Jim Hines has posted a long article about the Puppies in 2016, linked to the upcoming Hugo nominations. It looks like there might be less of a kerfuffle and less nastiness this year in the nominations and the voting - at least I hope so. In case you can nominate, or are just interested in current sf/f lit that is eligible, you can take a look at Hugo Recommendations, or jump right to the huge spreadsheet list of eligible nominees here.

In case you don't care about that stuff at all - here are links to cats doing Extreme Napping, and tiny cats sleeping, also thanks to Jim Hines. Our little cat does some napping at the moment, too, but it's not as spectacular...



Speaking of spectacular, though - there's been a mammoth find (literally!) that points towards a much earlier human activity in Arctic zones than previously thought. This also could include earlier human presence in North America.

Over at Ossamenta there are links to several opportunities - bursaries for attending the Association for Environmental Archaeology on the Orkneys, their research grant, plus a fully funded PhD in York about Mesolithic bone tools. Check out the blog post to learn more.

 
[caption id="attachment_2162" align="alignnone" width="640"] "French archaeologists at work 2015 Pompeii" by Jebulon - Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:French_archaeologists_at_work_2015_Pompeii.jpg#/media/File:French_archaeologists_at_work_2015_Pompeii.jpg


To me, Italy is the place where the Romans were, the place where culture had its heyday in Antiquity. The place where Things Happened that I had to learn about in school even though they happened in a country far to the South of Germany - because they were so important. (The founding of Rome. The Roman Empire. Latin. Well, that didn't happen, that was spoken, but it was a huge thing for a long time.)

So you'd think that a place like that would be proud of its heritage, right? And take good care of it, including the archaeological sites? Well. That would be nice, but unfortunately, it's not true.

The Italian Ministery of Cultural Heritage is planning to cancel the Archaeological Heritage Offices, through a reform that will impact Italian archaeology, including rescue archaeology. This is major bad news - if anything, Italian archaeology needs more funds, and more support, and more action. Case in point? Pompeii, the world-famous site, has been crumbling for years and is in ever more danger of falling apart completely.

As is usual today in cases like this, there's a petition going on at change.org to make the ministers re-think their decision. It's still fairly new, and thus still fairly small. Please help make a difference and help save Italian archaeology by signing, and spreading the word - thank you!

Doug is running a blogging archaeology carnival again - asking about the Grand Challenges of Archaeology, and I promised him an article. So here you go: these are the Grand Challenges to my archaeology.

First, and biggest, challenge for me? Logistics. Since I'm a freelancer, I have limits to how much money and how much time I can spend on a project. Whether that is a reconstruction project, an experiment, or an article, my ressources are limited. When I am really lucky, I get paid to do some research on a specific topic (or at least paid for a reconstruction project so I can cover part of the research time from that payment), but usually, it's on my own time and bank account.

There is, technically, the possibility to apply for grants, but since I've had few positive experiences with grants yet, and it is usually much easier to get them when you have a network based on a Uni, museum, or similar institution, I haven't spent a lot of time on applications recently. It boils down to time again, here - sometimes I have to struggle to keep up with all the absolutely necessary things like sending out orders, keeping the shop pages updated and conforming to the legal shenanigans the EU likes to toss at us, blogging and then doing the work on current projects. With that, I might not have the time or the energy left for much more.

This is just me, however - it's not directly related to archaeological textiles. One of the Great Challenges there, generally, is that there is so little data available. Textiles are very perishable, and conserving, analysing and publishing them is quite expensive (as it takes a really, really long time to microclean an archaeological textile, and analyse it, and thus it is a pricey thing), which means that by far not all textiles that are preserved are actually analysed and published. With finds that are not frequent in the first place, this does seriously cut down on our possibilities - and skews our understanding of how textiles looked, because the things that do get published are obviously the spectacular pieces.

A second Great Challenge? Terminology. This is a veritable quagmire. We have pictures, we have medieval terms, we have (very few) surviving textiles and garments... but we have no possibility, usually, to firmly link one clothing term to a type found or shown in the pictures. In addition, costuming history has traditionally taken specific old terms and uses them to address certain types of clothes or textiles, though this might be misleading, or even wrong. There's a German term, "Sendelbinde", that has been used with the meaning of "hood" or "chaperon", but the term is not medieval - it originates in early costume history, in the 19th century, and was first used to mean a hat band. If you're looking at stitches in sewing, there's so much variation in modern terms (and so much inaccuracy) even within a single language. It gets even worse when you try to translate things. At least this problem can be solved easily, even if it looks a little awkward, by inserting a schematic drawing in the article or paper, showing which stitch is meant by what term. The other problem is harder; for me, I'm solving it by trying to use modern, general terms for specific types of garments.

These are, for me, the biggest issues - a third one is the fact that it is not easy to find all the (small) publications about clothes, garment fragments, or textile finds, as they are typically written in the language of the country they were found in, and often published in small, hard-to-find journals or books with a small print run. But if we could conquer the problem of money and the problem of terminology, so much of textile or garment research would be made easier.

An excavation at Flag Fen Archaeology Park, near Peterborough, is yielding wonderful things (including textiles and such spectacularly unspectacular items as a spool of thread). The site is a wet preserved Bronze Age settlement, with outstanding preservation. And it gets even better (well, for the archaeologists, not for the settlers back then) - the two buildings caught fire and collapsed into the Fens so quickly that almost everything was left in situ - a little like Pompeii, earning the place the nickname of Peterborough Pompeii.

This includes said spool of thread and even pots that still contain food - which is an utterly major "wow" for any archaeologist or historian interested in food. I do hope there'll be results from an analysis soon, helping us get a much better idea of how a Bronze Age meal could have looked like. Isn't that wonderful?

 

Somehow catching up always takes longer than expected - so today I'm still trying to get back on track and sort out what has to happen, and how quickly it needs to be addressed. And since I was off the Internet for a good while (which helps me immensely to really relax), I don't even have a stack of linky goodness to give to you. There are only two things:

If you're interested in Speculative Fiction, you can find a post about Australian Spec Fic, written by women and published in 2015, over here.

Also, Doug is making another Archaeology Blogging Carnival, and I'm planning to take part in this. It's called The Grand Challenges for Archaeology... so you can expect a post regarding this in one of the next few days!

 

Somehow I have accumulated a whole stack of things that wait to be shared, and since the holidays are very close now, I'd better start sharing them right away...

First of all, there are two calls for papers, both for sessions at the EAA, or more precisely the 22nd Annual Meeting of the EAA in Vilnius 2016 (31st August – 4th September).
All relevant information about the EAA conference, conditions, fees, accommodation etc., can be found on the conference web page, http://eaavilnius2016.lt/:1. Conference and membership fees and conditions: http://eaavilnius2016.lt/registration-fees-and-conditions/2. Accommodation: http://eaavilnius2016.lt/registration-fees-and-conditions/ and http://www.vilnius-tourism.lt/en/information/accommodation/3. Guidelines for speakers and poster presentations: http://eaavilnius2016.lt/general-info/guidelines/4. Deadlines: http://eaavilnius2016.lt/general-info/deadlines/
Untold Stories: Technology, Linearity and Complexity in Archaeological Thought.

The material record naturally lends itself to long-term perspectives. In few areas is this as apparent as the study of technology, which has historically been closely intertwined with the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology. But has our focus on the long-term caused us to unwittingly shape a unilinear, technologically deterministic picture of the past? And is there something to be learnt from the parts of the story which have been pruned from this evolutionist model?

The papers presented in this session will explore examples of how our pattern-seeking approaches have excluded interesting aspects of the story of the relationship between humanity and technology, and the methods by which we can reinstate these. We argue in favour of complexity (but not as a rule); of the little details which can enrich or subvert archaeological grand narratives, while acknowledging that the latter are also an integral part of our discipline.

This session is intended to stimulate discussion of our current approaches to the archaeology of technology, and to consider ways in which they can be developed in order to inform broader theoretical and methodological developments.

The deadline for submissions is February 15. More info and abstract submission:  http://eaavilnius2016.lt/
And another session at the same conference:

TH1-13: ‘Tradition and innovation in textile technology in Bronze Age Europe and the Mediterranean’ has been provisionally accepted in the theme "Interpreting the Archaeological Record", and the call for proposals of papers and posters has now been opened.

Textile craft with its complex technology and socio-cultural significance has been a key craft in the societies of Bronze Age Europe and the Mediterranean. However complex and socially and economically important, textile technology has often been considered as being rather traditional and non-innovative throughout many centuries of the Bronze Age.
The present session aims to examine textile technology in search for its traditional and innovative elements, through investigating the evidence of archaeological textiles, textile tools and their diachronic changes, botanical and faunal environment, textual sources and imagery of textiles and cloths. The session will focus on the Bronze Age in Europe and the Mediterranean, although papers referring to transitional periods from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age, and from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age will also be welcomed.
We particularly welcome all papers discussing various aspects of traditions and innovations traced in textile technology, especially these regarding raw materials and their processing, textile techniques, textile tools and equipment, organisation of textile production and dynamics of its specialisations, cross-cultural and cross-craft interactions, and changes of textile craft in relation to socio-cultural transformations of the past societies.

All paper and poster proposals should be submitted electronically at: https://www.eventure-online.com/eventure/welcome.form?type=abstract&congress=152_EAA&c=bd4350a3-56f9-46d1-8d66-514d76e0eb3c by 15 February 2016.
EXARC invites to a meeting called Goals and perspectives for experimental archaeology and archaeological open-air museums, Leiden (NL), taking place March 10 to 13, 2016. More about the meeting can be found here.

In addition, there's a PhD project in Glasgow, with a spot for a student. The research project will develop nanoparticles for the treatment of textiles found in the Mary Rose. More about this and contact for application can be found at the Glasgow Textile Conservation blog.
And that's all conference and job links I have for now...

I spent this Saturday giving a long workshop, so today is destined to be non-busy, making up for the half-weekend. The cat, as usual, is happy to help relaxing by snoozing right at my feet (and also making it nearly impossible to move the chair).

For you who are busy, though, I have some links!

Apart from the famous Herjolfsnaes garments, there's another site with textile remains in Greenland, called Garden under Sandet. The fur finds from there have recently been analysed, and what was thought to be bison, muskox and bears have turned out to be horse and goat. The full article is up at Elsevier (paywall).

A video on Youtube shows several historic egg preservation techniques.

Finally, if you read German, Mathis from Schauhuette has posted a thoughtful piece about the payment and situation of private archaeology businesses in Germany.