History yays

[Jubal]

Yeah, I think to some extent he just ended up with a ton of pressure from his stuff getting too big: he had huge numbers of social media followers and I think he got dragged down by it as well as that making him much more unnerved about older bits of his work being so widely read. It is definitely a pity.

Yeah, archaeogenetics is something we need more people doing, though we also really need good people doing it because I really don't want to think about what some historians would try doing with those methodologies...

[dubsartur]

Yeah, I think to some extent he just ended up with a ton of pressure from his stuff getting too big: he had huge numbers of social media followers and I think he got dragged down by it as well as that making him much more unnerved about older bits of his work being so widely read. It is definitely a pity.

Yeah, archaeogenetics is something we need more people doing, though we also really need good people doing it because I really don't want to think about what some historians would try doing with those methodologies...

Oh wow again there is a whole story happening on closed social media where I can't follow it.  It is just a headache.  I wish that when people leave the real Internet they would leave a note why and a forwarding address. 

When someone deletes a website that I have in my memory, they are deleting part of my mind.  When they break incoming links, they are destroying my work.

Its frustrating because we have 150 years of quack racial 'science' that fell apart on inspection ... but that does not mean it is fair to ignore the new data or all the hard work that has gone in to collecting datasets of ancient and medieval DNA.  But I think you really need someone who understands statistics, understands genetics, and understands historical argumentation to sort it out.  In Pereltsvaig and Lewis vs. Gray, Atkinson, et al., there was one or two small points where the linguists may have not fully understood the math or the conventions of the glamour mag Gray and Atkinson published in (although their criticisms as a whole were very patient and devastating).  The idea that some Polynesians made it to South America seems plausible and its not an idea which Europeans are highly motivated to 'reason'.

Edit: A.J. West seems to have another account at https://medium.com/@IndoMedieval  I have made so many mistakes in life, but one of my best decisions was never creating a birdsite account.

[dubsartur]

Does everyone here know about sartor.cz with their copies of medieval brocades and cloths-of-gold?  They offer silk (for working garments) and synthetics (for cheaper looking-pretty garments) https://www.sartor.cz/44-historical-textiles

[Jubal]

Oh neat! Not come across that before.

I actually want to get some reasonably medieval looking wear (ideally high medieval as that's my period) largely for cosplay purposes, doing medieval storytelling, that sort of thing. I'm not sure where to start looking on that front though.

[dubsartur]

I think Timothy Dawson does pretty good Middle Byzantine replicas although his theories about armour are peculiar (and an Orthodox icon painter I knew always said that the point of the icon is to copy an earlier icon as best as you can not to reproduce the world you see with your eyes) http://www.levantia.com.au/index.html

For the High Medieval Franks there are the books by Sarah Thursfield, Dorothy K. Burnham, and Katrin Kania https://bookandsword.com/resources/fashion-in-the-age-of-datini/ and of course the kaftans and hose from graves in the Caucasus https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Mans_Caftan_Leggings_from_Caucasus_8_to_10_C_Conservation_The_Metropolitan_Museum_Journal_v_36_2001

Richard Culinan has something on Abbasid clothing and there are lots of resources for Norse clothing although I think a lot of the finds are very fragmentary https://richardcullinan.wordpress.com/2016/12/17/an-overview-of-mens-abbasid-9th-10th-century-persian-clothing/

For ready-to-wear Medieval Design in Italy is better than average http://www.medievaldesign.com/eng-prodotti-uomo.asp?form_chiave=28 but if you can use a straightedge and a needle or a sewing machine you can make something work for the high middle ages.  The internet used to be great for this stuff (Karen Larsdatter, ImaReal, Cariadoc's Miscellaney, Stefan's Florilegium) but now all the geeky people are screaming about politics, doing things face to face and offline, or pushing their personal brand with lots of photos and videos on some giant company's servers.

[Jubal]

Some of us are screaming about politics and still doing the other stuff, in fairness

Thank you for the links! I wish I could spend time actually sewing things, but I lack the time and indeed the space to store a sewing machine and fabric rolls and I'm not sure how well my nerve-damaged hands would hold up to the job. Though conversely, actually buying this stuff is always costly. A conundrum :/

[dubsartur]

Sometimes in ancient history we can move the first attestation of something back almost 2000 years in one jump: like when the split tallies from Achaemenid Bactria (probably modern Afghanistan) were published.  Previously it had been thought that tally sticks were a medieval invention but there are other ancient references once they knew to look for them.

Henkelman, Wouter F. M. / Folmer, Margaretha L. (2016) "Your Tally is Full! On Wooden Credit Records in and after the Achaemenid Empire." In Kristin Kleber and Reinhard Pirngruber (eds.), Silver, Money and Credit: A Tribute to Robartus J. van der Spek on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (NINO: Leiden) pp. 133–239 https://www.academia.edu/28154769/Your_tally_is_full_Credit_records_in_and_after_the_Achaemenid_empire

[dubsartur]

In 2015, they discovered that the temple of Kukulcan in Chichén Itzá has a friggin' cenote for foundations  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300348163

[dubsartur]

Prof. Dr. Martin Rundkvist in Sweden is live-blogging his excavations of the platform mound at Aska, Östergötland, Sweden https://aardvarchaeology.wordpress.com/category/fieldwork/ (his birdsite has a Swedish version but the blog has weekly updates)

[Jubal]

Not sure if this is really history or science, but it's interesting either way - the 1940s British design for a space-suit which was never used (and might well not have worked) but someone did build one more recently. And whatever its actual capabilities, it looks *fantastic*. It even has a cape!



More info at:
https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/the-bis-lunar-spacesuit/

[Tusky]

That is amazing. I like the helmet especially.

It looks like something a scifi costume designer might have come up with!

[dubsartur]

Fake History Hunter has a pretty good list of myths about the middle ages, its a little bit 'web research based' and I can't find an "about the author" but his / her / their answers look OK https://fakehistoryhunter.wordpress.com/2019/09/10/medieval-myths-bingo/

[dubsartur]

On a lighter note, Rejected Princesses has an Armenian folk-tale about Queen Anahit. 

Edit: And wow, the creator seems to have been having a rough time with some of the things which are portugaled-up about social media culture and US un-portugalling-society culture.

[DeepCandle Games]

Not sure if this is really history or science, but it's interesting either way - the 1940s British design for a space-suit which was never used (and might well not have worked) but someone did build one more recently. And whatever its actual capabilities, it looks *fantastic*. It even has a cape!



More info at:
https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/the-bis-lunar-spacesuit/

As a realist (for thematic reasons on this post) I say meh

but as a warhammer fan GIB NOW

[dubsartur]

Speaking of '40s technology, the tank museum in Bovington, UK has a cheerful video on the history of their Tiger-I, number 131, and how amateur scholarship, oral history, and archival research let them correct the story of how and by whom it was disabled (a round hit the junction between turret and ring and the crew bailed out).