Sunday, November 18, 2012

Hild's grave

This blog has moved. My blog now lives here: http://gemaecce.com/


After discovering the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture I've been playing with Photoshop, imagining what Hild's grave marker might look like. (This is just a first pass. It will end up looking much better when I've futzed with it.) This is adaptated from the Hildithryth stone found at St Hilda's in Hartlepool.

My dream is that one day someone will find Hild's grave. That, using shotgun proteomics, we can find out how she died (my guess: malaria). Using strontium analysis we can figure out where she was born, where she spent various stages of her life. (I don't think she spent any time in Gaul--or Gwynedd, or Ireland--but what if she had?)

I wonder if she'd be buried with jewellery (which raises the possibility of mineralised textiles), or perhaps a book? (That would be amazing.)

I'll just have to keep dreaming...