IMC 2025: Sessions

This session will approach tactility and the early medieval text through the lens of crafts and materials. Jill Hamilton Clements explores the tactile aspects of handling seventh- to ninth-century name-stones—including considerations of weight, movement, and gesture—as a part of ongoing commemorative praxis. Harriet Soper will discuss navigating diurnal time in early medieval English literature and material culture, moving across physical and textual spheres in the spirit of Byrhtferth’s comparison between the movement of the gnomon’s shadow on the sundial and the motion of a pen. Finally, Jacqueline Fay will consider a group of six spatula-like bone spoons, broken and thrown away probably in the eleventh century in Winchester, that feature decorative elements in the Winchester-Ringerike style. Homely yet aspirational, these spoons provide a rare glimpse into the early medieval world beyond the highly literate environment of the monastery. Confusing the categories of the imaginative (the cultural or representational modes) and the material, the spoons demonstrate the way in which people’s lives and understanding emerge from and are engaged with many systems, certain of which have been prioritized and reified in our methodologies whereas others, perhaps, are missed.