Latest Comments

Guest - Katrin Sprang Discussion
18 September 2026
Hi Rachel, I have looked for more photos of you, but that was not very successful. I found a link on...
Guest - Beatrix Sprang Discussion
15 September 2026
That lozenge pattern element is not a photograph, but a scan. So it should be to scale. But I pinned...
Guest - Katrin Sprang Discussion
15 September 2026
I was not referring to Rachel's reconstruction (is the reconstruction you refer to the one photograp...
Guest - Beatrix Sprang Discussion
14 September 2026
There is something Rachel did not mention. She told me: "Well, I worked with the measurements we too...
Guest - Katrin Sprang Discussion
14 September 2026
Well, this is certainly developing into an interesting discussion. Firstly, going from that lovely l...
AUG
17
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If you don't know where to put your old ship...

... maybe do like some medieval folks in Konstanz. Use it as ceiling in your house.

I'm not pulling your leg - that's the new and kind of sensational find recently made: A basement ceiling that can be dated to 1244 mostly consists of part of a ship. There's not so much detail to be found on the 'net yet, but if you read German, there's a little bit here at the SWR page

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JUL
14
0

Summer Break!

It's time for a summer break!

I will be off the blog until August 17. If you wish to see me in the meantime, you can come to the Archaeotechnica in Brandenburg, where I'll be taking a break from the break and work for a weekend.


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JUL
09
0

Chocolate, only in not so tasty.

Chocolate was, apparently, always a thing for the military. There was Pervitin laced into pralinés dubbed "Hausfrauenschokolade" (housewife chocolate), and it was also mixed into chocolate bars as "Panzerschokolade" (tank chocolate). And in case you are wondering now what that Pervitin brand name stands for - it's meth. (Yeah.)

A different kind of chocolate, also for military use, but not used as a drug delivery agent, was the D ration chocolate bar. That is, well, mostly harmless or so it seems, and if you are intrigued now, Tasting History has a podcast about it:

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JUL
08
0

Aaand...learning new stuff.

Well, turns out I should have caught up a bit earlier on this new-fangled e-invoice thing, because, as it turns out, handing an invoice into the federal state of Baden-Württemberg (and probably the others these days, too) requires formatting it as a nice, sleek, validated e-invoice.

So. There I am. Fortunately I am using a lovely book-keeping programme that is able to whip up such invoices. Not so fortunately is that it is Neuland, as Germans would say, to me and I have to figure out all the bits and pieces that have to go in there (and are still missing). 

It's on the way, though. And then at least I'll know more about this stuff, because it will probably not be the last thing I deliver to some public or state institution. At least I hope so! 

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JUL
07
0

The Data Protection Smurf.

So. I have a new video cookie thingummy gadget that makes you agree to Youtube cookies, but it is not yet working everywhere... only on the main site. The blog with all its videos still needs a solution, and that either means some database roughhousing and then some code kicking, or finding a different plugin (meh), or maybe getting some solution from the blog software maker.

For now, I will be waiting to see what said blog software maker will say; I also have a vague idea about how the kicking and roughhousing might be done, though I do prefer to, um, not do it.

(All this because the Data Protection Smurf wants you to know that youtube, aka google, will get your data, and wants you to agree, and because I do not want to pester you with some "agree to these cookies" thing only - and only! - because you might watch youtube. Because, in case you have not noticed yet... this site only uses essential stuff, and thus you don't need to do this banner-clicky-thing.)

Which means... there's fewer and fewer extensions or solutions that need to be dealt with. A few more are outstanding related to the shop, but I might  be able to do without them, and then there's the small issue of the template, which is not really suited to the next version, and I would like to have something more robust and with less extra code anyways. 

Otherwise... yeah.

I also have done some foot measurements for a planned exhibition that involves, you have guessed it, shoes. All the other things will still have to be done, too, but starting from the bottom, that was the top thing on the agenda. (It was a little weird since that is, for a change, not a rock-solid hard plastic figurine, but one with a little more malleability. I am really not used to that!)

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JUL
06
0

Slowly crawling on...

The website stuff is progressing slowly and, of course, eating up more time than it was planned to feed to it. But, well, at least there's progress. Then I finally did some of the promised reading, and it's almost done as well, so tomorrow should be sort-of-back to normal (as in doing shop stuff, writing an outstanding invoice, and going back to work on some other project prep).

Weather outside is still warm, though not insanely hot - that is, unfortunately, promised to come next week, or already end of this week, and nobody knows how quickly it will happen and how hot it will get. So our plans for doing a bit of holiday stuff might have to be amended to allow for the weather.  

The Little Cat seems to have recovered a bit. She's now getting a special nice (pleasantly-to-her-nose) stinky mussel powder that is supposed to help with bladder health. We will see!

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JUN
30
0

Hedgehog!

No, not the video yet, I'm sorry. But you do get a screenshot... 

...and you only get this for a blog post today, because I was at a nice presentation with lunch afterwards, and the rest of the day slipped into this and that and now I'm sending out the info about the Textile Forum registration being online. Hooray! 

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