More archaeology for me!
So my nerdy excitement levels are way high at the moment, because today I found – in Ballarat of all places! – a copy of a magazine I’ve never heard of: British Archaeology. I subscribe to the American one, which comes from the American Institute for Archaeology; this one is put out by the Council for Brisitsh Archaeology. Now, it was quite expensive, but it is beautifully printed and – although short – it seems to have only about 2 full page ads in the entire 66 or so pages! Compared to the American one, and even BBC History (which I also subscribe to), this is quite amazing. Anyway – I’m very pleased, and I’m looking forward to reading it. Most of it, of course, is British – which is fun – and a cursory glance seems to indicate that it will be like the American one in terms of being reasonably good history and good archae, and being populist at the same time.
Hurrah for me.
Archaeology Magazine Nov-Dec
After some effort, I managed to re-subscribe to Archaeology, which makes me happy. So I thought I’d blog some thoughts on the latest issue…
I’m not sure I like the new format of the mag. The old way, there were one or two short pieces at the start – like “World Roundup” (always an interesting read); then it was straight into the longer, in-depth articles. Now, there are fully 20 pages of ads and shorter stuff before you get to the meaty bit. To drag the eating metaphor out – I like an entree as much as the next person, but I don’t like getting bored before the main course. I’d rather have the little bits at the end, to browse like a cheese platter. Yah; pushed that one to the limits, didn’t I?
Anyway… I was fascinated by Sanchita Balachandran’s reflection on whether to preserve an artifact of dubious provenance. I would have thought that preserving at all costs, so that at least something can be learnt, would be worthwhile. Apparently, though, this can be seen as encouraging looters and other nefarious types to continue their dastardly deeds (not meant to be read flippantly, btw). I’m still not sure I agree with this idea – what, let the Rosetta Stone fall apart because you’re not sure where it came from? – but I can readily see there are moral issues here.
I love stuff about Oxyrhynchus, and Tebtunis seems to be in the same league in terms of the amount of papyrus they’re finding. Marco Merola writes a fascinating account of the archaeological efforts being undertaken on the site, as well as what is being revealed by the information. It still gets me, every single time, just how much has not been uncovered yet, of places like Egypt that we seem to understand so well – let alone places where digging is barely begun. I love it! So yes – Tebtunis – awesome. Also on this track is Jarrett Lobell’s article on the discovery of an agora – an entire damned agora! – in the modern suburbs of Athens. Mad. I do hope the developers manage to incorporate parts of it into the new buildings.
Read a book on Genghis Khan – I think it was by John Man(n?) a while back; he and his have been a perennial favourite. Having taught the Chinese Revolution this year (not very well…), I was reminded again how diverse “China” is and has been. Jake Hooker’s article on the Liao Empire – which I’d never heard of – brought this home. They created some truly amazing stuff but… where are the uni courses, the museum exhibits, the kids’ cartoon shows? You could do some truly awesome stuff in copying their riding boots.
There’s a running joke in my family that I don’t much like stuff that’s younger than 1000 years old (I take affront at that; 500 years, maybe). So I’m still sometimes a bit dubious about reading stuff like Tom Koppel’s “Steamboats on the Yukon.” Of course, once I get reading, I’m fascinated – the reality is that I love basically all historical stuff, although I don’t know why. It helps, with this article, that in this instance the author had spent time with the team attempting to study and preserve said steamboats, so his account of scrambling over them is compelling.
In line with the family joke, I’ve sometimes received the vibe (not from my family) that history is pointless, because you know, it’s like already happened? It’s tempting then to point people to Heather Pringle’s “Medieval DNA, Modern Medicine.” I don’t, because I think history is important in itself, but there you go. Being a child of the Jurassic Park at the movies generation, extracting DNA from old bones (teeth, actually) seems a bit parse sometimes. This article is nice in showing just how damned hard that is, and what we oh-so-advanced modernites can learn.
Finally, I have to say that however much I love the magazine, it feels like there are more ads in there every time I turn around. And they’re all American, of course, so there’s barely any point in even looking at them. Oh well; it’s still a great read.
Movies and books
So I went to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age the other day. I loved it, and will post more about it soon. For now, this has amused me:
Do I have a book about Walter Raleigh on my shelf?
Yes
Have I read said book yet?
No
Will I now always think of him as Clive Owen?
Hell yes!
Is this a problem?
Hell no!
Tee hee. I thought it was funny. It really is a bit like seeing the movie before reading the book.* I also have a bio of Elizabeth – the Alison Weir one, I think – which my darling bought for me on a whim once and who was subsequently devastated when I informed him that I was a bit over Elizabeth, because she had been done to death. I think I am also at the point where I can read that book, too.
*Which I have only successfully done once: I saw the BBC series of Pride and Prejudice before reading it, and it made reading it much easier, for me.
Assyria, and lectures
Went to another public lecture the other day, this one the eleventh Marion Adams Memorial Lecture, for the Arts Faculty at Melbourne Uni. It got me thinking that I would like to have a lecture named after me, or possibly a book-buying bequest… I might have to set aside some money right now for that to be possible.
Anyway, the lecture: was very interesting. I won’t describe the whole thing here, because if you are interested in hearing it you can – gasp! the technology! – actually download and listen to it. Actually, it wasn’t there when I checked today, but I am sure they’ll get it there. If the microphone was good enough you should be able to pick up Dr Andrew Jamieson* thumping the desk and getting very excited, which was quite worhtwhile. Of course, you won’t get the visuals – unless they upload those too, which I would have thought unlikely – they were really great. The gist of his talk, anyway, was that far from the Assyrian heartland being the sole arbitrator of taste and refinement in the Neo-Assyrian period, there definitely seems to have been toing and froing in cultural borrowings and acquisitions between the heartlands and the conquered periphery. Just makes sense to me, but I take it that this is a new idea in the field.
*Whom, if memory serves, I heard speaking at another lecture last year – this one in conjunction with his brother, who is a physics lecturer also at Melbourne Uni. The whole thing was very good, but Andrew was definitely outshone on that occasion by his brother. Maybe he was sick then, because this particular lecture was brilliant.
Daughters of Earth
I got my copy today from Amazon – hurrah!* So excited. I’ve been looking forward to reading this ever since cassiphone raved at me about it at NatCon in June. It has a very nice cover…. It’s been a while since I read any feminist theory or lit crit, so I’m itching to start. Of course, I have been somewhat remiss with my duties, so I have to get back to that… and send some hard copies out to collaborators, before they lynch me. So it might have to wait until my resolve weakens.
*Don’t know it? It’s edited by Justine Larbalestier, and includes scifi stories written by women throughout the 20th century – from every decade, I think – as well essays about them and their place in the scifi tradition.
Octavian and his position: a lecture
This lecture was given last Thursday by Frederik Vervaet, who received his PhD from Ghent University, Belgium. His accent was a little hard to follow at the start, but once I got into the rhythm it was quite lovely to listen to.
The proper title for the lecture was “The Secret History: The Official Position of Caesar Octavianus at the time of the Restitutio Rei Publicae (31-27BC).” Before I get to that, a note on the guy who introduced the lecture, who pronounced it ‘Kaiser Octaweeanus’ – that is, correctly, as far as we know the pronunciation of Latin. What I can’t figure out is whether he was simply being pretentious and showing off, or whether (since he is actually a Classicist), he knows Latin well enough that it’s simply second nature. Got no idea; interesting to consider, anyway.
Vervaet started off by talking about what it actually meant for Antony, Lepidus and Octavian to be triumvirs, from 43 onwards, because only by understanding that, and their power, can you get the pre-Augustus few years. He also asked two preliminary questions: when did the second triumvirate period conclude? (probably 32, is his conclusion); and how did the triumvirate fit into the idea of extraordinary magistracies? (nicely; and can only be abdicated – doesn’t simply conclude with the end of the year).
The issue of abdication becomes important when looking at Dio Cassius, and what he records of Octavian in 27: a speech that sounds remarkably like an abdication. So, although he hadn’t seemed to be holding the triumviral position up to this stage (because he would have been a solo triumvir, Lepidus having been forced out before the first 5 years finished and poor old Antony suiciding in 30), he seems to have continued exercising it. So why did he not acknowledge it? Vervaet talked about Octavian’s own concealment, and ‘artful delusion’, particularly in the Res Gestae and other bits of propaganda. I also liked the phrase ‘Augustan ambiguity and deceitfulness’. The nomenclature had also started to disappear during the second triumvirate anyway – emphasising his consular position, for example, instead.
After establishing Octavian’s position, then, Vervaet proceeded to ask two other questions: why continue as triumvir (alone), and why did he conceal it – since he didn’t seem to have any trouble with big-noting himself in other ways? As to the first question, it could be argued that the purpose of the triumvirate – to restore order to Rome – had not been achieved until 31 (because of the war with Cleopatra and Antony), so he shouldn’t abdicate; and after that there was (apparently) universal demand that he hang around. The second question needs you to remember that this is still the Republic: keeping hold of power was Bad and Evil and Frowned Upon. As well, when Antony and Octavian were having their spat, there was propaganda on both sides about the other not being willing to give up the power, so you don’t want to prove enemy slanging to be correct, do you? Finally, there’s also the fact that keeping hold of power unconstitutionally doesn’t sit so well with positioning oneself as the champion of tradition and constitutional propriety.
So… Octavian. I’ve always been anti-Octavian. Antony is more my man. This was a really great lecture, thoroughly enjoyable.
Concrete in Rome
So I went to a public lecture at Melbourne Uni on Tuesday, called “From the Colosseum to the Baths of Diocletian: What Concrete can tell us about Social Change in Imperial Rome.” It was given by Lynne Lancaster of Ohio University. This was the first cool thing about the night: it was a woman, talking about concrete and stress points and vaulting ribs… very cool. The first funny thing was that it took two heads of departments (Classics, a bloke; Engineering, a woman [I think she was the head; I could have been wrong]) to turn some lights down so everyone in the audience – and there was a lot of people – could see the slides properly.
So, a number of things I found out are listed here. Lancaster has a book out at the moment, talking about some of these things; she made some joke about wantin a ‘sexier’ name, which I didn’t think was that sexier, but her publishers insisted that her title be searchable. So it’s really not sexy.
She started the lecture talking about factors affecting innovation, which I think she said she stole from someone else. Most of the rest of the lecture revolved around these issues, and how it affected concrete in Rome.
1. Accumulated knowledge
2. Evident need
3. Economic ability
4. Cultural/social/political acceptability
1. The accumulated knowledge required for buildings such as the Pantheon and other buildings of the early empire (her focus) was that of the arch (there’s evidence that there were arches from the 6th century BC – cool!), and use of pozzolana – volcanic ash used to reinforce the mortar.
2. Vaults got larger, which allowed for larger groups of people gathering together – which was convenient, since amphitheatres, theatres (numerous small vaults people sat on), and baths (fewer large vaults covering people) were becoming ever more popular.
3. Becoming an empire, rather than a good ol’ republic, brought different ways of collecting money for Rome – it also led to the wealth of one individual, or family, rivalling that of the state. And that wealth was often used on construction. The top builders, in her opinion, were Nero; Vaspasian; Trajan; Hadrian; Caracalla; Diocletian; and Constantine.
*Tangent-ish: the debasement of the coinage, which started under Nero. The denarius was about 97% silver under Augustis, but was only about 50% by the mid-third century. By this time, the coinage was so bad that the government wanted its taxes in kind, rather than money! This ended up having interesting repercussions for the building industry… see below…*
*Interesting tangent #2: When Trajan built his own little forum, he also modified Caesar’s – including a latrine. The cool thing about this is that the latrine was built on the second floor, meaning they had to use lots of arches to channel the weight. It also had nice windows….*
*And, just because: the Pantheon (I think Lancaster has a thing for the Pantheon…) has a 43m dome – the largest unsupported vault (I think I got that right), and two times larger than any previous dome: so interestingly, no incremental changes. It also has hollow, 6m wide walls, with extruded brick ribs…*
4. Brick industry development paralleled the increase in the use of vaults.
Under Trajan, politicians had to own land (I think I got that right – I might have missed something there). One way to profit from this was to sell clay, to make bricks. Brick use explodes from this time – it’s probably consequential. There’s evidence of bricks allowing for social advancement (slaves becoming freemen, etc). As well, there’s evidence that women owned and even produced bricks…. So in all of these ways there were incentives to Make Bricks.
**Break for a human demonstration of the necessity of ribs and vaults!**
Four women called up, to act as ribs – then Lancaster hung from their hands! and asked them where the tension was. And then, four men came up and put their hands on their shoulders – queue hanging again – and the women reported that there was less tension. Very, very cool.
Then there was scoria. It’s basically solidified volcanic foam, and was the only non-decorative stone imported into Rome, and it was used on imperial buildings. Most of the stuff that was used was from Pompey, but was brought after 79 – when the explosion from Vesuvius had covered the stuff – so it was hard to get to, but still they did it. Hello, lucre…
The Basilica Ulpia: why use columns, rather than a vaulted roof? Columns make the roof flat, and there was increasing interest in showing off colourful stone from captured territory. It also probably provided a very nice viewing platform for Trajan’s Column – so convenient!
Also at this time came the introduction of the use of window glass (from late in the first century). This led to huge changes in Roman perceptions of light and space, and raised expectations through the roof (tee hee). Buttresses become important for this development, and allows for baths to get bigger – good from a social and imperial point of view – and the light showed off the captured marble very, very nicely.
There were other bits and interesting pieces in the lecture – which I really enjoyed, if I haven’t mentioned that – but the last thing I wanted to mention related to that comment about taxes and debased coinage. Diocletian made a huge change by imposing a property tax on people living in Rome. The urban prefect, who was in charge of the area within a 100 mile radius of the city, used a form of barter to get building materials – and, on the other side, to reduce the taxpayer’s tax burden. Very, very clever.
Yay for public lectures! I love the Classics department at Melbourne!
Marvellous Merlin: Knowledge and Power
I went to a seminar given by Stephen Knight on Merlin a few weeks ago, and it was great. I’ve liked Knight ever since I did an essay on Robin Hood, in about third year, and I read bits of his book on said bandit. I didn’t realise that he was Australian! – I should have, since my lecturer Stephanie knew him, but it just didn’t occur to me that someone so prestigious could be an Aussie. Dreadful, no?
The focus – my take-home message, if you like, which might not have been the intended theme, but was talked about a lot – was Merlin’s relationship to power. He doesn’t often hold it, but he relates to it and talks to or at it; sometimes it’s a positive, sometimes negative, relationship.
The seminar started by talking about the Myrddin (‘Welsh’, or original at least, name for Merlin). From 493, in Cumbria, comes a poem that talks of a man who was traumatised by a battle, who consequently lives in a forest and mocks his own culture, and particularly the court. He becomes, a few centuries later, something of a prophet: in the poems of 1000 or so, he is speaking for Welsh power – where before he had been challenging that power. Interesting…
He went on to mention Merlin in Geoffrey of Monmouth (only helps with Arthur’s conception, no other involvement – he also collapses Merlin with Ambrosius. He’s also the one to coin Merlin, since merdinus in Latin means shitty!); various French poems, Robert de Boron and Layamon… Merlin, as knowledge, speaks to power, in the person of Arthur or similar. He might be an archbishop or grand vizier-type figure. But knowledge doesn’t always speak of truth, or share its knowledge; often, he’s just telling power to shut the hell up and get on with it already.
There’s a great picture from the Renaissance, in which the cave is more like a grand hall, and it shows Merlin as an artificer and an artist. Playing, of course, on contemporary desires and wishes and preferences.
Knight continued by talking about Dryden – King Arthur: The British Worthy – and other C18 plays and poems. Merlin is used in various ways in these places, but generally to do with power. In fact, the name ‘merlin’ comes to mean little almanacs – full of knowledge, of course. Merlin hasn’t always been portrayed as old, as those of us who are fans of The Sword in the Stone will always regard him; this is a relatively late development. The wrinkles, the beard – they’re all code for knowledge. This, by the way, led to an interesting discussion about whether figures such as Gandalf – also with white beard etc – are incarnations of Merlin, or if they’re just using the same codes.
It was a really fascinating talk, and I’m really glad I went. It was after this that I decided I would start reading more academic stuff, because really, it was so much fun stretching my brain! Apparently Knight went on to talk at a medieval conference, and talked about similar things; my friend AB went to the conference, but I haven’t caught up with her to talk about it.
Historical hoarding
I wonder if my adoration of history is related to my incorrigible hoarding. Oh yes, it is incorrigible: those of you at school in Australia in 1988 may remember receiving a dinky commemorative coin for the Bicentennary. I’ve still got mine (primary school, thanks very much). I used it, for some reason, to collect the signatures from some has-been cricketers at an exhibition match in Darwin the same year. I kept my cinema tickets for ages. As if anyone would ever be interested in my ephemera! But then, there are are historians who examine the minutae of everyday life, so – you know …. I, though, am not one of them.
At the same time, I am also a tragic nostalgic: I wish my college friends were all still talking, because I’d love to have a ten-year reunion next year – but it ain’t gonna happen. I love my family history, partly for bragging rights and partly for interest.
I think this might be a bit of a chicken/egg issue. But it is an interesting thing to consider.
BBC History May 2007
Yeh, bit slack with reading these mags at the moment… I got stuck on an article about Charles II and the restoration, and then it occurred to me that I didn’t have to finish reading it – novel, eh?
The two articles about the mutiny/insurrection/pick your favourite word in India, against the Brits, were fascinating. Saul David and William Dalrymple give different perspectives on it (literally: one Brit, one Indian). Given I knew zip about the issues and results of the conflict, these articles were intriguing for me. The question about motivations, and whether it was religious or political or how those things worked together in somewhere like India, with Hindus and Muslims and Christians, was absorbing. And I am not willing to draw any modern parallels.
I’ve heard the word Oxyrhynchos (sharp nose) with reference to papyri before, but never really knew what was going on there. Now I know, thanks to Peter Parsons! I love things like this: piles of rubbish being preserved for millenia, and then being just the ticket for archaeologists – a great big mound of treasure, basically. Yay for the preserving sands!
It’s the 300th birthday of the union between England and Scotland this year, and apparently there’s a bit of grumbling and muttering, in Scotland especially, about what a bad deal they got. Not so, according to Eric J Evans, who reckons the Scots got a very good deal indeed – especially economically, if not politically.
There’s a new book coming out about Stalin as a young man – who’s not interested in analysing the youth of a nutter, to see what caused him to be like that, to reassure ourselves that something went wrong so he wasn’t just a normal man who did dreadful things? Anyway, according to Simon Sebag Montefiore, he developed a taste for violence early on, but also was into seducing women and writing poetry… which may be connected to one another…. I don’t think I’ll read the book, but it’s an interesting idea, and I think I’m glad someone has done it.
Diarmid MacCulloch’s article on Christians and Muslims today, and whether this is some inevitable (argh! anathema word!) clash of faiths or a result of the last 200 years of history, is fascinating – because I don’t know a lot of it, and he makes a compelling case. As a Christian myself, I think that there is (inevitably!) tension between the faiths because of their differences, but this doesn’t necessarily translate onto the world stage… I’m not convinced Bush makes his decisions as a Christian and nothing else, and I am also not sure about the various Islamic states – because I just don’t know enough about them. Anyway, very interesting stuff.
Finally, let me just mention the short article on ERII’s coronation. Interesting stuff about the behind-scenes events, and the stress over whether or not to broadcast it.
Not the best issue of BBC History, for my tastes, but still quite good.
Randomly Yours, Alex 