CORDIScovery Podcast | Number 09 (October 2021)

#09 Cloth, glass and stone: Innovation and cultural connections in the Middle Ages

Abstract:

What can textile production in Romano-Byzantine Egypt tell us about that culture? Who wove what, and how? Glass is a demanding medium, both technologically and logistically, and how it was used in Byzantine and Islamic cultures shines a light on their aesthetics and innovations. The way glass was used reveals cultural dynamics as do the medieval headstones in the Western Balkans. What do these weathered stones tell us about how different cultures in this period lived alongside each other?  These and other questions are explored by this episode’s three guests:-

• Nadine Schibille, the principal investigator on the GlassRoutes project which investigated the geopolitical, sociocultural and artistic dimensions of glass in the first millennium CE.
• Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert, the principal investigator on the MONTEX project, which considered the culture surrounding textile use and production in Egypt from the Ptolemaic to the early Arab period.
• Saša Čaval, whose project SOLMUS looked at the social features of the medieval burial stones in the Western Balkans, erected over 500 years ago, locally called stećci.

• Primary Source

Official

EU CORDIS: Horizon 2020 Projects: Social Landscapes as Multicultural Spaces: Stećci in Bosnia and Herzegovina https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/797881

EU CORDIS: Horizon 2020 Projects: MONKS, NUNS AND TEXTILES: Production, Circulation, and Distribution of Textiles in the Monastic Environment in Egypt (4th-8th Centuries AD) https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/701479

European Research Council: Projects, 2021: Mapping the First Millennium Glass Economy https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/647315

EU CORDIS: Research*EU Magazine, Dec 21/Jan 22: Special Feature: The farms of the future – it’s all about precision https://www.europeansources.info/record/researcheu-magazine-number-108-december-2021-january-2022/

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