Romans are quite fascinating, with their mass-produced goods and their incredible logistical shenanigans like aquaeducts and streets. They are also... weird. In a way, at least - they'd probably consider us modern people at least as weird as we see them, if not more so.

But on to the Roman links showing both their ingenuity and their weirdness: Roman concrete, especially that for under-water use, has long been a thing to wonder about, as it just stays strong and strong, not corroding or decaying in conditions where modern concrete would have long given up. Now, it seems, the question why this is possible has been solved. It actually is corroding - but in a way that makes it stronger. Here's an article from the Guardian giving you details.

In the atlasobscura, you can read about clay instead of concrete. Specially shaped clay - the Romans had pottery jars just for the purpose of fattening dormice, which they would then eat as a delicacy.

Well. Probably not weirder than drinking coffee that has been shat out by civets. Or eating putterfish.

Birka is a rather well-known find place for quite a few textiles, including tablet-woven bands, and a frequently cited resource. The publications are not the newest, and in this case, it's in our favour - they are old enough to be offered as pdf files, for free, on the site of Historiska.se, the Swedish history museum.

You can find the Birka publications here, and if you have a bit of time, also check out their English homepage - which even features a test where you can find out which character from the Norse mythology you might be. (It tells me I'm Skadi... and something about me not minding deadlines, because I'm already done when they approach. Ah, if only.)

Time for a post about interesting things, some of which you can participate in!

If you are in the Southampton area, there's a project about dexterity in flintknapping:With motion capture. How cool is that!

If you're more on the other side of the globe, there's the meeting of the Society for the History of Technology October 26-29, where there's a session about textiles and early industrialisation in planning. You can read more about the Society and their conference here.

There's also a conference about "Embellished Fabrics: Conserving Surface Manipulation & Decoration." It is the 11th North American Textile Conservation Conference, taking place in Mexico City, Mexico, November 6-11, 2017. The website is www.natcconference.com, and it will provide more information in case you're interested.

And another conference, this time in Poland, in June: Dynamics and Organisation of Textile Production in past societies in Europe and the Mediterranean. International Conference, Łódź, 21-22 June, 2017. The preliminary programme looks really nice and interesting!

For those of you who understand German (or for the adventurous of you who don't), there's a TV show where one guy participates in a club for one day, looking at the stuff people do in their spare time... and one of the clubs is a Living History group. You can watch the half-hour show here.

Some more interesting things - Jim Hines has done a survey about novelist's incomes. So if you've ever wondered whether writing a novel will make you rich, you might want to read his long, really interesting multi-part blogpost, starting with part 1 right here.

In 2011, a tunic was discovered in a Norwegian Glacier, and it has since been reconstructed. You can read a bit about the reconstruction and watch a video here. (I'm not totally happy with the spinning part of the video, as you might guess when watching it...)

And that's it for today. Hope you find something you enjoy among these!

The sun is shining, it's cold outside, and here are things from around the Internet!

There's a project on indiegogo to get a Mini-Mill from Canada all the way to Iceland, to spin the wool from local sheep into nice yarn. You can support that project starting with a 4 USD donation, and there are multiple perks to get hand-picked wool or yarns. So if you are looking for some really special fibre or yarn... you might find it just there.

Hugo Nomination Season is upon us, and will run until March 17. While I am, as usually, abysmally behind in reading current stuff, I do intend to nominate at least a few things. EscapePod, for one thing - and since there's some more spinning hours in the weeks ahead, I think I might find one or two more stories from 2016. In the "Best Related Work" category, Gillian Polack's "History and Fiction" is actually eligible... and I hope to find some more exciting stuff before the deadline. Hints about books and short stories published in 2016 that blew you away are utterly welcome!

While we're on the topic of reading, Aarhus Press Free Ebook of the month is "Elephants are not picked from trees", a book with stories about the taxidermied animals in Gothenburg National History museum.

Not free, but available again in digital version after they went out of print: past issues of Experimentelle Archäologie in Deutschland/Europa. You can have a look at the volumes on the EXAR website and click through the "buy" link to land on the publisher's homepage, where you can buy pdf downloads of individual articles from out of print volumes.

Aarhus University Press has another free e-book of the month that might be of interest for you: Things from the Town. Artefacts and Inhabitants in Viking-Age Kaupang.

It's a thick volume with its 485 pages, listing many different items. The official description for the book is this:

In this third volume deriving from the excavations of the Viking town of Kaupang of 2000-2003, a range of artefacts is presented along with a discussion of the town's inhabitants: their origins, activities and trading connexions. The main categories of artefact are metal jewellery and ornaments, gemstones, vessel glass, pottery, finds of soapstone, whetstones and textile-production equipment. The artefacts are described and dated, and their areas of origin discussed. The volume is lavishly illustrated.

There's a chapter about textile equipment which is mostly focused on spindle whorls, but it is not one of the most lavishly illustrated ones - and in fact, while the book does contain quite a few photos and drawings, they are not of very good quality, but rather strongly pixellated. Which is a pity, as the objects are really interesting.

I don't want to really complain though - it is still a free e-book with lots of information about finds from Kaupang, and having some more data about spindle whorls is never a bad thing!

Continuing from yesterday, for your amusement wants and procrastination needs - more links! To things!

The Atlantic has a piece about how the current incentives and structures make science worse, not better - The Inevitable Evolution of Bad Science.

Textilis has a post about Appliqué embroideries on medieval textiles.

If you're looking for a bit more to read, Isabella von Holstein's thesis "A light stable isotope (C, N, H, O) approach to identifying movement of medieval textiles in North West Europe" is available online here.

A Scottish lacemaking company is using modern computer technology to keep their looms running - CAD instead of punch cards.

If all that makes you want a sonic screwdriver, here's a knitting pattern for one. Functionality not guaranteed - unfortunately!

Can you guess what has accumulated during the last two weeks? Right. Links. Lots and lots of links about various topics... which means my browser has so many tabs open right now that it even scares me (and I'm nigh-undauntable by lots of open tabs).

So, here you go, in no particular order whatsoever:

A (short) history of pockets in women's clothing.

What archaeologists say about Trump's election. (Text of the post on Archaeologik is in German, but the links point to English pages.)

A 3D-Model of the medieval mikvah in London.

Aarhus Uni Press has Danish Medieval Castles as their free e-book of the month.

The Importance of Being Scared: An article about fairy tales and fear.

And that's it for today - more linky things tomorrow!