Archaeology rewriting the roles of women in history

[Iverunoutofideas]

Or herstory!

I really hope this link works. I found it fascinating and have also been thinking recently about why women became nuns - I'm starting to think it may often have been the smart feminist choice at the time.

cosmosmagazine.com/society/blue-specks-reveal-a-medieval-woman-s-life

And she was 45-60 with no obvious signs of disease or injury, which was unusual then I'd imagine. They concluded she was a nun, so no childbed dangers for her. I read recently about a find in Sweden ? where the body had been buried with weapons so it was assumed to be male. But analysis proved it was female. Fascinating stuff and shows how many conclusions we jump to.

really interesting, thank you (I may have initially thought it was a link to COSMO magazine )

I'm currently working my way through the Last Kingdom, and this makes me think of the nun, Hild

I mean there are so many amazing and talented female artists - of course there would have been women creating illustrated manuscripts. I expect they just had to be completely incredible so their talent was irrefutably]ble - plus ca change eh?

I have a colleague who studies this period from a feminist angle, looking at manuscripts and suchlike. Very cool!

Very cool, thanks for posting!

Oh being a nun in medieval times was brilliant! You could work your way up to running a sizeable business effectively, and freedom from a lot of the bullshit ordinary women were subject to.

Yes I recently realised that going off to a nunnery potentially allowed you to learn, not be molested and have a child at 14, continue to study or practise skills, be protected from accusations of being a witch etc.

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunnant is a very interesting novel about this subject - albeit set rather later than this woman lived

it makes interesting points about how much the lives of the nuns were still subject to the whims of others. it;s also a cracking read