The links have been piling up again, so here you go - a whole stack of them:

An article about the education of upper-class women in the Middle Ages - I found that very interesting.

Diachronic Design is a blog and webpage concentrating on computers in archaeology - there's not too much content yet, but it could be worthwhile to watch.

Pompeii is crumbling (German blog Archaeologik posts links to Italian articles about collapses).

Doug has done the roundup and synopsis of the (many!) answers to his first Blogging Archaeology Carnival, "Why do you blog".

In case you haven't seen the box-turns-something-else yet, here is the link. (I think this is way, way cool. The only question I have in regards to similar folding thingies is - where in hell do you put the mattress? You still have to store that somewhere, right? And it will be... bed-sized. So no actual space-saving takes place.)

The British Library has a medieval manuscripts blog, covering for example the marginalia of the Gorleston Psalter.

A very interesting post on sharing data: Archaeology and Github (over on Powered by Osteons).

And finally, a (German-language) repository and database of old cooking recipes, dated 1646 until the 20th century.

Enjoy!

I have found out about Doug's "Blogging Archaeology" carnival half a month ago, when that post was quite new. Now Rainer Schreg from Archaeologik (which is a mostly German blog) has joined in, bilangually. He has also condensed the basic info about that carnival beautifully:

At the SAA annual meeting 2014 in Texas there will be a Blogging Archaeology session. The weblog Doug's Archaeology by Doug Rocks-Macqueen contributes by hosting a blogging carnival (explained here). Each month leading up to the SAAs in April, Doug will post a question. Answers will be blogged at the individual blogs. At the end of each month, Doug will collect all posts and add their links.

The blogging topic for November: Why blogging? – Why did you, or if it was a group- the group, start a blog? Why are you still blogging?


Ever since I have read about the carnival, I was on the fence about it. Yes, I do have a blog, and I am an archaeologist, but I don't really see my blog here as a proper archaeology blog. But what the heck - I am going to join into the fun today, and I will let you (and Doug!) decide whether my blog is an archaeology blog - or not.

I started blogging back in 2008, December - the fifth blogiversary is almost upon me, can you believe it? When I started out, I had just finished my PhD thesis and was searching for a publishing house to take it on; I was starting out as a freelancer full-time, and I had no idea where my life would actually go. I was, however, already mostly out of the digging part of archaeology. (I loved the digs, but I tend to get knee issues when digging, and I knew years before that I did not want to do the actual digging forever.)

My (not-so-secret) plan was to regularly post things about archaeological textiles or garments and share things that I do, or find, including tips for computer gadgets, websites, books, and Calls for Paper. The blog was started because I had been reading blogs for a good while and just liked how people would share things and post excitingly interesting links, but it was also intended, right from the start, as a method of getting word about my work out there into the world - the work which happens to be connected, at least, to archaeology.
This blog saw my first bigger museum projects, as well as the birth of the Textile Forum. I have partly documented quite a few of my projects, and, as usual for blogs, started this or that blogging venture that soon tapered off into nothing (anyone remember the "all the gory details" venture? No? I'm glad you don't.). I have also used it to bleg, with varying success (mostly due to the very obscure things I was blegging for!) and have, according to plan, posted some things about medieval garments and other actually old things (tagged as "togs from bogs" even though they are not all bog finds).

Basically, the blog still does what I intended it to do, from the start - I share details (or vague allusions, in some cases) about my ongoing projects, I blog about conferences (mostly the CfPs, that is), occasionally about archaeological textiles, experimental archaeology or crafts, and there's a bit of self-promotion sprinkled in. There are not so many posts about ancient textiles as I had secretly hoped and planned to do, which is to the most part due to their taking up quite a lot of time. However, I still manage to blog most days, just like I planned from the start. There are blog-less days due to holidays, or conferences, or illnesses, but you get a post every weekday otherwise.
Just in case you wonder now why I planned on blogging Monday to Friday from the very beginning... that's because I was convinced that otherwise I would totally forget that it was Blog Day Today. Which I still am. And nothing is more frustrating than a blog you enjoy not posting at least from time to time, semi-regularly. So I made a decision to go for a daily post, even if just a short one, even if it would mean less really big and substantial posts due to time issues, because I personally would prefer having regular smaller updates to having very occasional bigger ones. And also, for me personally, if a blog only updates once in a blue moon, it needs to have really, really good and interesting posts to make me want to bother and check in on it from time to time.

I'm still blogging, obviously. I do it because I still think it's a good idea, and I hope what I have to say is helpful and interesting to readers - surely not every thing for every reader, but nobody manages that. So I blog on, even though sometimes it is hard to find the ideas, or something to blog about, or the motivation to add in those links and format those pictures. (Yes, sorry, I'm a lazy person in that respect.) The blogging in the morning (my morning, in case you are time-shifted) has become part of my daily routine, and I'd probably miss this. I would probably also miss having the blog as a good excuse to read other blogs and keep up with stuff and randomly click interesting links all because well, I need to have something to blog about, and maybe I could blog about that tomorrow?
When I have a bad day (or week), and I think about stopping the blog, I keep going because a) it would be stupid to have made all this investment of time and effort and good vibes into the blog just to stop because of a bad streak, and b) much more importantly, I hope that there are  people who would actually miss their regular read here, and the occasional useful link. Also, I still think defunct blogs are sad, and I don't want to add to the overall sadness of the Internet.

So there you have it. That's why I started blogging, and why I still keep on doing it.

Here you go, a little link salad, just for you:

The concept of Home in the age of the Internet: here.

German place names, in phonetic English, on a map (embedded in a German article): here.

Larsdatter's content index for the series "Medieval Textiles and Clothing": here.

The (now finished) project homepage of "Fashioning the Early Modern": here.

Joconde, the collections database and portal of French museums (in French, naturellement): here.

Otherwise, thank goodness it's Friday - this week was chock-full of work. It was nice, gratifying work for the most part, but that still means I am really looking forward to the weekend!

It's all grey, grey and foggy. We need to go and do grocery shopping. The cat is (as usual) sleeping on her bed beside my desk (which is, as usual, in dire need of some more order). There's a stack of smallish and semi-pleasant tasks that I have been putting off or not found the time for, such as marking and putting away fabric samples, or working my way through a stack of paper.

My main task for today, however, is to write - I need to finish putting something together regarding medieval dress accessories. I have coffee, I have books, I have the internet, so technically nothing is keeping me from opening up that file and writing.

While I am doing this, you could go on with your day - or you could have a rootle through the grey literature, project archives and theses of the archaeological data service. Grey literature, for those that do not know the term, is unpublished and usually hard-to-access documentation; the internet makes this much easier. So if you always wanted to read a fieldwork documentation of an archaeological dig - this is the place for you to go.

After two iterations of peer-review and lots and lots of prodding, re-writing, tweaking and polishing, I have received the good news: My article about the spinning experiment has been accepted by AAS. I have thus just transferred the copyright, in a version of an author contract that is quite... grabby. Another instance of academic publishing being different from "normal" publishing - but I'm happy to have gotten it off my desk, and out into the world. I will let you know once it's out!

For those of you who read German, there's a nice "protocol of a natural desaster" from the Middle Ages on tribur.de. Actually, it's not nice, it is quite tragic.

Also? There's a blog called The Archaeology of Tomb Raider.

It's getting more wintery (or maybe still late-autumny) here, with fog in the morning and quite cold temperatures at night. Something outside seems to have changed for the cat, too - not just the weather, though. She's been all on edge these last few days, and this morning she even preferred her litter box to the garden flower beds, refusing to go out at all. We suspect there's a new cat in the neighborhood and they are on less-than-friendly terms. We have not discovered the culprit yet, though.

Speaking of discovery - I have re-discovered Doug's Archaeology Blog this morning, and this time I have added it to my reading list straight away. It's a lovely blog with lots of links and content and thoughtful articles, and if you are interested in behind-the-trowel archaeology (as in not only what is dug up, but who is doing it), I can heartily recommend it.

Another blog that looks like a fun read, with behind-the-scenes stuff: Powered by Osteons. Including critical (well, science-critical) reviews of Bones, should you be interested in that.

Final link for today - in case you have been looking for a database to work with in your excavation projects, you might want to take a look at this one. The IADB promises to be helpful with your documentation and research, up to and including the analysis of the finished excavation. (I guess you still have to do the work yourself, though...)

 First of all, if you've waited for your blog post much longer than usual yesterday, I'm sorry - seems that the blog did its glitchy thing again. That's the thing when I click "Publish" and it looks like it does, and everything is fine and dandy, but the post is in fact happily hanging out with the other drafts, unseen by the world.

And now: Time for some unrestrained linking around again!

Over at Archaeologik, there's a (German-language) post about a new-ish book called "Europe invents the Gypsies". The book came out in 2011, and this year it won a price. There are a few English links under that post, too, shedding light on the still rampant prejudice and stereotype about Roma.

If you are interested in reenactment as the re-enacting of conflicts, there's a blog called "Historically Speaking" that might be of interest to you. Myself, I'm more a living history person, but still find it quite interesting to hear some more about reenactment now and then.

Notorious Ph.D. writes about the "History Girls" piece that was published in the Daily Mail. It's Ye Olde Gender Issues, but Notorious has a really nice way of adressing that stuff. I enjoyed her article, anyway.

Have you ever thought about learning Finnish? If you have, you might want to laugh at this. Here, on the same blog, is an explanation why it looks like it looks. And if you'd like to try some Finnish humour without learning the language first, take a look at depressing finland.

As the Finale of the Linking Aimlessly Installation of today: beautiful double-face weaving, by Ellen Harlizius-Klück (text in German).