My lovely colleague Mattis Hensch (who has the Schauhuette blog) has done it again and made a wonderful video-blog that is really worth watching. It's the first part of a time-lapse of how a skeleton is dug out.

The grave is in the choir of the previous church, a Romanesque building, of St. Vitus in Utzenhofen (Lkr. Amberg-Sulzbach). They have found a grave in the place where the altar would probably have been situated, and they are uncovering the skeleton now, hoping for some help in dating it.

The text is German, but you can watch it even if you don't understand the language - you will still see actual archaeological work. Click this link to see how it's done with trowel and vacuum cleaner!

There will be a second part of the excavation documentation coming up soon, and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of it.

Since the Dyeing Experiment at the Forum went so well, Heather Hopkins and I are considering to present it in Cardiff in January next year. Which means a trip to Cardiff - I've never been to Wales before, and being quite fond of Dr Who and Torchwood, this is even more of a reason to go there.

Today, though, the first (and actually most important) thing on my list is to wrap up the bookkeeping for the quarter and send off the VAT forms to the tax folks. Work I love... not, but sadly, it's necessary. (Good thing about it? Having to send off the forms forces me to keep the books up to date and well sorted.)

And while I'm sweating about little numbers black and red, you might enjoy this:

There is a digital charter archive sponsored by the DFG, online. I don't know how good the English translation of the page really is, but the charters are not English anyways... the database seems to be searchable, and they are working on expanding it with more items. Go see the "Virtuelles deutsches Urkundennetzwerk" if that sounds interesting to you.

Since I was speaking of Cardiff: The call for papers for the Experimental Archaeology Conference is still running, so if you want to participate, you have until November. More info is on their blogsite (I'd say website, but it runs on blog software).

Going to Cardiff = travel. Travel = interesting topic. Archaeologik has posted a picture of a medieval arterial road without firm surface, and I think it looks spectacular.

And finally, making access to unavailable and out-of-stock books possible seems to slowly spread - which is a totally wonderful thing! The book that I last heard about is this one:

Speaking of Gender Issues (and giving a different, less classical-gender-typical example), there's a female knight doing knight stuff over in the US. I stumbled across her when reading about the great tourney last weekend, on another blog, but she also has her own website.

Not only a "lady knight", she also works as stuntwoman, actress, and model. It really is very, very impressive, I think!

Sex and gender are topics that come up again and again in history, in archaeology... and in the blogosphere as well as in geekdom. There's a 19th century gender concept hidden in many, many pictures (including "snapshots" of some historical scenes rendered by artists for exhibitions and textbooks), and it's more than easy to fall into traps regarding pre-fixed gender concepts that still sit deep in our society.

I thought that we were, maybe, slowly moving away from all that. I hoped it, at least.

And then I stumbled across the pens. Pens, my friends, that are not normal pens, no. Not even normal biros. They are... "For Her Ball Point Pens". Yes, really. (Also available in the Big River Store, now with many more product reviews than when Regretsy first posted about the pens. If you have some time, go read them - they are hilarious.)

Can you believe it? Pens. For Her. Because females... yes, they are not supposed to use male pens. Imagine! Men's pens! Women! I can totally understand if someone has issues with bulky, thick pens. I have issues with bulky, thick pens, and I don't like to use them, but that's not because I am female, or because I have really small hands, but because I am a left-handed person. And this means I grip a pen very close to the tip for writing, and fine motor control for the specific motions of a left-handed person writing is much easier when the pen is slim.

I will now go on with my work, using the unisex laptop, unisex phone and non-gender-marked ballpoint pen. Life's butch.

A friend pointed me to the existence of a small book called "The Manly Art of Knitting", written by Dave Fougner. It seems to be available used only, and that to a steep price - 90+ USD from the Big River Store, at least.

However, for those of you just curious about the contents, like me, with no actual need to buy it, there's a very nice review on the Historic crafts blog. (They have since moved to a new location, here on blogspot, and it looks like a nice blog, but unfortunately with no new posts done during the last year.)

Anyways - manly art of knitting. The book appears to contain instructions on how to knit a hammock, among other things (I like that idea). A hammock would be just the thing to lie in during this summer heat we have here (though that would also mean we'd need two conveniently spaced trees... which are not to be had in our garden).

Other (not so manly) links - on Medieval Silkwork, there's a post about female undergarments in written sources.

And I should be working on my article now, the deadline is looming up...

You have of course heard about the Lengberg Underwear finds - Beatrix Nutz is still very active publishing them, and a new article in French is in "Histoire et Images Medievales" published this month.

Meanwhile, others are putting their own experience together with the new finds, such as Isis Sturtevagen, who has a very interesting article about medieval underwear on her blog.

In non-bra news, the first Call for Papers for the 2013 UK Experimental Archaeology Conference to be held at Cardiff University and St Fagans National History Museum, Cardiff, on 11 – 12 January 2013, is out. Information and the usual other stuff ; ) can be found at the conference blog/website.

And finally, and something totally different: There's a new archaeological dissertation blog online, about “Sámi circular offering sites – a comparative archaeological analysis”. It is a PhD project in archaeology by Marte Spangen, Stockholm University.
I think it's very nice that more and more PhD folks blog about their work!

I have been writing this blog here since December 8, 2008. I am trying hard to post something interesting each day - or at least to post something, preferably interesting. In those three-and-a-half years, I have not had a single guest post. I actually did all the 728 posts myself. If I copy-paste any content into this blog, it's something like a call for papers that gets sent out with the aim of being distributed to interested persons - and I like to help in that.

Which means that to any person taking more than a very, very casual glance at my blog, it should be quite clear that I am not going to do post exchanges or post advertisements. Yes, I will plug my own stuff (hey, it's my blog, after all) and I will praise other things that I am happy about - but not because I was asked to do so, but because I want to. Because I am convinced that there is something in high quality for a fair price. And I have never gotten any compensation for my plugs. (Most of the "you are so going to want this" posts are about free internet resources anyways.)

So. I still get the occasional "oh your blog is sooo coool please visit my site" comment spam (which I delete) and, about as rarely, a mail praising my blog with a standard set phrase and then the offer of either a link exchange or "guest posts" coming from that other site, or some money if I advertise for a product in my texts. Usually, I just ignore them. Sometimes when I feel like it, I will take a look at the site, laugh, and then delete the email. But this morning I received one of the guest post offer mails that didn't only (as usual) make it very obvious the person writing it had not taken a good proper look at my blog (though becoming a "fan" right away)... that person didn't even know the real topic of the post I was offered as a guest post, which did not fit in at all with my own focus.

So I finally took this opportunity of total incredulity on my part (really? you really think I will now believe anything your site hosts is well-researched?) and sent that person an answer mail... raising the offer. With picture of Wil Wheaton collating papers. (If you have never heard about that and get weird offers sometimes too, do click the link. If you haven't heard about it and don't get weird offers... oh, click it anyways. At least I think it's funny.)

Hah. Something I had wanted to do for ages. Who says weird soliciting mails are not good for anything?