You all know what to think of archaeologists, right? We are the brothers and sisters of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft... not.

When I was still studying, one of the colleagues explained to us about the public image of archaeology, about the problems with bad press (or not-easy-to-understand press), and how to deal with press people and journalists. What I remember from that as the most important lesson is: It's not the journalist's job to learn about archaeology. It is your job, as the interviewed archaeologist, to give the journalist correct and concise information, in a way that he or she can easily use it for the piece. That was highly helpful!

If you want an in-depth treatment of the topic, you are in luck: Doug has written a multi-part blog post about archaeology and journalism, and I highly recommend reading it if you are in any contact with press people or journalists, even if you are not an archaeologist. Go read part I of Archaeology and the Press right now.

(To top things off, he's also posting about Archaeology Publishing at the moment, another series of posts... also very informative.)

Want to see the oldest bottle of wine? You find it here.

If you are rather looking for about 1.5 kg of chocolate turned into an anatomically correct replica of a human skull, look no further.

Speaking of skulls, Dread Pirate Roberts' Favourite Winter Hat is currently being test-knit by a group of lovely folks over at Ravelry. I hope to have it available as a pattern soon - and will take it to LonCon, too.

Other not so nice news regarding SFF: Marion Zimmer Bradley had a dark side, protecting her child-abusing husband as well as molesting herself. Jim C. Hines has a blog post about this, with further links.

Sometimes (though not very often, I'm afraid) it's enough to complain about something to make it go away. As apparently the blogfeed problem did - I came back to a properly working feed this morning, with a stack of interesting bits and pieces. Most of them are German, though - still, you might want to take a look at the pictures.

Rainer Schreg blogs about a mikwah in Venlo that turns out not to have been a mikwah, and the long story behind it. It's real drama, archaeology-wise - complete with "input from experts" that was never given by these people. (Text German, most of the links Dutch)

Schauhuette publishes 14C-Dates from early medieval graves in the Amberg-Sulzbach area. (German, but if you want to see a photo of a nicely dug early medieval skeleton, go there anyways.)

Finally, from the V&A: Rapid Form Mannequins. This is a really, really cool idea - unfortunately it's (still) quite difficult to make. But who knows? Maybe this will be the norm in a few years?

... that castrated sheep were prized for their wool growth? I didn't, until very recently, when I found this blog post at ossamenta. I stumbled across that blog through the Blogging Archaeology Carnival, by the way.

Also, you may or may not have heard about the treasure found in Vienna Wiener Neustadt (south of Vienna) - it has now been published, and you can take a peek into the book (in Geman) and order it here. For those of you who don't read German but are curious, there are several pictures of pieces from the treasure on that page (listed under "Bilder"). The treasure is a spectacular find from the Late Middle Ages, found by chance in Vienna Wiener Neustadt (the ground's owner was digging a pond in his garden), and it's been analysed and researched and published by a team of experts for three years - among them one study colleague of mine.

(Ahem, I didn't realise it was not Vienna in my original post. I now know better. Also thanks to Michaela, I now know that the treasure is on display until November 2014 at Asparn an der Zaya.)

A few days ago, I stumbled across a Past Horizon article about a new find of a Viking age figurine, showing a woman in full dress (or at least dressed). I took a look, marked it for looking at it again a little later, and planned on blogging about it, with maybe the inclusion of some thoughts about the dress and its possible interpretation.

Well, you know how some problems solve themselves with waiting? Cathy from Loose Threads has beaten me to it, and posts in detail about the figurine and the difficulties of interpretation of its dress. So I will just point you at her blog, for now. And say that I totally agree with what she writes: The figurine throws up more questions than it answers, and that is frustrating and fascinating at the same time.

Welcome again to the world of textile archaeology.

The cat is sleeping beside me, and I am working my way through a gazillion and a half of (nice) emails, the sun is shining, I have Chai and chocolate cake for breakfast. There is gorgeous cloth waiting for me to work on a little later, preferably while sitting in the sunny wintergarden. Can a work week start in a nicer way?

While I am nicely swamped in work, you will get some links.

Here is a blog post about the adventures of an archaeological artefact after excavation. 

Oberösterreich (in Austria, obviously) has a database of archaeological sites, partly with find lists, which is still expanding. I'm hoping they will eventually include individual finds too.

If "Catal Höyük" rings a bell for you, the blog "Castles and Coprolites" might not only amuse you with its title, but also with the poem "Lady of the höyük".

Finally, a really amazing modern fashion dress, showing an old painting recreated as embroidery: Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach, painted in the early 16th century.

I've barely started on the current big project, and first complications have already arisen, hooray - there is an issue with the fabrics I had planned to order. If I am lucky, I can get very similar replacements for them. If not... well. We shall see. At least it starts out quite, quite interesting.

There are bits and pieces I can get started on, though, and I am firmly planning to do so today, with just one single other point on my agenda.

(Sorry for the vagueness - if things work out, I'm planning to de-vague it soon, and you will be along for the ride.)

So while I'm feeling a little torn about how things will work, here are some scattered random links for you.

The Yarn Harlot writes about a baby sweater, and how only love could buy it. Yes. This. (Fits right in with the Fair Prices stuff that I blatantly plugged again yesterday.)

If you read German, Archaeologik posts about an excavation of a modern ceramic firing pit (pit was courtesy of a school project). If you don't read German, there's piccies.

Random fact of the day: I'm still doing yoga. My standard go-to site is doyogawithme.com, which I still highly recommend. There are pay-for sites that are by far not as nice as that one. And online yoga is a business with quite a bit of money to be made, as noticed by a company called YogaGlo... who have, apparently, patented a certain layout of the room for video classes.
This has led to hubbub and kerfluffle with the other yoga class sites, among them Yoga International. How is that interesting for you, you ask? Go read their open letter - and then you might want to enjoy their offer of all their classes for free (offer stands with undisclosed end time, but probably not forever).