Jitske Jasperse, ed., The Social Lives of Medieval Rings. CARMEN Visual and Material Cultures. Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, 2025, 258 pp., 48 color and 8 b/w ill.

Jewelry is far more than adornment or wealth: when studied properly, it functions as a historical source itself. This is brilliantly illustrated by Jitske Jasperse’s edited volume on medieval rings. The Social Lives of Medieval Rings marks a significant and timely contribution to the academic study of medieval jewelry by repositioning rings as dynamic social objects embedded in complex networks of meaning, exchange, and identity. Jasperse’s volume foregrounds these social functions of rings across a diverse European landscape, covering regions as far-reaching as Iberia, France, England, Germany, Rus, and Byzantium.