Again assorted links for your convenience and delectation!

A Commonplace Book has compiled pictures of late medieval felt hats from illuminations.

Powered by Osteons hosts the Roman Bioarchaeology Carnival. With cool links (where did Roman babies poop?)

There's a German online course about the Hanse, Lübeck, and Archaeology - ten videos, made with archaeologists, all free.

Finally, ancient flatbread recipes reconstructed from burial site evidence.

That's it for now - and actually also for the next few days, since I will be at Herzberg from tomorrow until Sunday. Regular blogging will resume on Monday.

The cat, sleeping contentedly beside my desk again (lucky cat) just looked at me a minute ago, slightly confused. The reason for that? This video:




(Sorry for the facebook-link - I'd have preferred to link the video directly, but could not figure out how to do that.)

I laughed so hard I had to cry. Which, in turn, made the cat stare at me. (Weird humans.)

In other news: the library at Erlangen has digitised manuscripts available online, I have a medieval event coming up, I've finally managed to re-stock my beeswax pieces, and am planning to fire a batch of spindle whorls the coming weekend.

Also it finally rained during the last two days - finally! The garden was really parched, so it was high time. (The lawn outside has been in crunchy summer edition mode for a few weeks now, and as usual, it will recover - but the strawberries and tomatoes and flowers don't take the heat and drought so well.)

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?

When I started out with this blog, it was an easy way to keep track of the blogs I follow (quite a list, actually) and post. Including the possibility to schedule pre-written posts.

Then, a good while ago by now, hitting that "publish" button did not always work. You might remember a few posts coming up belatedly, or a day late, if you are a regular reader here. In these cases, there was usually a notice saying "An error occurred while trying to save or publish your post. Please try again." but not always. No notice, no re-try. No re-try, no published post. But well, that's something I could live with. The worst... it's yet to come.

Over time, I have come to rely on the reading list of the blogs I follow showing up the newest posts of each blog, so I'd scroll through and see very quickly who had posted about what, and whether I might want to click over there and read the full piece. From time to time, this list appeared empty, which was fixed upon reloading. No pain.

For the last 4 or 5 days, though, I get to see one post. One. And clicking the "view more" at the bottom does... nothing. This irks me, and makes me wonder whether it might be time to look for another blogging solution. (The list of other blogs is one of my very cherished and valuable resources to find something bloggable on days when I have nothing bloggable on hand, and it saved me many a time. So it's not just a little convenience - it has grown to be a blogging tool for me.)

I won't be looking into it right away, though - there are two papers to finish, and other stuff to plan and prepare (the next market, for instance). Plus the weather here is making me sleepy. (The cat taking her morning nap RIGHT BESIDE ME does not help at all, by the way. Couldn't she channel my sleepiness and just nap it away for me, too? She stubbornly refuses to do that. Something about having to get her own 12 hours of nap-time in per day or so, I suppose.)

It's extremely hot around here - too hot for the season, actually, both Bamberg and Erlangen scored new heat records for June yesterday. And today? We're in for another very hot day, so very soon I will close all the doors and windows to keep as much of the morning cool inside and leave the heat outside.

The heat is one of the reasons we did not do much during the long weekend - and I think everybody was happy that yesterday was a public holiday, it was certainly much too hot to work. It's warm enough to have switched from drinking tea, mostly, to my favourite summer drink, based on something I had in a pub once that they called "thai lemonade". The original consisted of mostly water with fresh ginger, fresh lemongrass, mint leaves and lime juice, with some sugar to round off the taste. I'm unfortunately lacking proper fresh lemongrass and I usually skip the sugar, but if you are looking for a refreshing summer drink - just get those ingredients, throw them into a carafe, fill with cold water and let it stand for a bit. If you prefer mint with other tastes, some sprigs of mint and a small handful of crushed raspberries will also give a nice flavour to a 2-litre carafe of water. (Probably works with strawberries too, but I don't have the self-control at this time of year to put them into a water jug... I eat them. All.)


And if you are looking for something to read along with your drink, I have recently been waylaid by some articles at phys.org. They have stuff about sheep genome. And horse gaits. Plus a plethora of other interesting articles.

If you'd rather read something older, you can head over to the British Library website - the Simeon manuscript has been digitised.

There's things that digital books will never be able to do. The hefty feel of a book's weight in your hands, the neat rows of books standing in a shelf, the smell of printer's ink and paper, the beauty of a well-executed binding.

The way a well-loved, often-used book falls open at favourite passages. The little scars and blemishes and tiny drops of tea and tomato sauce that attest to a book's being so captivating that you had to keep reading even while eating. The fact that you can glance at where you are in that book and get a little sad that you are already halfway through... Books, real, physical books are a wonderful thing.

However, that's regarding modern books. Books that are in print, and that you can get easily. For manuscripts, though, I will sing a different tune: Manuscripts are rare, and precious, and hard to gain access to, so I am happy for every single one that gets digitised and put online.

Such as the Stuttgarter Psalter. Or the Utrecht Psalter. (You can even download the latter as .pdf, which is just wonderful.) The Codex Manesse (also downloadable).

In case you are wondering why this comes up now (again) - I am leafing through manuscripts looking for depictions of spinning women (or men, I'll take them just as gladly) from before the 13th century. Any hints, links or pictures are more than welcome!

If you've ever wondered whether to take up a career in academia or go drug dealing instead, you might want to read this article about how Academia resembles a Drug Gang (h/t to Archaeologik).

Or you can read digitised journal (old ones, mostly, and in German) at the Unibib Jena. (They also have "Alt-Thüringen", which may be of interest if you are archaeologically inclined.) I haven't really found out what they all have, yet - but I thoroughly appreciate the rising number of digitised things.

Speaking of which, you can leaf through the entirety of some cool and interesting books, including the original manuscript of Alice's Adventures, the Lindisfarne Gospels, and many more if you go here. Thank you, British Library!