Meetings 2025

Online seminar: 12 May 2025 [video]

• Chet van Duzer (author, cartographic historian, and a founding member of the Lazarus Project) on New Light on Henricus Martellus’s World Map at Yale (c. 1491): Multispectral Imaging and Early Renaissance Cartography

• Chet gave an account of a recent project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to make multispectral images of a world map made by Henricus Martellus in about 1491, which is held by the Beinecke Library at Yale. This large map has long been thought to be one of the most important of the fifteenth century, and was thought to have influenced Martin Waldseemüller’s world map of 1507, but the many texts on the map were illegible due to fading and damage, and thus its exact place in Renaissance cartography was impossible to determine. New multispectral images have rendered most of the previously illegible texts on the map legible. He explained why the Martellus map was an excellent candidate for multispectral imaging, describe the process of making the images, show the results, and gave an account of the place of the Martellus map in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century cartography.

Online seminar: 21 April 2025 [video]

• Dr Jacqui Jung (professor of History of Art at Yale) on From Frankfurt to Barcelona: Crossing Boundaries with Jackie Jung's Gothic Architecture Travel Seminar of May 2024.

• She shared with us her journey with her eight graduate students, as they traveled for twelve days, through three countries, on one giant bus, while visiting fifteen churches and five major museums.

Online seminar: 3 March 2025

• Dr Brian Catlos (Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Colorado University Mediterranean Studies Group) on Berbers, Arabs and the End of the Golden Age of al-Andalus, and Just Say “No” to Convivencia: Demystifying Ethno-Religious Identity in the Medieval Spain and the Mediterranean.

Online seminar: 10 February 2025

• Dr. Karen Rose Mathews (associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Miami) on The Cathedral/Great Mosque of Córdoba as a Microcosm of Medieval Spain: Military Conflict, Religious Cooperation, and Cultural Appreciation.

• The Cathedral/Great Mosque of Córdoba perfectly encapsulates the fascinating and complex interfaith relations of medieval Iberia and their manifestation in visual culture. The monument reveals its layers of history and highlights the unique blend of antagonisms and alliances, religious opposition and cooperation, cultural mixing and appropriation that distinguished medieval Spanish society from the rest of western Europe in the Middle Ages. This talk will address this structure’s rich 1200-year history and the openness to new functions and meanings that have ensured its longevity and continued cultural significance to the present day.

• Dr. Mathews has published extensively on the visual and material culture of the medieval and early modern Mediterranean, addressing topics such as cartography as a new Mediterranean visual system, the relationship between spoils of war and spolia, the development of a common visual language in the late medieval Mediterranean, merchant identity and aesthetics in the Italian maritime republics, and the use and significance of spolia in Christian and Muslim architecture. Her publications can be found at https://miami.academia.edu/KarenMathews.

Online seminar: 21 January 2025 [video]

• Dr. Christina Cowart-Smith (who gave us her first talk as a Stanford undergraduate in the spring of 2016):  Crossing Britain: The British 'High' Cross in Context, AD 600-1100

• Her talk examines the archaeological contexts of a type of sculpture form unique to early medieval Britain and Ireland: the 'high' cross. These monumental, free-standing, cruciform stone sculptures were constructed by communities spanning the length and breadth of Britain in the period between AD 600 and AD 1100. This talk looks at the overall distribution of these monuments before unpacking three assumptions. First, it has long been assumed that the majority of these monuments were, in Britain, fragmented and/or destroyed during the Protestant Reformation. Does the archaeological data support or contradict this idea? Second, high crosses have often been ascribed a burial marker function given the use of the form in Victorian graveyards. What is the evidence in support of this and how strong is it actually? Third, high crosses are regularly thought of as an Irish 'invention.' What is the basis for this argument and is this even a helpful question? In all, her talk demonstrates how an archaeological understanding of the monuments is essential to unpacking layers of engagement, from the medieval to the modern.

• After Stanford, Christina moved to Glasgow to pursue a MLitt in Early Medieval Scottish History at the University of Glasgow, and a MA in Early Medieval Archaeology at Durham University, where she also received her PhD. Presently, she works as a freelance archaeologist and editor and is applying for postdoctoral fellowships. Her longest love is the fiddle music of Western Scotland, which she continues to play to this day. Now based in London, she volunteers at the British Museum. For more information visit christinacowartsmith.com.