Periodic Reporting for period 4 - B2C (Beasts to Craft: BioCodicology as a new approach to the study of parchment manuscripts)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-06-01 al 2024-08-31
Beasts to Craft (B2C) has established biocodicology as a new discipline, harnessing biomolecular techniques to unlock the biological information encoded in parchment manuscripts. From its inception, the project set out to map regional and temporal patterns of animal species and production quality in parchment, to develop truly non-invasive methods for analysing proteins, lipids, DNA and isotopes, and to apply these innovations to questions of manuscript provenance, craft practice and use history. By integrating proteomics, genomics, chemistry and digital cataloguing, B2C transformed our understanding of medieval animal husbandry, manuscript manufacture and the intricate relationships between human culture and the biological materials upon which it relied.
Across the project’s lifetime, more than 7 000 parchment samples spanning the sixth to sixteenth centuries were analysed using eZooMS peptide mass fingerprinting. A high-throughput MALDI-TOF MS/MS pipeline, coupled with the open-source Bacollite software, enabled rapid, automated species identification at unprecedented scale, revealing distinct geographic and chronological trends—for example, the marked rise of sheep parchment in English legal texts from the twelfth century, and characteristic Cistercian workshop signatures in northern France. In parallel, the team developed the Parchment Glutamine Index (PQI) and enhanced the DeamiDATE software to quantify site-specific deamidation patterns, yielding proxies for lime-exposure and processing intensity that permit reconstruction of quire assemblies and the standardisation of manufacturing protocols across monastic networks. A novel solvent-based protocol now permits extraction of skin lipids without visible damage, and compound-specific stable-isotope and radiocarbon analyses on minute lipid fractions have demonstrated the retention of primary isotopic signals, opening new avenues for provenance and dating studies. Improvements in DNA extraction have produced high-quality host and microbial sequences from over 120 manuscripts, allowing the identification of breed-specific retroviral markers for geographic “postcoding” and the detection of preserved livestock pathogens such as sheep-pox virus DNA. Building on a landmark study of a medieval English birthing girdle, B2C extended proteomic mapping of stains and wear across ten devotional manuscripts, identifying human-derived proteins and residues of honey, milk and egg, and thereby delivering direct evidence of liturgical and medical practices. Fourteen international workshops facilitated the integration of biomolecular data with codicological and digital manuscript catalogues, and a publicly accessible database now houses over 50 000 mass spectra for cross-institutional research and machine-learning applications.
Across the project’s lifetime, more than 7 000 parchment samples spanning the sixth to sixteenth centuries were analysed using eZooMS peptide mass fingerprinting. A high-throughput MALDI-TOF MS/MS pipeline, coupled with the open-source Bacollite software, enabled rapid, automated species identification at unprecedented scale, revealing distinct geographic and chronological trends—for example, the marked rise of sheep parchment in English legal texts from the twelfth century, and characteristic Cistercian workshop signatures in northern France. In parallel, the team developed the Parchment Glutamine Index (PQI) and enhanced the DeamiDATE software to quantify site-specific deamidation patterns, yielding proxies for lime-exposure and processing intensity that permit reconstruction of quire assemblies and the standardisation of manufacturing protocols across monastic networks. A novel solvent-based protocol now permits extraction of skin lipids without visible damage, and compound-specific stable-isotope and radiocarbon analyses on minute lipid fractions have demonstrated the retention of primary isotopic signals, opening new avenues for provenance and dating studies. Improvements in DNA extraction have produced high-quality host and microbial sequences from over 120 manuscripts, allowing the identification of breed-specific retroviral markers for geographic “postcoding” and the detection of preserved livestock pathogens such as sheep-pox virus DNA. Building on a landmark study of a medieval English birthing girdle, B2C extended proteomic mapping of stains and wear across ten devotional manuscripts, identifying human-derived proteins and residues of honey, milk and egg, and thereby delivering direct evidence of liturgical and medical practices. Fourteen international workshops facilitated the integration of biomolecular data with codicological and digital manuscript catalogues, and a publicly accessible database now houses over 50 000 mass spectra for cross-institutional research and machine-learning applications.
WP1: eZooMS – Species and parchment quality
Sarah Fiddyment (PDRA1) refined protocols to extract a broader range of proteins from bound volumes and partnered with the Wellcome Library on the “Spells and Spills” initiative. A landmark outcome was the release of Bacollite for automated parchment identification from eZooMS data (DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa181) now openly available on GitHub.
WP2: DNA – The flocks (and herds)
Matthew Teasdale (PDRA2) developed workflows to recover ancient DNA from parchment.
WP3: Health and disease
Annelise Binois (PDRA3) contributed three months of disease-marker research before accepting a lectureship at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Together with Jiri Vnouček (PDRA4), she performed visual analyses of parchment for pathological indicators and presented initial findings at Namur. Meanwhile, Sam Johns (PhD1) was recruited at the University of Bristol (part-funded by a Carlsberg Foundation project) to explore biochemical stress markers in archival beeswax and parchment.
WP4: Production methods
Jiri Vnouček established experimental standards for scientific parchment manufacture, investigating natural ageing, degradation pathways and damage mechanisms to inform future conservation practices.
WP5: Comparison with textiles and bones
From February 2020, Jane Malcolm-Davies (PDRA7) curated and sampled a 12th-century knitted wool fragment from Schloss Gottorf (Grabung Plessenstraße), securing museum permission and contextualising it alongside contemporaneous parchment.
WP6: A conservation legacy
We assembled the B2C Parchment Collection—comprising legal deeds made available to the research community—to underpin comprehensive multi-omic datasets (details at sites.google.com/palaeome.org/ercb2c/get-involved/b2c-parchment-collection).
WP7: Workshops and outreach
We were able to run more workshops than originally planned thanks to shared events with colleagues Team members also contributed sessions key conferenecs delivered departmental and summer-school presentations, and engaged the public through events such as Danish Culture Night.
Sarah Fiddyment (PDRA1) refined protocols to extract a broader range of proteins from bound volumes and partnered with the Wellcome Library on the “Spells and Spills” initiative. A landmark outcome was the release of Bacollite for automated parchment identification from eZooMS data (DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa181) now openly available on GitHub.
WP2: DNA – The flocks (and herds)
Matthew Teasdale (PDRA2) developed workflows to recover ancient DNA from parchment.
WP3: Health and disease
Annelise Binois (PDRA3) contributed three months of disease-marker research before accepting a lectureship at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Together with Jiri Vnouček (PDRA4), she performed visual analyses of parchment for pathological indicators and presented initial findings at Namur. Meanwhile, Sam Johns (PhD1) was recruited at the University of Bristol (part-funded by a Carlsberg Foundation project) to explore biochemical stress markers in archival beeswax and parchment.
WP4: Production methods
Jiri Vnouček established experimental standards for scientific parchment manufacture, investigating natural ageing, degradation pathways and damage mechanisms to inform future conservation practices.
WP5: Comparison with textiles and bones
From February 2020, Jane Malcolm-Davies (PDRA7) curated and sampled a 12th-century knitted wool fragment from Schloss Gottorf (Grabung Plessenstraße), securing museum permission and contextualising it alongside contemporaneous parchment.
WP6: A conservation legacy
We assembled the B2C Parchment Collection—comprising legal deeds made available to the research community—to underpin comprehensive multi-omic datasets (details at sites.google.com/palaeome.org/ercb2c/get-involved/b2c-parchment-collection).
WP7: Workshops and outreach
We were able to run more workshops than originally planned thanks to shared events with colleagues Team members also contributed sessions key conferenecs delivered departmental and summer-school presentations, and engaged the public through events such as Danish Culture Night.
The impact of B2C extends across heritage science, academia and society. Biocodicology is now recognised in over fifty peer-reviewed publications and is routinely employed by curators and conservators for authentication, provenance research and conservation planning, while historians gain quantitative evidence of scribal and craft practices. The project’s training initiatives have equipped more than two hundred researchers in proteomics, archaeology, conservation and manuscript studies; two permanent lectureships in bioarchaeology at the Sorbonne, multiple postdoctoral appointments and six major research grants—including ERC Consolidator and Advanced awards—testify to the sustained capacity built by B2C. Its software tools (Bacollite, PQI, DeamiDATE) have been adapted for proof-of-concept applications in food-and-feed authentication through the PeptInsure project, demonstrating the wider utility of peptide-fingerprinting. Public engagement has flourished via exhibitions, media features and citizen-science workshops, bringing awareness of cultural and biological patrimony to new audiences. Looking ahead, ongoing efforts will apply lipid-isotope ratios to reconstruct past climate variables, exploit pathogen DNA to chart historical disease dynamics, and combine 3D imaging of parchment microstructure with molecular data. The legacy of Beasts to Craft lies in its demonstration that medieval manuscripts are living archives of human and animal histories, poised for exploration by the next generation of interdisciplinary scholars.