In this study, Ascaris DNA was extracted and sequenced from a medieval archaeological sample in Korea. While Ascaris eggs were confirmed to be of human origin by archaeological evidence, it was not possible to pinpoint the exact species due to close genetic relationships among them. Despite this shortcoming, this is the first Ascaris ancient DNA (aDNA) report from a medieval Asian country and t...

his early tract on the diseases of the Augsburg goldsmiths (1473, printed 1524), and whose service at the court is here well documented. The study of medieval medicine is thus alive and well in Germany. This book, with its excellent indices, can serve as a model for similar collections dealing with vernacular medicine in other countries and as the basis on which to write a sound history of medi...

The oral component of medieval poetry was integral to its performance and reception. Yet many believe that the medieval voice has been forever lost, and any attempts at rediscovering it are doomed to failure due to scribal practices, manuscript mouvance, and linguistic normalization in editing practices. This paper offers a method to abstract from this noise and better understand relative diffe...

Most medieval scholarship arises from an encounter with the surviving texts of the Middle Ages and the documents which convey them. The use of computers to store and analyse these texts has a surprisingly long history. As early as 1949, when the computer was still in its infancy, Roberto Busa began developing an electronic concordance to the works of Thomas Aquinas the Index Thomisticus. Until ...

The genetic composition of the medieval populations of Central Europe has been poorly investigated to date. In particular, the region of modern-day Slovakia is a blank spot in archaeogenetic research. This paper reports the study of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in ancient samples from the 9th-12th centuries originating from the cemeteries discovered in Nitra-Šindolka and Čakajovce, located in west...

In this paper we will focus on the scribal variation in manually copied medieval texts. Using a lazy machine learning technique, we will argue that it is possible to discriminate between scribes, implying that they did adapt texts when copying them. Consequently, we will assess to what extent scribal interventions compromise our ability to detect the original authorship of medieval texts. It wi...

Textual criticism consists of the identification and analysis of variant readings among different versions of a text. Being a relatively simple task for modern languages, the collation of medieval text traditions ranges from the complex to the virtually impossible depending on the degree of instability of textual transmission. We present a visual analytics environment that supports computationa...

A study of ninety-five skeletons excavated from the later medieval and early Renaissance levels of a cemetery in Trondheim has revealed bone changes compatible with a treponemal infection which is suspected to be endemic syphilis. This is an important discovery as it is the earliest pathological evidence, so far reported, for this disease in Norway. The diagnosis is supported by X-ray findings....

A study of tooth size was carried out on medieval skeletal material from Aebelholt and Naestved in Denmark. Measurements of all suitable permanent teeth were made in both mesiodistal and buccolingual dimensions with a sliding caliper with vernier reading to 0.1 mm. The material was divided according to sex and place of excavation; statistical preparation of the data provided mean values and sta...

This paper presents insights on the market microstructure of the late Middle Ages. In particular it looks into the institution of the broker on medieval markets and fairs. It argues that the broker was a key player in the solution of a two-sided matching market problem. The broker’s obligation was to match sellers to buyers. Medieval market makers, i.e. the town o¢ cials set up rules for broker...