If you've been more than marginally interested in the epidemic called "Black Death" that wrought havoc on the population in the Middle Ages, you may have caught that there was a (sometimes quite heated, I gather) dispute about whether it was the Plague as we know it today, or something entirely else, or a mutation of the Plague, or a combination, or whatever. And I confess I was leaning towards "something else", too, just like a lot of other scholars.

But now they did it. You know, those archaeologists and other scientists? These guys that poke around in old stuff, messing around with our nice familiar concepts of history, dragging home old bones and potsherds and lumps of clay and textile and rusty metals? They did it. They found the DNA of the Bringer of Black Death.

And it's Yersinia Pestis.

Their research is published in an open-access peer reviewed journal (oh, we so need more of those), and you can read the whole article for yourself. Good old Yersinia. Wreaking documented havoc on mankind since 541.

On a modern textile blog (catering to industrial production mostly) you can find some facts about linen (drawn from a modern linen producer). The fact that is missing there is that while linen has very high tensile strength - which means you can hang a lot of weight from a thread - it is actually not very resistant against friction, wearing through relatively fast. Still, it's an interesting list.

If you're waiting to see the TARDIS in a cathedral, at least in a photo, go visit highlyeccentric's blog. I am officially stunned.

HistoriAnn and Notorious PhD blog about conference etiquette and the job of a panel commentator, respectively. If you're going to conferences or being in the danger of moderating/commenting a panel, I do recommend these posts and their discussion.

If you are wishing to learn about medieval beans and how to prepare a bean dish, go read Andreas' recounting of a cooking test run (he's giving a seminar in fall).

But if that all is not tickling your fancy, you can always hop over to the Yellow Press of Medievalist Studies* and learn about medieval flamethrowers. Yes, flamethrowers!

* I realise that this may be a bit harsh - but I get their RSS feed, and that is just what I sort of think when all the flashy titles pop up. Yes, I know that much of it is the scholar's own fault. Yes, I'm doing that myself. I discovered medievalists.net a while ago and was totally excited for a time, but learned soon that their offerings (as always, duh Katrin) has to be taken with some salt. It's a service that will dig up articles and stuff about the Middle Ages, but they are not a peer review organ, and there will be outdated or disputable papers on there. That said, I still like to get the feed, if only to learn about medieval flamethrowers once in a while. And now this footnote is almost getting longer than the rest of the post.

Of course the tax stuff was not finished without one or two revisions and double-checkings, and of course that took longer than expected.

And getting the book-keeping up to its current state also took a while - but I have finally found a few web resources that really helped me to understand some of the stuff I had just muddled through before. So, for those of you who are German and need to get some basic knowledge about how to do the books, I can recommend the introduction into bookkeeping offered by Collmex (which is software to do the stuff - not the software I use, but the booking processes are the same regardless of programme) and, for any additional questions, there's a forum called Rechnungswesenforum, where a lot of knowledgeable people hang out and are willing to help.

So while I did (of course) not get all of the stuff done that I wanted to get done yesterday, I learned a few things about the book wrangling that were really helpful - and will probably make life (and bookkeeping) easier in the future. Whew.

It is almost the end of May, which means that the deadline for German taxes is approaching - and that, in turn, means I am doing what all good Germans are doing now... which would be re-checking the bookkeeping, making final calculations, and filling out tax forms with all the maths that is involved with that.

And while I am here and happy that there are programmes to help me doing all the maths and calculations and listing and whatnot that needs to be done, in case you want something else to look at, here's a list of stuff that I wanted to pass on to you, accumulated during the last few days when things were busy here:



Textile History, Journal of the Pasold Research Fund Ltd' has digitized all back issues. You can find the contents of each issue at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/tex. There's also a free issue to look through (one from 2009) as well as a cumulative index. (h/t to MEDTC-list)

There's a conference "Developments in Dress History" planned for December 8-10 2011 in the University of Brighton, UK; the Call for Papers is open until August 1. You find more info about the conference and the full CfP here.

The Euregio Maas-Rhine has a project about the historical wool fabrication up and running - it's called the Wollroute (wool route). They have made videos to show the historic production places and tell some background info - in German, Dutch or French. If you don't understand any of these three, you will at least have nice pictures of wool and looms, so do check out their website www.wollroute.net.


Yale has made their digital collection available online, and it's free! They announced an Open Access policy this May, and now you can browse what they have via Discover Yale Digital Commons. (They have spindle whorls. And lots more.)


And finally... Crowd Funding has found its entrance into archaeology. A group of German students wants to try and make a T-shaped stone pillar, as it was used at Göbekli Tepe more than 11000 years ago. The pillar will be about 5 m high, 35 t heavy, and will be worked with only the materials and tools available back then. They have already done their preliminary experiments, and now they are looking to raise money for the real project this summer. The fundraising is done via mySherpa, a German-language site (and the project description is all German) - if you are interested in the project (or better still wish to support it), you can find their mySherpa site here. (In contrast to kickstarter.com, mySherpa requires you to pay upfront as soon as you declare your sponsorship; in case of underfunding of the project, they wire your money back.)


Go have fun with these links!

The moment has come - textile folks rejoice! Cathy stumbled across a new downloadable .pdf-publication on the Archaeology of York webpage, and this time, it's Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate by Penelope Walton Rogers. That book has been out of print for a good while, and I dimly remember checking its price once, years back, and deciding it was way too pricey for my student's budget.

Now it's available for free download! You will find the download page behind this link. Enjoy!

And now I'm returning you to your regularly scheduled reminder post...
It's May already, and the deadline for the Textile Forum is drawing closer.

So please do not forget to register if you would like to attend this year's European Textile Forum in Asparn an der Zaya, Austria. We are going to focus on linen and other vegetable fibres, and it does promise to be very, very interesting!

Nicely in tune with my wool spinning blog post yesterday, there's a link to an article on medievalists.net today - about medieval sheep farming.

I've only taken a short look at it yet, but it promises to be a very interesting read - a report based on data from pipe rolls:

The Winchester pipe rolls provide sufficient data to allow an examination of five areas of policy associated with medieval sheep farming. These are the provision of sires; the construction and maintenance of sheepcotes; the supply of feed to the sheep; the supply of medicaments and veterinary expertise; and the supply of labour devoted to the care and well-being of the flock.

(p. 140).

If you're interested, here's the medievalists.net page with the link to the .pdf file. The article is by Mark Page, published in Agricultural History Review 51:2 (2003), and called The Technology of sheep farming: some evidence from Crawley, Hampshire, 1208-1349.

While I'm getting back on track of work to do after taking yesterday as a day off - things like putting the workshop teaching stuff from the car back inside and where it belongs, writing emails and working a bit on all those other projects that want attention - here's a nice little video with typography that I, you know, thought you might like?


Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

I hope you enjoy it!

Or, if you prefer to have something with more archeological content, you can watch the videos about the Staffordshire Hoard conservation works, posted by the Birmingham museum. Here's the first one of their five videos (they have their own youtube channel).