Collecting Insects in the Middle Ages (original) (raw)
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The representation of insects in the seventeenth century: a comparative approach
Annals of Science, 2010
The investigation and representation of insects in the seventeenth century posed huge problems: on the one hand, their size and texture required optical tools and fixation techniques to disentangle and identify their tiny parts; on the other, the esoteric nature of those parts required readers to make sense of images alien to their daily experiences. Naturalists and anatomists developed sophisticated techniques of investigation and representation, involving tacit and unusual conventions that even twentieth-century readers found at times baffling. This essay develops a comparative approach based on seven pairs of investigations involving Francesco Stelluti, Francesco Redi, Giovanni Battista Hodierna, Robert Hooke, Marcello Malpighi, and Jan Swammerdam. Seen together, they document an extraordinary time in the study of insects and reconstruct a number of iconographic dialogues shedding light on the conventions and styles adopted.
Insects at the Intersection of Gender and Class in the Early Modern Period
Yearbook of Women's History
For millennia, the lives of humans and insects have been intimately connected. Living on bodies, in homes, and in people's imagination, insects were (and are) an integral part of everyday life. In the historiography of human-animal history, the role of arthropods has recently gained more attention, with historians designating the Early Modern period as a time in which insects were increasingly studied and appreciated. In the domestic sphere, however, insects were seen as unwanted intruders. This essay considers the ways in which Dutch men and women encountered and were expected to deal with insects in the premodern period. It argues that ideas about (dealing with) insects intersected with ideas about gender and class, and aims to show how these ideas co-evolved over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Chasing Butterflies in Medieval Europe
Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society, 2014
A survey of illuminated medieval manuscripts from Europe reveals depictions of several different methods used in the Middle Ages for catching butterflies. A discussion on the meaning and iconography of lepidopteran imagery in these manuscripts is presented.
Journal of Medical Entomology, 2019
The impressive Sacristy of the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore contains 38 wooden sarcophagi with the bodies of 10 Aragonese princes and other Neapolitan nobles, who died in the 15th and 16th centuries. To improve the knowledge about the entomofauna associated with bodies in archaeological contexts, herein we provide insights on the funerary practices and the insect community associated to Ferrante II King of Naples and other Italian Renaissance mummies of the Aragonese dynasty buried in the Basilica of St. Domenico Maggiore. We identified 842 insect specimens: 88% were Diptera (Muscidae, Fanniidae, and Phoridae), followed by 9% Lepidoptera (Tineidae) and 3% Coleoptera (Dermestidae and Ptinidae). Ninety-seven percent of the specimens were collected from the coffin of Francesco Ferdinando d’Avalos, which was the best preserved. A lack of fly species characterizing the first colonization waves of exposed bodies was noted. The most common fly was the later colonizing muscid Hydrotaea...
Early medieval human burials and insect remains from Kildimo, Co. Limerick
Journal of Irish Archaeology, Vol. 20 (2011), 65-76, 2012
Human skeletal remains were uncovered during localised quarrying works on farmland in Kildimo, Co. Limerick, in the summer of 2005. Subsequent archaeological work entailed the complete excavation of two skeletons, the recovery of disarticulated bones, the recording of two other truncated graves and an overall site plan.The two excavated skeletons were a double burial of a 12–14-year-old possible female and a 6–9-year-old child.The two truncated graves contained the remains of a possible adult and another young child.The remains of two other adults were identified in the disarticulated bones.The site represents a previously unrecorded cemetery.An early medieval radiocarbon date was obtained for burial 1 (young adolescent female). Insect remains were visible in the abdominal areas of the double burial and this soil was sampled.They were discovered to be the remarkably well-preserved disarticulated remains of blowflies, who generally feed on fresh cadavers of humans and animals, as well as on other decomposed animal products and excrement.The presence of these fly remains on the two young bodies would indicate that they were exposed for some time above ground before burial.The bodies were buried to a depth of 0.5m and blowflies rarely burrow to that depth, nor do they generally feed on already decaying corpses.They can, however, complete their life cycle below ground, so the bodies may have been buried while the flies were in their pupal stage, where they later hatched out and died in situ.The reason why the burial of these two individuals was delayed until decomposition set in is open to speculation. In addition, there are indications that these early medieval burials may be Christian in origin, and may be linked with an Early Christian site, perhaps associated with St Díoma, for whom the townland is named.The extremely unusual finding of the insects greatly increases our understanding of the pre-burial history of the skeletal remains and highlights the value of integrated specialist approaches to archaeological excavation.
Rare Secrets of Physicke: Insect Medicaments in Historical Western Society
King, G. 2016. Rare Secrets of Physicke: Insect Medicaments in Historical Western Society. Pp. 189-213, In: L. Powell, W. Southwell-Wright, and R. Gowland (eds.), Care in the Past: Archaeological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Oxbow Books. Insects and insect-derived products have been employed for medical purposes since ancient times, and their application continues to endure in many parts of the world today. Oral traditions and historical texts present a lively repository of folk remedies involving arthropods and other invertebrates. Ants have been purported to alleviate arthritis. Earwigs have been proposed as a cure for deafness, and bedbugs have been recommended for treatment of hysteria. Interestingly, recent preliminary experiments of these remedies suggest that insects may represent an underexploited source of potentially useful compounds for modern medicine. Herein, an archaeoentomological perspective is drawn upon to provide a unique portrait of historical notions of care, treatment, and medicine. Please contact me if you'd like the full manuscript.