Somehow, these last few hours of the morning have slipped by without me really noticing it. If you saw the person who stole them, please let me know so I can get them back!

And now for your more-or-less random news: The cat is lying right beside me, sleeping. She has a slighly higher need for cuddles and closeness to her humans since we spent the last weekend away, so she wanted her nap close to me.

The garden is exploding into spring growth, with the roses sprouting stems and leaves. The tulips are nearing the end of their bloom cycle, but the lily-of-the-valley is taking up the baton, joining the forget-me-nots and strawberries. The pansies have been blooming for ages anyways, as have the dead-nettles... so the garden is looking quite full of flowers. So full, in fact, that I had to clear space to plant the tomatoes that I set out yesterday!

The internet has also been exploding into spring growth, or so it seems to me. There's lots of stuff to spend some time watching or reading, for example this:



Or, if you prefer reading, Sarah Goslee of the stringpage blogged a link to out-of-print publications put online by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, freely available to read and download. There's 371 publications available as of today, and Sarah has picked out a few of interest already, so visit her place for direct links.

And finally, if you are tired after all this reading and watching, here is something guaranteed to shock you awake: Google Earth pictures used to record looting at Apamaea, Syria, over the course of less than one year. Looting, my friends, is evil. EVIL.

From my large-ish stack of tabs open to remind me of interesting things to blog about, here are some more links:

A study shows that the global cooling trend reversed in the 19th century. Industrial revolution, anyone? The NY Times/dotearth also covers this topic. With colourful charts.

There is a conference "Archäologie und Paläogenetik" in Erlangen, starting the day after tomorrow (May 9 - May 13), for those of you German speaking and in the region (or willing to travel). There's also an open evening lecture on May 10. More info? Go to the DGUF website.

I have been telling people about the job offers board at H-Soz-u-Kult for ages - and now there seems to be another board posting job offers for academics, including archaeologists and historians.
There's also a job offer for a textile conservator open in South Central Pennsylvania, just north of Gettysburg, about 1.5 - 2 hours from DC, 1.5 hours from Baltimore, and 2 hours from Center City Philadelphia. The job seems to be work as a conservator for an antiques dealer specialising in flags - if you are interested, email me and I will pass on the mail.

And finally, if all this has made you hungry: A 12th century manuscript including recipes has been found.  Isn't that nice?

We're talking about something more exciting than learning normal, modern-day English here, of course. We're talking about... Middle English.

My grasp of that language is, well, middling at best, and reading Chaucer for any length much longer than a tweet is quite demanding on my brain. My excuse is, of course, that I am a) an archaeologist and b) English isn't even my native language.

If you would like to learn Middle English, there's a METRO for you. That is short for Middle English Teaching Resources Online and something like a virtual classroom where you can learn how to read (and read aloud) texts from Chaucer, the Wakefield Plays or the Gawain-Poet. And even if you are not planning to learn this slightly outdated language, you can enjoy a few audio snippets from their site.

Just in case that you have now gotten totally hooked on that radiocarbon stuff, here are two more links:

First, a database listing 14C-dates from Slovakia, Czechia and neighbouring countries. There's about 860 dates in there already, with more to come, and the database can be downloaded as MS Access file.

If you ever come across uncalibrated radiocarbon dates given as "xxxx BP", it's not just a matter of doing the maths back from 1950 (the "present"). Radiocarbon content in the atmosphere did vary, and science is working on making even better calibration curves to get the dates correct. So instead of whipping out the calculator and getting a date with an offset, you can go here and have OxCal calibrate it for you.

Palgrave Macmillan is offering free access to all its journals for the whole month of April. Their journal range includes "postmedieval" as the journal of interest for medievalists. Access is free for the current year as well as the last four years of the archives ("where the archives allow", they say on their info page).

The free access scheme requires setting up a trial account. The whole scheme seems to be geared towards librarians, but not limited to them. So sign up and enjoy postmedieval! (Or economics journals, if you feel so inclined.)

The maiden voyage of the Bronze Age boat has taken place, and you can watch a video of very happy people paddling right here:



Apparently, they named her Morgawr. There's also a summary video including a few scenes from the launch and maiden voyage, called "We Made a Boat", on their playlist.


And now we will hop to the far future (to be precise, to post-medievalism) because Palgrave is offering one issue of Postmedieval, the journal, for free. They sound... interesting. Go have a look.