Look closely at the bottom of the Rupertsberg Antependium and you will see ten praying nuns. These may have been the artists who created this altacloth at Eibingen. All are named and embroidered right into the centre of the liturgical action -- a sacred space from which they were otherwise excluded.

Did you know that medieval religious women were among the most skilled artists of the Middle Ages? Nuns at the abbey of Eibingen in Germany worked together in the early years of the thirteenth century to create a richly embroidered cloth of purple/red silk to decorate the front of a church altar.

Excited about my first ever poster presentation!

#TeamNun well represented at #isba11 in Torino!

Wolfram Wintzer-Essling (Germany) - specialist in medieval archaeology for LWL-Archäologie für Deutschland. Driving force behind the research excavations at the women's monastery at Dalheim. #TeamNun loves archaeologists who uncover medieval women's religious communities!

What a great team, with great work done despite the heatwave!

Nice find at Dalheim! A beautiful sewing needle under the cloister🪡

Busy Monday at Dalheim. Skeletons buried in nest rows in the northwest corner of the cloister. Patrons? So far a male and a juvenile.

Kloster Dalheim is a lesser-know religious community in Westfalen, German (near Paderborn) that emerged in the twelfth century. From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, Dalheim was a female monastic community.

University of St Andrews - University of Bonn joint research Field School in May 2025. Uncovering the lives of Dalheim's medieval religious women.

Getting great feedback for our #TeamNun exhibit at the St Andrews Wardlaw Museum Research Studio -- now until 30 May. Check out the online version here! historyinourbones.info

Our History in our Bones exhibit at the St Andrews Wardlaw Museum Research Studio is open! You can visit the online version here: www.historyinourbones.info #TeamNun #MedievalSky

Our History in our Bones exhibit at the St Andrews Wardlaw Museum Research Studio is open! You can visit the online version here: www.historyinourbones.info #TeamNun #MedievalSky

🧵 1/5: I'm THRILLED to see Jiří Vnouček's paper on the Hamburg Bible's parchment finally published with such stunning illustrations (73 in all)! This research shows how a careful reading of parchment tells a rich story of its creation. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Just finished reading this in time for a research trip to examine some exciting archival evidence relating to the historic production of parchment in Scotland.. but more on that tomorrow... (thank you to @mchapelproject.bsky.social for bringing the article to my attention!)

Happy International Women's Day from TeamNun! We will be sharing stories of premodern (and modern!) women at work throughout Women's History Month. Check out our website for updates: teamnun.org #Medievalsky #Nuntastic #TeamNun

Students: apply to participate in the Faleri Novi excavations with our £1,000 bursary and summer placement! Applications are open to all students registered at a UK university, and must be received by 28 February, 2025. For details see: www.romansociety.org/Grants-Prize...

Did I mention the @lindoresabbey.bsky.social Distillery cats, Friar John Claw and Vesper -- cats so cool they have their own Instagram account with over 78,000 followers (friarandvesper)? Vesper is shy, but Friar John loves to drape himself all over the archaeology and tea tables!

Come dig at Lindores Abbey this summer with @standrewshist.bsky.social and the @mafs-scot.bsky.social ! Scotland is fabulous in June-July!

TeamNun on the road in Italy! Read here about our most recent adventures in the archives of the monastery of Santa Maria della Stella. www.teamnun.org/news/teamnun...

#TeamNun on the road in Saluzzo, Italy! Working our way through 6 centuries of a Cistercian women’s monastery. Riffredo/Santa Maria della Stella 🤩

Poring over monastic admin (so many litigations!)...lovely change from *my* admin (and litigations!)! #TeamNun

#TeamNun on the road in Saluzzo, Italy! Working our way through 6 centuries of a Cistercian women’s monastery. Riffredo/Santa Maria della Stella 🤩

Eleanor (Nora) Farber (Scotland) -- Osteologist and Archaeological Scientist. Newest member of the TeamNun AHRC/UKRI Word of Mouth Project, joining and elevating the level of the St Andrews Lab in January. #TeamNun loves Nora!

Sara Charles (UK) -- Book historian & meticulous recreator of the materials & techniques of manuscript production in the Middle Ages. Explores the experiences of scribes & illuminators by immersing herself in the "smells, textures, and sounds," of the workshop. @saracharles.bsky.social #medievalsky

Carolin Gluchowski (Germany) -- studies reform and reformation in 16th-century women's monasteries in Germany. Key player in an innovative team exploring the impact of religious change on the lives of nuns in a stunning graphic novel, Breaking Walls! #TeamNun loves innovative approaches to impact!

Check out what's happening on TeamNun! www.teamnun.org

Great opportunity for experience in library, field, and lab. Medieval History, Field Excavation, Bioarchaeology!

For those of you in the Boston area, I'll be hosting a Q&A after a special screening of the documentary film Hunt for the Oldest DNA at the MIT Museum on December 3 at 6pm. Tickets to the screening and after show are available here: mitmuseum.mit.edu/programs/sel...

Question / favor for the #palaeoproteomics folks out there --- I am a human evolution educator for middle & high schoolers and like to show kids the tools of paleoanthropology ---hoping to boost my understanding of #palaeoproteomics & would love to chat with some of y'all! Thanks in advance!

Are you an applied microeconomist and golfer? Come to Fife & do both! The 1st annual Fife Applied Microeconomics and Golf conference will be held 2-4 June. Golf on Balcomie (Old Tom Morris) and Craighead Links (Gil Hanse). Deadline 15 Jan. Info: applied-microecon.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/fifeamgolf/

Tired of the modern world? Come dig into the Middle Ages this June-July at Lindores Abbey in Scotland. Learn about medieval monasticism, and gain practical experience in field archaeology, bioarchaeology, and heritage. U of St Andrews credit. Link below. #MedievalSky #Archaeology

Sister Jacoba Zöll (Germany) -- researching constructions of gender and sanctity in late Medieval Germany. Absolutely Indispensable Organizer of workshops and conferences for AGFEM. #TeamNun loves highly learned and efficient religious women, past and present!

Orsolya Czére - Research Technical Professional whose work in the School of Geosciences at the University of Aberdeen focuses on paleoenvironment and archaeology.

Sherri Franks Johnson (USA) -- whose skilled archival work reveals the ways in which women's religious communities in late medieval Bologna successfully negotiated very different places in city, order, and wider church.

Sally Sara S. Poor (USA) -- outstanding medievalist whose work on thirteenth-century religious woman and mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg took on received notions of female authorship and made us question time-honored assumptions of women's exclusion from the canon of European literature.

Claudia Sutter (Switzerland) -- promising early career historian whose research focuses on the (surprisingly) brisk economic exchange between cloistered women's religious communities in the Late Middle Ages and the outside world. #TeamNun loves enterprising Dominican women!

Hope to see some of you there!

Thrilled to announce that #TeamNun has been awarded an AHRC Standard Research Grant for a five-year study of medieval religious women combining historical research and archaeological science!

#TeamNun Aberdeen!

Orsolya (Orshi) Czére (Scotland) -- #TeamNun Research Technical Professional (RTP) extraordinaire. Can't wait to get started studying the teeth and bone of medieval religious women to reveal what kind of food and drink they consumed and where they lived before becoming nuns. #TeamNun loves RTPs!

Kate Britton (Scotland) -- archaeological scientist and core member of #TeamNun. Kate uses stable isotope analysis to reconstruct past diets, movements, and environments. #TeamNun loves oxygen, strontium, nitrogen, and carbon!

Liz Lehfeldt (USA) -- historian of religious women in late medieval and Early Modern Spain and groundbreaking challenger of the notion that cloistered women were isolated from the realities of the world around them.

Looking for summer archaeology field experience! Come dig with us at Lindores Abbey in Scotland!

Robin Pokorski (USA) -- early career researcher investigating friendship among German monastic women and analyzing their social networks. #TeamNun loves independent scholars!

Gisela Muschiol (Germany) -- whose groundbreaking work on early medieval religious women revealed just how much control they exercised over their own liturgical lives. Founding sister of AGFEM (Arbeitskreis geistliche Frauen im europäischen Mittelalter). #TeamNun loves gender studies!

Martha Newman (USA) -- distinguished monastic historian working at the intersection of religious experience and social change. Explores the Cistercian use of stories of miracles and visions to articulate a sacramental religiosity that resonated with medieval nuns. #TeamNun loves miracles!

Eir Önnu Ólafsbur (Iceland) -- undergraduate student in archaeology at the University of Iceland. Sings while digging at Kirkjubæjarklaustur with the Fornleifarannsókn: Benediktínaklaustur á Íslandi / Benedictines in Iceland team. #TeamNun loves mentoring students!

Anne E. Lester (USA) -- whose important early-career work on Cistercian nuns has led her ever deeper into the intertwining religious and social contexts of medieval France and beyond. #TeamNun thrives at the intersection of textual and material evidence!

Miriam Shadis (USA) -- framed by the volumes of charters she expertly scours for the voices of royal women (and hundreds of nuns!) in the central Middle Ages! #TeamNun loves medieval charters!