
death at the claws or jaws of a predator. The cores were named for the
Levallois-Perret suburb of Paris, where stone flakes were found in the
1800s.
Featuring a distinctive faceted surface, created through a sequence
of steps, Levallois flakes were versatile "blanks," used to spear,
slice, scrape or dig. The knapping process represents a more
sophisticated approach to tool manufacturing than the simpler,
oval-shaped stones of earlier periods.
The Levallois artifacts examined in this study were excavated from
Guanyindong Cave in Guizhou Province in the 1960s and 1970s. Previous
research using uranium-series dating estimated a wide age range of the
archaeological site -- between 50,000 and 240,000 years old -- but that
earlier technique focused on fossils found away from the stone
artifacts, Marwick said. Analyzing the sediments surrounding the
artifacts provides more specific clues as to when the artifacts would
have been in use.
Marwick and other members of the team, from universities in China
and Australia, used optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) to date the
artifacts. OSL can establish age by determining when a sediment sample,
down to a grain of sand, was last exposed to sunlight -- and thus, how
long an artifact may have been buried in layers of sediment.
"Dating for this site was challenging because it had been excavated
40 years ago, and the sediment profile was exposed to air and without
protection. So trees, plants, animals, insects could disturb the
stratigraphy, which may affect the dating results if conventional
methods were used for dating," said Bo Li , an associate professor of
archaeology at the University of Wollongong in Australia and one of the
paper's corresponding authors. "To solve this problem we used a new
single-grain dating technique recently developed in our OSL lab at the
University of Wollongong to date individual mineral grains in the
sediment. Luckily we found residual sediment left over by the previous
excavations, so that allowed us to take samples for dating."
The researchers analyzed more than 2,200 artifacts found at
Guanyindong Cave, narrowing down the number of Levallois-style stone
cores and flakes to 45. Among those believed to be in the older age
range, about 130,000 to 180,000 years old, the team also was able to
identify the environment in which the tools were used: an open woodland
on a rocky landscape, in "a reduced rainforest area compared to today,"
the authors note.
In Africa and Europe these kinds of stone tools are often found at
archaeological sites starting from 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. They
are known as Mode III technology, part of a broad evolutionary sequence
that was preceded by hand-axe technology (Mode II) and followed by blade
tool technology (Mode IV).
Archaeologists thought that Mode IV
technologies arrived in China by migration from the West, but these new
finds suggest they could have been locally invented. At the time people
were making tools in Guanyindong Cave, the Denisovans -- ancestors to
Homo sapiens and relative contemporaries to Neandertals elsewhere in the
world -- roamed East Asia. But while hundreds of fossils of archaic
humans and related artifacts, dating as far back as more than 3 million
years ago, have been found in Africa and Europe, the archaeological
record in East Asia is sparser.
That's partly why a stereotype exists, that ancient peoples in the
region were behind in terms of technological development, Marwick said.
"Our work shows that ancient people there were just as capable of
innovation as anywhere else. Technological innovations in East Asia can
be homegrown, and don't always walk in from the West," he said.
The independent emergence of the Levallois technique at different
times and places in the world is not unique in terms of prehistoric
innovations. Pyramid construction, for one, appeared in at least three
separate societies: the Egyptians, the Aztecs and the Mayans.
Boatbuilding began specific to geography and reliant on a community's
available materials. And writing, of course, developed in various forms
with distinct alphabets and characters.
In the evolution of tools, Levallois cores represent something of a
middle stage. Subsequent manufacturing processes yielded more-refined
blades made of rocks and minerals that were more resistant to flaking,
and composites that, for example, combined a spear point with blades
along the edge. The appearance of blades later in time indicates a
further increase in the complexity and the number of steps required to
make the tools.
"The appearance of the Levallois strategy represents a big increase
in the complexity of technology because there are so many steps that
have to work in order to get the final product, compared to previous
technologies," Marwick said.
The results show significant
morphological differences pointing to a respiratory mechanism that was
different compared with that of modern humans
University of the Basque Country
IMAGE: This is an image of the reconstruction of the thorax of Kebara 2. Scale = 5 cm.
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Credit: A. Gómez-Olivencia, A. Barash and E. Been
Neanderthals were hunter-gatherers who inhabited western Eurasia for
more than 200 thousand years during glacial as well as interglacial
periods until they became extinct around 40 thousand years ago. While
some of the anatomical regions of these extinct humans are well known,
others, such as the vertebral column and the ribs, are less well known
because these elements are more fragile and not well preserved in the
fossil record. In 1983 a partial Neanderthal skeleton (known officially
as Kebara 2, and nicknamed "Moshe") belonging to a young male
Neanderthal individual who died some 60,000 years ago was found in the
Kebara site (Mount Carmel, Israel). While this skeleton does not
preserve the cranium because some time after burial the cranium was
removed, probably as a consequence of a funerary ritual. However, all
the vertebrae and ribs are preserved, and so are other fragile
anatomical regions, such as the pelvis or the hyoid bone (a bone in the
neck to which some of the tongue muscles are attached). So it is the
skeleton that preserves the most complete thorax in the fossil record.
New statistical and virtual reconstruction methods have enabled the
researchers to extract new information, which has just been published in
the prestigious journal Nature Communications.
For over 150 years, Neanderthal remains have been found at many
sites in Europe and Western Asia (including the Middle East), and the
thorax morphology of this human species has been a subject of debate
since 1856, when the first ribs belonging to this human group were
found. Over the past decade, virtual reconstructions have become a new
tool that is increasingly being used in fossil study. This methodology
is particularly useful with fragile fossils, such as the vertebra and
ribs that form the thorax. Nearly two years ago, the same research team
created a reconstruction of the spine of this Neanderthal individual; it
displays the preserved spine of Kebara 2 showing less pronounced curves
in these humans when compared with Homo sapiens. The team's paper,
published in the book "Human Paleontology and Prehistory," pointed to a
straighter spine than that of modern humans.
For this virtual model of the thorax, researchers used both direct
observations of the Kebara 2 skeleton, currently housed at Tel Aviv
University, and medical CT (computerized axial tomography) scans of the
vertebrae, ribs and pelvic bones. Once all the anatomical elements had
been assembled, the virtual reconstruction was done by means of 3D
software specifically designed for this purpose. "This was meticulous
work," said Alon Barash of Bar Ilan University in Israel. "We had to
scan each vertebra and all of the rib fragments individually and then
reassemble them in virtual 3D."
"In the reconstruction process, it was necessary to virtually 'cut'
and realign some of the parts that displayed deformation, and
mirror-image the ribs that had been best preserved in order to
substitute the poorly preserved ones on the other side," said Asier
Gómez-Olivencia, an Ikerbasque research fellow at the University of the
Basque Country.
"The differences between the thorax of a Neanderthal and of a modern
human are striking," said Daniel García-Martínez and Markus Bastir,
researchers at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC) and
co-authors of the work. "The Neanderthal spine is located more inside
the thorax with respect to the ribs, which provides more stability. The
thorax is also wider in its lower part," added Mikel Arlegi (UPV/EHU).
"The wider lower thorax of Neanderthals and the more horizontal
orientation of the ribs, as shown in its reconstruction, suggest that
Neanderthals relied more on the diaphragm for breathing," said Ella Been
of the Ono Academic College. "Modern humans rely on both the diaphragm
and on the expansion of the rib cage. Here we can see how new
technologies and methodologies in the study of fossil remains are
providing new information to understand extinct species."
This new information is consistent with the recent works on the
larger lung capacity of Neanderthals published by two of the co-authors
of this study, Markus Bastir and Daniel García-Martínez (Virtual
Anthropology Laboratory of the MNCN), in which they support the presence
of greater lung capacity in the Neanderthals.).
Patricia Kramer of the University of Washington sums it all up
thus: "This is the culmination of 15 years of research into the
Neanderthal thorax; we hope that future genetic analyses will provide
additional clues about the respiratory physiology of the Neanderthals".
IMAGE: Chuckie Barnett at age 3 (left) and Michael Barnett at age 5.
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Credit: Marsha Barnett
Over 30 years ago, Marsha and Allen Barnett lost their sons to a
puzzling childhood disease that relentlessly attacked their nervous
systems and sapped their energy. After five-year-old Chuckie died
suddenly in 1981, doctors provided a name for the disease: Leigh
syndrome. Leigh syndrome is a complex disorder typically caused by dysfunctional mitochondria,
the tiny batteries inside all cells that generate our energy. Two years
later, the same disease killed Michael, Chuckie's older brother, when
he was 10 years old.
Earlier this year, Mrs. Barnett, who lives in southeastern
Pennsylvania, received a phone call from a physician she knew, Marni J.
Falk, MD, at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP),
where Barnett has long supported research in mitochondrial medicine.
"She asked about Chuckie's and Michael's symptoms, then told me, 'I
think we found the causal gene mutation,'" she said.
Falk, the Executive Director of CHOP's Mitochondrial Medicine Frontier Program,
led a research team that identified the inherited mutation in the
Barnett family, a change in one nuclear gene that arose spontaneously
generations ago among both parents' Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors. Scores
of different genes harbor mutations that may cause Leigh syndrome, by
many different possible inheritance patterns. The mutation in this
family was present on both copies of the same gene in both affected
brothers, and was also seen in two other children in the study with
Leigh syndrome who were not related to them.
The study team, a research collaboration involving multiple centers
to prove that the gene mutation definitely impaired mitochondrial
function, published its findings in the October 2018 issue of Human Molecular Genetics.
Falk's co-study leader was Michio Hirano, MD, of Columbia University,
and the study's co-first authors were Rebecca D. Ganetzky, MD, of CHOP,
and Emanuele Barca, PhD, of Columbia University.
Leigh syndrome, named after a British neuropsychologist who first
described it in 1951, involves metabolic strokes deep in the brain, with
a loss of skills from stressors such as fever, illness and anesthesia.
It has historically had a high mortality rate in childhood or
adolescence. Over 90 different genes necessary for mitochondria to
function properly are now known to cause it, with disease-causing gene
variants rooted in DNA, either within a cell's nucleus or in the
separate mitochondrial genome.
Impaired cellular energy production in Leigh syndrome causes
patients to experience progressive weakening of their muscles, heart and
central nervous system. Both Chuckie and Michael eventually lost
control of their eye muscles, for instance.
Falk and colleagues analyzed data from four subjects affected with
Leigh syndrome who did not have a specific genetic diagnosis: the
Barnett boys and two unrelated patients from Ashkenazi families now
living with Leigh syndrome who are followed by the CHOP Mitochondrial
Medicine Frontier Program. The team identified a common causative
mutation in the nuclear gene USMG5, a gene not previously associated with any human disease. USMG5
encodes a protein component of complex V, the molecular motor within
the mitochondrial energy system that directly generates ATP, each cell's
chemical energy currency.
The change in USMG5 is a founder mutation, one that
originated by chance, most likely centuries ago in an unidentified
individual from an Ashkenazi Jewish population, possibly in Eastern
Europe. The mutation causes an autosomal recessive disease, so someone
can carry the mutation in one of their pair of USMG5 genes
without having disease symptoms. However, if both parents are mutation
carriers--as is true of Marsha and Allen--each child has a 25 percent
chance of inheriting the mutation on both copies of their gene, and
being affected with Leigh syndrome. The youngest Barnett son, now 40
years old, does not have Leigh syndrome.
Nearly 30 years ago Marsha and Allen Barnett established a
foundation to support research in mitochondrial disease, which
subsequently supported the recruitment to CHOP of mitochondrial medicine
pioneer Douglas C. Wallace, PhD, where he established the Center for
Mitochondrial and Epigenomic Medicine in 2010. Wallace holds the Michael
and Charles Barnett Endowed Chair in Pediatric Mitochondrial Medicine
and Metabolic Disease.
Insights from the current research have implications for preventive medicine and genetic counseling, says Falk. The USMG5
mutation should be added to the list of mutations tested for at the
time of prenatal genetic carrier screening in prospective Ashkenazi
Jewish parents. The mutation is relatively common in the Ashkenazi
population, where roughly one in 175 individuals are carriers. It should
also be added to the list of genes to be evaluated in children with
Leigh syndrome.
"What we've learned from these four children recognized to suffer from USMG5
deficiency will enable future children diagnosed with this condition to
be very carefully monitored and managed when they face stressors such
as fever or anesthesia, to avoid decompensation," said Falk.
Decompensation is a rapid medical deterioration that may occur when a
patient's system is stressed. In the longer run, Falk and other
researchers are working to realize precision medicines for mitochondrial
disease. In the future, children known to have this gene disorder may
be able to receive treatments targeted to their specific disease.
"This work highlights the importance to families and medicine of
continuing to work to solve cases that have never before been fully
understood," says Falk. "The current revolution in genomic sequencing
methods, combined with highly collaborative research investigations to
validate genetic leads, continues to deepen our knowledge of
mitochondrial disease, and with it, precision diagnosis, counseling,
management, and therapies."
Nearly a thousand years ago, a famous king created
a famous book, later given the title "Domesday" (pronounced
"doomsday").
At least that's been the common story: William the Conqueror, 20
years after his 1066 invasion of England from Normandy, ordered a
massive survey of his new realm. One year later, he got a book with the
results - a record of the nation's wealth and resources, everything from
property to sheep to servants.
The "Great Domesday Book," as it was later named, is perhaps the most famous document in English history after the Magna Carta.
The book's origin story, however, had not been thoroughly
investigated until University of Illinois history professor Carol Symes
took up the task. "What had never been resolved is how this massive text
was really created," Symes said, "and in this incredibly narrow
timeframe."
Now, after years of research, Symes makes the case in the journal Speculum
that the final "Great Domesday Book" came years and perhaps decades
later than the 1087 date to which it's attributed, also the year of
William's death.
It also was not the orderly bureaucratic enterprise that's often
assumed, but instead "enabled hundreds of thousands of individuals and
communities to air grievances and to make their own ideas of law and
justice a matter of public record," Symes wrote.
"This is documentation of the trauma of conquest. We're watching
people pushing back, or at least letting their voices be heard because
they're fed up," she said. In one example, the text records townspeople
bitterly complaining about the leveling of houses to build a castle.
"We need to rethink what has seemed to be a rather straightforward,
top-down royal project, but is revealed to be the tip of a big,
monstrous iceberg that involves the agency of many historical actors and
often preserves their voices. This helps to tell a very different story
about one of the landmark events of England - the Norman conquest and
its aftermath - that is not just a story about 'the great man.'"
The universe of the "Domesday Book" is complicated, to say the least.
The name is attached to two different bodies of text, "Great Domesday"
and "Little Domesday" - the first covering all of the country's shires
except three in the southeast, the second covering those three, but in
more detail, suggesting it was an earlier draft.
There's also "Exeter Domesday," a collection of 103 booklets that
appears to be an even earlier draft of survey results, mostly covering
three shires in the southwest.
Curiously, London does not appear in any of these records, which likely
is a sign its citizens either ignored the inquest or overwhelmed it with
grievances, Symes said.
The Exeter collection is just one of many "satellite" documents that
have some connection with the survey or book but have received little
scholarly attention, Symes said. For many who focus their research on
"Great Domesday," the book has been "the sun around which everything
else spins."
Among Symes' contributions is to suggest ways that the different
texts relate to each other, since that hasn't been clear. "I think I
have figured out the workings behind how this book ("Great Domesday")
was made," she said.
Most of Symes' research focused on the Exeter collection and another
satellite document, a small fragment of parchment roll, perhaps the
oldest in England, from an abbey at Burton-on-Trent in the northwest of
the country. In both cases, she examined the original documents.
The Exeter documents provide numerous clues on how "Great Domesday"
was assembled, but also serve as a window on the people and the process.
A bishop can be seen intervening with the king's advisers when his
property is not recorded. Teenage scribes make drinking plans in the
marginal notes of manuscripts.
The abbey's parchment fragment, however, is key to Symes' contention
that the final book came years and even decades later. She ties its
contents to the comings and goings of a man who served at one time as
its abbot, who had access to the survey data that went into "Domesday"
and may even have been involved in the survey.
"It plugs a huge hole that we had in our evidence. It suggests that
the process of creating the thing we call 'Great Domesday' actually took
a lot longer than people had thought."
Symes said she was attracted to this particular book as part of her
interest in medieval manuscripts, especially the complex ways in which
they were "mediated" - i.e., written, handled, copied, recopied, added
to, edited, interpreted and heard by audiences, all in an age before the
printing press. Historians need to take a text's complex mediation into
account, she said, even considering the parchment on which it was
written, to fully understand and not misinterpret it.
Symes also likes messiness - finding out "how the sausage gets made."
She was attracted to Domesday, in part, "because it's a messy document
that people pretend is not messy. It's taken to be this pristine,
transparent thing when it's not."
One value in the Domesday research, she said, is in "realizing that
the people of almost a thousand years ago were real people with real
human emotions and needs. We're putting on a different set of glasses to
look at these sources, and what we see is all those people who were
written out of the record. We're getting to see and hear them again."
The "wonderful irony," Symes said, is that we can do that through
one of the most famous books created in the Middle Ages, by a king.
