 Hello, everybody. My name is Larry Niece. I'm a professor at the University of Delaware and currently serving as chair there. And it's my privilege and pleasure to introduce Rachel Foss. Rachel, well, first I should thank, as everyone else has done this wonderful gathering at the Barnes sponsored especially by Temple and Penn. Rachel did her BA work locally at the University of the Arts and still stayed locally for doing an MA at Temple before coming to the University of Delaware. She's had a wide range of experiences, including a lot of artistic work with Japanese ink painting and other things, because she was doing the material turn before it became so popular. She's made presentations at conferences recently, one related to the topic she'll be talking about today at a conference on the medieval brain in York in England and also presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association. This summer she'll be doing some dissertation work. She's at an early stage in her dissertation progress going to England with a grant from our Center for Medieval Cultural Studies at the University after having completed a program at the Delaware Public Humanities Institute. She's a terrific citizen as well as a terrific student who's been very much instrumental in mentoring our undergraduate students, along with some others. I'm very pleased and proud of that. As I mentioned, she's at an early stage in her dissertation work on a dissertation currently titled They Do Tend to Change, The Cross and the Body in Early Medieval England, and her lecture today is hard, I can't read my writing very well. I think it's hard hand in mind grasping the cross in early medieval England. Thank you Dr. Neese for that wonderful introduction and thanks to the Barnes and to their wonderful staff for all their support and for hosting us today. Far removed from the bodies they once adorned and the grays from which they were unearthed, gold cross pendants richly and laid with garnets sit behind glass in various museums in Great Britain. Like many museum objects, crosses from 7th century England are disembodied from the people who wore them and from their context of their life as things. Consider for example, a discovery in 2012 in the village of Trumpington just outside of Cambridge. No older than 16, a young woman was laid to rest on an ornamental wooden bed, a small gold pectoral cross sewn into her tunic lying upon her chest. To her mourners, perhaps she appeared as if only sleeping, the familiar sight of her piety at her heart. But once isolated on the covers of catalogs or trapped behind glass, ornaments such as the Trumpington Cross become disassociated from the human form they once adorned. Breft of the contextual images from the excavation, both publications and museums tend to privilege the frontal visual aspects of the cross as a kind of objet d'art. In the academic sphere, these gleaming artifacts have inspired mainly stylistic analyses and historical evaluations have been generally restricted to indications of cultural change, evidence of the process of conversion in a pagan society, a public display of Christian belief for the owner or an apotropaic device of protection. However, the effective aspects of the bodily engagement between ornament and wearer have not been explored. The application of phenomenology and the cognitive sciences presents an exciting range of possibilities for understanding the relationship between the body and material culture. As established in the work of phenomenologists and anthropologists, the body includes the brain. Furthermore, the body is situated in an environment with which it interacts and is affected by environmental conditioners. Investigating the cognitive impulses that prompt the creation of material culture and govern the acquisition of knowledge through the body counteracts the conception of the mind as a disembodied generator of abstract ideas separate from and unaffected by the world of its experience. The case study of the wearable cross serves to elucidate the cultural and psychological conditions that precipitated its creation and provides a clearer picture of the people of seven century England and the glittering crosses they carried with them in life and beyond. So some historic background. Although not appearing before the seventh century, the wearable cross belongs to the tradition of social communication through ornamentation in use by groups in Britain since the fifth century. By the turn of the sixth century, many of the disparate communities of post-Roman Britain had coalesced into large elite families and they utilized ornamentation to differentiate themselves from rival groups. Funerary practices incorporated lavish public disposal of wealth into the grave, furnishing the deceased's body with jewelry and weapons as expressions of a dynastic and heroic past that legitimized current rule. Jewelry passed down from one relative to another acted to embed this imagined past within the family and to strengthen ties between relations. Wearing such items would prompt not only memories of the deceased but would allow a family member to directly embody his or her ancestor to collapse the temporal divide between the venerable deceased and living kindred. By the arrival of Pope Gregory's mission to convert the people we commonly refer to now as Anglo-Saxons, the most affluent families had adopted royal titles and established kingdoms that would solidify into the recognizable powerhouses of the seventh century. As these kingdoms began to incorporate the Christian religion, Christian symbols were integrated into items of adornment. The cross represents one of the most enduring Christian signs and images to enter Anglo-Saxon society. The crux usualis, the act of signing the body with the form of the cross disseminated into public and personal practice from the earliest installation of the liturgy. Although blessing with the sign of the cross was initially the exclusive provenance of the clergy, distinctions between gender and station became irrelevant in usage among the laity. This was in fact beneficial to the entrenchment of the new religion. Repeated motor actions have been shown to enhance memory and in the case of the crux usualis, such repetition can establish new conceptual systems such as Christianity into the body. David Chaichester has observed that, quote, in the kinesthetic movements of the body, tactile information is acquired. For the study of religion, kinesthesia calls attention to embodied movements, kneeling, standing, prostrating, et cetera. Not only as types of ritual performance, but also as instruments of knowledge. The knowledge of Christ's sacrifice was made present and personal in the body through the action of crossing oneself as if mapping Christ's physical body onto one's own. In this way, the ordeal of Christ's crucifixion was made experiential through the vehicle of touch. In his homilies on Ezekiel, Pope Gregory encouraged contemplation of the passion in order to create a point of access between Christ and the faithful. Meditation on his sacrifice fostered an awareness of Christ as living and present rather than an actor in past events. Memory, particularly of the visual motor and effective states of worship plays a vital role in acts of embodiment. Just as the memory of past events involving ancestors was recalled through personal ornaments, memories of worship could be recollected at any time through interaction with the wearable cross. Viewing movement, whether live or pictorial, activates motor courtesies as if we ourselves were performing the same action. Thus any imagery or performance of Christ's passion would trigger not only emotional empathy, but a felt imitation in the body of the viewer. The memory of these events is thus shaped by the body and may condition subsequent responses to images of the cross, including wearable versions. But material also matters. Nine of the 12 known Anglo-Saxon pendant and pectoral crosses are fashioned of solid gold and inset with garnets. The particular Anglo-Saxon predilection for gold and reflective surfaces has been illustrated, I'm sorry, illustrated most famously by C.R. Dodwell. Dodwell identified a fascination with variable brightness in Anglo-Saxon art, attire, and literature. Most significantly, the sensitivity of Anglo-Saxon visual perception to refulgence is made evident in their very vernacular language. This is indicated by some of their color words, which primarily express nuances of brightness, most particularly the words brun, phailu, and wan, which suggest in turn the degree of brightness of metal in sunshine, of shining material under the same circumstances, and the subdued brightness of something seen on a dull day. Contrast, such as between the glitter of red garnets against gold, also appears as a recurrent theme in Anglo-Saxon literature. For example, the mirth of the bright drinking hall versus the dangers of the dark, cold world beyond its walls. The source of this affinity may be found in the perception of the environment the Anglo-Saxons inhabited. In his essay Emotional Climates, Rituals, Seasonality, and Effective Disorders, Simon Harrison describes the environment as an instrument in shaping the symbolisms that give meaning to our effective states. His observations of the medieval bifurcation of darkness and light as related to the turn of the seasons, the turn of the humors to melancholia, and the turn of life to death bring to mind accounts of the English countryside. Depictions of the bleakness of moors, the dangers of fenn paths and wolffells, and the gray, unforgiving expanse of the Atlantic were the speciality of Anglo-Saxon poets and represent some of the only descriptions of their environment. Seasonal affectation may have contributed to the Anglo-Saxon aesthetic as an environmental conditioner, eliciting a preference for objects that represent light or are animated by it. Although the selection of gold was certainly tied to elite circles, additional factors prompted the preference for gold over other precious metals. Most significant in the selection of gold for wearable iterations of the cross was the effective quality of the material. Handling a personal cross ornament could animate the appearance of metal and gems. As the holder deliberately turned the form to observe the play of light, one can imagine the flash or glimmer appearing as something living, especially as the gold warmed to the temperature of the skin. In the context of Anglo-Saxon culturally and environmentally conditioned aesthetics, the material was nearly tantamount to the message. If one wished to touch the divine, no other substance was as suitable or as effective as gold. Beyond significations of identity or wealth, ornamentation served another equally vital function in the lives of Anglo-Saxons, operating as an apotropaic device in answer to a cultural anxiety concerning protection of the body and soul. In fifth century England, amulets were chief among protective items of adornment and were utilized to shield the wearer from evil forces well into the conversion period and beyond. To classify the use of wearable crosses solely as a gradual replacement of pagan amulets would be reductive and inaccurate. Comparison with the amuletic tradition does, however, underscore the importance of embodied contact with implements of protection. With the introduction of Christianity, the Cruxus Usoalis was prescribed as a shield for the body from the assault of malevolent forces. And the frequency of signing in popular religion is illustrated through three compilations of Anglo-Saxon medicine. This perceived need for ceaseless crossing challenges the permanence of the sign and illustrates social solicitude regarding protection against the persistence of evil and spirits. For the early Anglo-Saxon Christians, a possible solution to the transitory nature of the seal may have been found in the enduring tactility of the physical artifact of the cross. By the seventh century, monumental stone and wooden crosses dotted the English countryside and gemmed crosses stood upon the altar. Both quotations and embodiments of the might of Calvary would differentiated the wearable cross from larger public exempla was a personal tactile potency. Understanding and embodying the Christian God and the power of his son's sacrifice necessitated reduction of the prototype to the familiar form of jewelry. The personal and portable nature of the wearable cross would have granted Anglo-Saxon's access to the power of the cross outside of fixed religious sites and enabled worship in the private sphere of individuals at all levels of society. In terms of placement, pendant crosses hung at the heart, not only were a Christian applied the crux usualis but in accordance with the culturally accepted localization of the mind and the heart in the brass. Leslie Lockett has compiled a thoroughly interesting work on the hydraulic model of the mind expressed in old English narratives and poetry as a literal rather than metaphorical concept. Identification of the head or brain as the seed of the soul in old English literature is rare and does not appear in Anglo-Saxon medical texts until after 1000 CE. The body and mind are not portrayed as dual or conflicting forces but as a mind body complex sharing a single will that affects the eternal soul for good or for ill. The soul is only able to act on its own once released from the mortal coil as a representative of the self in the afterlife. As a physical weight upon the breast, the pendant or pectoral cross may have been worn to shield the gateway of the mind from the arrows of evil like those described in Kinwell's Juliana poem composed around the ninth century. In line 397, and devil outlines his strategy for compromising the mind of a victim. The entrance opened, then I at once send into him with the shooting of an arrow into his breast mind, bitter thoughts through the various desires of his mind that it seems to him better to perform sins and lusts of the flesh than the praise of God. The usage of adornment as protection or a sustaining the memory of an ancestor translated effortlessly into the wearing of the cross not only as a talisman but as an animistic device to keep the savior in mind. In the decades 670 to 720, a marked change occurred in the furnishing of Anglo-Saxon graves. Items professing social status waned even as Christian items such as the wearable cross persisted. Despite the certainties afforded by the Christian religion, anxiety regarding protection of the body in death and the journey of the soul to the afterlife persisted, reflected in both burial practice and in later literature. In his poem to the saint, Kino Wolf appeals to Juliana for aid at the time of his death, lamenting ignorance of his soul's final destination. When facing his end on the battlefield of the 10th century poem, The Battle of Maldon, the hero Bertnoff implores God to allow his soul safe passage to his heavenly kingdom, unscathed by hell demons. It is interesting to note that unlike the condemnation of amuletic practices, clericatex is issue no complaint against furnished burial. In the absence of commentary, what may be deduced is that the wearable crosses were designed to operate in the spiritual realm, as well as the earthly, and therefore their protection was expected to continue as the body passed into it. Grave items were not considered passive markers of identity, but as active agents of protection, equally applicable to life and death from the transition from non-Christian to Christian belief from the six to seventh centuries. Lawrence Boroslow has said that, quote, knowledge depends inherently on the brains, bodies, and environmental situations in which it resides rather than existing independently of them, end quote. Indeed, this statement must give hope to those of us who desire to know a people of a bygone age but who inhabit a similar flesh in a similar landscape. It also illustrates the complex web of factors that precipitate the creation and condition the forms of objects like the Anglo-Saxon Cross. The application of the cognitive sciences presents a range of fascinating possibilities for understanding the biological impulses that prompt the creation of material objects. However, we must be mindful of the comma that separates brains and bodies as we forge ahead in this new methodology, just as we must be mindful of the separation of material culture from the bodies with which it interacts and affects. Thank you.