Volume 8 of Medieval Clothing and Textiles presents the reader with pure gold, not just in the metaphorical sense, but also in the literal one: Three of our papers focus on this most precious of dress adornments. Brigitte Haas-Gebhard and Britt Nowak- Böck discuss elite burials of the early sixth century at Unterhaching, Germany, which include not only sumptuous gold jewelry but also textile bands embellished with gold strips. Maren Clegg Hyer examines evidence for the recycling of such precious gold bands in the later Anglo-Saxon period. Louise Sylvester, drawing on the database of the Manchester Lexis of Cloth and Clothing Project, investigates the lexis and lexicalization of gold in relation to cloth and clothing, offering a semantic classification applicable to multilingual medieval Britain.

This volume also exhumes significant archaeological textiles from obscurity. Chrystel Brandenburgh describes two early medieval headdresses from the Netherlands, long hidden in museum stores, and Lisa Evans examines a colorful fifteenthcentury cushion, one of the earliest identifiable examples of patchwork, found in a bishop's tomb in the small town of Impruneta, Italy.

Uses of dress and textiles in literature are explored in Patricia Williams's survey of the naming and function of items in the Welsh Mabinogion, and in Kathryn Talarico's discussion of Jean Renart's manipulation of clothing and gender roles in his Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole.

The editors thank Miranda Howard of Western Michigan University for her years of service on our editorial board, and we welcome to the board Christine Meek, of Trinity College, Dublin, who has herself been published in Medieval Clothing and Textiles and has also given valuable advice to other authors.