@ericasteiner
Celtic Studies PhD in progress @ Sydney Uni: ancient/medieval tattooing. Finds rabbit holes & side quests irresistible! Environmental humanities • Geomythology • Historical body modifications • Medieval mistranslations, misnomers & mysteries.
#medievalsky #earlymodernsky #ancientsky #cfp #booksky
Hands up who wants to get involved with a cool online journal - or attend an equally fun online conference this April! #fame&fortune
🚨 Fame & Fortune CFP 🚨
The new themed #CFP from
@ceraejournal.bsky.social for Volume 13 of our #openaccess #journal and the annual online #conference is finally here!
Conference paper abstracts due 6 March.
Themed journal submissions due 30 April.
Tell your friends!
#medievalsky #earlymodernsky
#medievalsky #earlymodernsky #academicsky #historysky
Come read the twelfth volume of Ceræ - Dreams, Visions, and Utopias!
We have extended our call for new committee members to November 10th! This time around, we are especially looking for postgraduate students and ECRs with experience to fill our editor roles, as well as a social media manager. #medievalsky #academicsky
ceraejournal.com/2025/10/02/c...
Hwæt #classicsky #medievalsky #earlymodernsky!
🗣️ Ceræ's annual EOI for new committee members is now open for next year's #openaccess Volume 13.
🗣️ Editorial experience not required - but enthusiasm is.
🗣️ Applications from graduates and ECRs prioritised.
🗣️ DM/email/visit website for more info.
Last week I said the hardest, most heartbreaking of goodbyes to my beloved Kiara. 17 years old, but in declining health for the last year or so, she passed peacefully in her garden, in the warm spring sunshine, held by her humans until the very end. We love you forever, darling little puss-face.
You'll have to wait for the thesis/articles to come out! 😉
As for my sources, i'm using the lives of St Brigit (she encounters tattooed warriors and rids them of their tattoos), the life of St Kentigern (possible reference to local tattooed woman and saint himself marked), and Adomnan's Life of Columba (Columba may have been tattooed).
It's hard to know what design iconography was in use pre-conversion as a point of comparison to post-conversion designs, and it also depends on whether post-conversion designs were simply imported or organic post-conversion ideas on what symbolised 'christianess' in a tattoo arose locally.
What are 'christian' tattoos? Do they have to be christian symbols (that we recognise), or is it enough that the tattooed and tattooers identified as christians? Written sources include poetry and prose, in both latin and old irish. Potentially some MSS illustrations and tool/pigment artefacts.
...Lumping the 'Vikings, Britons, and Celts' together is not in Malmesbury. Medieval people definitely did not identify them as similar. Tattooing was present in medieval Europe, but it was much more complicated than this fluffy piece suggests, and certainly nothing to do with individuality.
...that don't have cultural continuity or connection with each other. The reference to St Francis' stigmata (even though the word did mean a tattoo) is incorrect. The author relies mostly upon Caplan's edited volume (seminal, but from 2000), and the author is not published in this field...
Thanks for the shoutout, @myriahwilliams.bsky.social!
My short answer to the question is that it was likely in some specific areas, but not for much longer than the early/mid 9th c. The linked article unfortunately is pretty loose with its source material and jumbles together periods and places...
The authors suggest the chronology of the texts needs to be reassessed, but before this method is applied elsewhere, I think what needs to be looked at first is the historical context of parchment manufacture, storage, trading, and recycling.
End/🧵
#ancientsky #classicsky #medievalsky
Results that I found interesting: 4Q201 appears to be paleographically dated at least 100 years too early; 4Q70 really is the oldest parchment; and Mur19 proves my point with a C-14 mean date 50-100 years older than the internal historical date of the text.
3/🧵
#ancientsky #classicsky #medievalsky
Graph from article: shows range of paleographic/historical and radiocarbon dates for 25 parchment samples.
Parchment can be decades or even centuries older than the text it bears - exactly what the analysis here indicates. The majority of samples have a C-14 date decades older than a paleographic date, but most samples do overlap.
2/🧵
#ancientsky #classicsky #medievalsky
A key point has been missed, and for once it's not the AI that's the issue. C-14 dating of MSS doesn't date a text, it only dates the medium on which a text was written. Parchment was valuable, rarely manufactured for a specific text, and frequently recycled. 1/🧵
#ancientsky #classicsky #medievalsky
100% disagree. Methodology is equally as important for the humanities as it is for the sciences. We just call it by a different name or don't have a named section. It's often hidden within an introduction, as scope and limitations, translation choices, theoretical approach.
#skystorians
Actually not completely. Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, German, Moravian - all in fairly even proportions. My parents adopted my surname after they left and came to Australia. Knowledge and usage of German was not uncommon, but words like 'servus' would be used naturally by Slovak speakers.
'Active eradication' probably depended more on your social circles - my parents are both from Bratislava. I've grown up saying it (though i've never lived there) in the family, just like they did in the 50s-70s. Everyone they knew used it as a familiar greeting.
I would love to read about your work!!
Wow. Unbelievable that this study passed #ethics approval at the University of Zurich, and ridiculous it was considered 'low risk'. The members of that ethics committee need to be disciplined alongside the research team. And no journal should go anywhere near this study or the research team.
It would also depend on which organisation sponsors the conference. They cost money to run, and often the organising association isn't subsidised by the (university) venue. So we have to charge rego to pay for them. 🤷🏻♀️
Ceræ conferences have a small rego fee because we have zero institutional support!
Our opening @ceraejournal.bsky.social conference keynote, @jkeskiah.bsky.social, on the origins of dreams in Gregory the Great: dreams can be a product of a full (or an empty) stomach, and holy men can discern dreams by a secret taste. Well, I have just one response to that: MEDIEVAL CHEESE DREAMS!
Conferences are free to attend in France? 🤯
Yeah, some conferences continue to be eye-wateringly expensive! But another one to keep in mind for being affordable (especially online attendance) is the annual @jaema.bsky.social conference. We keep our rego as low as possible (roughly $10/day online and around $50/day in person).
Most #medievalsky and #earlymodernsky conferences, even online ones, are expensive 🤑.
Not so for @ceraejournal.bsky.social's conference! It really is just under $10 (USD), which is even less in £ and € (and only $15 AUD!) Our first session starts in just 30 minutes!
ceraejournal.com/programme/
It's not a student journal, but we do accept and publish authors at all stages of their career, from senior undergrad to full professor and everything in between: @ceraejournal.bsky.social
The 2nd annual @ceraejournal.bsky.social #onlineconference is this week, 26-27 April! 🎉
🗣️Heaps of fantastic papers over our unique 30-hour continuous schedule - which allows for equitable access to the conference irrespective of location.
#medievalsky #earlymodernsky
ceraejournal.com/2025/04/21/i...
Perhaps a shield or a heraldic device? Likely either the noble crest of the Baronetcy of Dorito or the Earldom of Domino. It's hard to tell.