Thinking Wetly: Causeways and Communities in East Anglian Hagiography

Water defined the landscapes of medieval East Anglia. Hitherto scholarly attention has focussed on the physical geography of the region, with landscape archaeology and excavations revealing sites of international importance and speaking to the potency and ubiquity of water as a ritual element. Surprisingly, however, very little attention has been paid to the symbolic importance of water in medieval East Anglian literature, and this article addresses this scholarly lacuna. Water features prominently in the literature from the region, particularly in the lives and legends of the numerous saints venerated at its many cult centres. This article begins by outlining some of the key ways in which water signifies in these contexts, before discussing a case study from the Liber Eliensis which, at first reading, seems to confound the received notion of water’s symbolic resonances but which, on closer consideration, reveals an additional, previously unidentified aspect of this most fluid of metaphors

Royal succession and kingship among the Picts

When we consider the history of the Picts we are faced with the perennial challenge for the early medievalist of deciding whether the fragments of evidence which survive are representative of the reality of Pictish society, or whether they provide us with distortions, based on patterns of survival. This issue is as relevant to the subject of royal succession as it is to other aspects of Pictish history. The debate over whether the Picts practised a matrilineal system, with the son of the previous king's sister becoming the next king, or whether it was a patrilineal system, with the kingship generally passing through the male line, has dominated the discussion of Pictish succession. Until the 1980s, the matriliny thesis was virtually unquestioned, and accepted by scholars including F. T. Wainwright, Marjorie Anderson, and Isabel Henderson1. The bases for this view were the accounts of the Pictish settlement of northern Britain in Bede's ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ and Irish texts written throughout the medieval period, but mainly surviving in versions from the twelfth century or later.2 In these sources it was claimed that the Picts went to Ireland before arriving in northern Britain, and that they obtained wives from the Irish, with some versions stating that this was done on condition that the succession went through the female line. Other sources which did not openly discuss the nature of Pictish succession, particularly the Irish chronicles and the Pictish king-lists, were then interpreted by scholars in relation to these accounts and were thought to support them

Our friend in the north: the origins, evolution and appeal of the cult of St Duthac of Tain in later Middle Ages

St Duthac of Tain was one of the most popular Scottish saints of the later middle ages. From the late fourteenth century until the reformation devotion to Duthac outstripped that of Andrew, Columba, Margaret and Mungo, and Duthac's shrine in Easter Ross became a regular haunt of James IV (1488-1513) and James V (1513-42). Hitherto historians have tacitly accepted the view of David McRoberts that Duthac was one of several local saints whose emergence and popularity in the fifteenth century was part of a wider self-consciously nationalist trend in Scottish religious practice. This study looks beyond the paradigm of nationalism to trace and explain the popularity of St Duthac from the shadowy origins of the cult to its heyday in the early sixteenth century

‘To the land or to the sea' : diet and mobility in early medieval Frisia

This study investigated palaeodiet and population mobility in early medieval Frisia through the stable isotope analysis of individuals buried in the fifth–eighth century AD cemetery of Oosterbeintum, a terp site on the northern coast of the Netherlands. The results cast new light on the role of the northern Netherlands in trade and migration in the early medieval period, and have significance for the study of interaction and movement throughout the wider North Sea region. Bone collagen and tooth enamel from humans and animals were analyzed using carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium isotopes. δ13C and δ15N results indicated that the population had a terrestrial, C3-based diet. High δ15N values were observed in humans and fauna, which are probably related to the terp's salt-marsh location. The δ18O and 87Sr/86Sr data revealed a high proportion of non-locals buried at Oosterbeintum, some of whom had probably migrated from regions as distant and varied as Scandinavia and southern England. It is suggested that this immigration may be associated with Frisian maritime trading activities. New data are also presented from a small number of contemporaneous European sites

MRI-guided histology of TDP-43 knock-in mice implicates parvalbumin interneuron loss, impaired neurogenesis and aberrant neurodevelopment in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-frontotemporal dementia

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia are overlapping diseases in which MRI reveals brain structural changes in advance of symptom onset. Recapitulating these changes in preclinical models would help to improve our understanding of the molecular causes underlying regionally selective brain atrophy in early disease. We therefore investigated the translational potential of the TDP-43Q331K knock-in mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-frontotemporal dementia using MRI. We performed in vivo MRI of TDP-43Q331K knock-in mice. Regions of significant volume change were chosen for post-mortem brain tissue analyses. Ex vivo computed tomography was performed to investigate skull shape. Parvalbumin neuron density was quantified in post-mortem amyotrophic lateral sclerosis frontal cortex. Adult mutants demonstrated parenchymal volume reductions affecting the frontal lobe and entorhinal cortex in a manner reminiscent of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-frontotemporal dementia. Subcortical, cerebellar and brain stem regions were also affected in line with observations in pre-symptomatic carriers of mutations in C9orf72, the commonest genetic cause of both amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia. Volume loss was also observed in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, along with ventricular enlargement. Immunohistochemistry revealed reduced parvalbumin interneurons as a potential cellular correlate of MRI changes in mutant mice. By contrast, microglia was in a disease activated state even in the absence of brain volume loss. A reduction in immature neurons was found in the dentate gyrus, indicative of impaired adult neurogenesis, while a paucity of parvalbumin interneurons in P14 mutant mice suggests that TDP-43Q331K disrupts neurodevelopment. Computerized tomography imaging showed altered skull morphology in mutants, further suggesting a role for TDP-43Q331K in development. Finally, analysis of human post-mortem brains confirmed a paucity of parvalbumin interneurons in the prefrontal cortex in sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis linked to C9orf72 mutations. Regional brain MRI changes seen in human amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-frontotemporal dementia are recapitulated in TDP-43Q331K knock-in mice. By marrying in vivo imaging with targeted histology, we can unravel cellular and molecular processes underlying selective brain vulnerability in human disease. As well as helping to understand the earliest causes of disease, our MRI and histological markers will be valuable in assessing the efficacy of putative therapeutics in TDP-43Q331K knock-in mice