If you're interested in medieval gold threads, there's a zoom talk at/from Yale University on Friday, April 2:

Department of the History of Art, Yale University, Medieval-Renaissance Forum: Gold on the Move. The Mongol Impact on 13th and 14th century Asian and Mediterranean Textiles.

It's at 12:00 pm Yale time, and if I did my time conversion correctly, that corresponds to 18:00 h German time. Which is a very reasonable time to listen to a talk!

These are crazy times. Crazy, with a capital C, or maybe with all capital letters. But anyway, even though it's all crazy, and even though we don't know how things will develop from now onwards (at least not in the medium run, it's pretty clear what will happen here in Germany in the next two or three weeks), a bit of optimism might be what we all need.

So. I'm very, very excited to announce that we will try to have a European Textile Forum this year! If all goes well enough, we will meet in Tilff-Méry, Belgium, from August 9 to August 15.

Our focus topic this year will be "Sticks and Stones May Make a Loom", and we will explore weaving techniques and possibilities on "primitive" looms during the Forum week.



If you're a weaver, or a researcher, and that sounds interesting for you, you can find out more about it on textileforum.org, where there's the Call for Papers and the registration form online now.

It's a little short notice, but better late than never: There will be a conference online about prehistoric textiles next week, on February 24 and 25. There will be talks in German and English; topics range from textile imprints on pots to the fabrication of early textiles from bast and other materials - you can see the whole programme here, and register in the same place in case you want to attend the conference.

It sounds really interesting even though it's way out of my usual time zone!

 

Somehow, today feels like Friday! Which has absolutely nothing to do with the proper content of this blog post... which is:

Around the World in 80 Experiments!

EXARC is hosting the Experimental Archaeology Conference with this title, starting March 29 and ending April 1 (no April fool joke).



Also no joke: It's open access, and completely free. You can find out more about the conference programme here, and register for it here.

... and even though it's virtual, I'm not there. If only because I heard about it too late - apparently, there was a very quick, very large rush of people registering for the conference, and the organisers had to cap it due to bandwith and virtual logistics limits.

Which, I think, is a very good thing - it does show that virtual conferences can be a thing, and maybe we'll have more of that in the future. I definitely hope so.

That said, there's a few free things on the programme, and you might want to check it out here - things are marked "open to the public" if you can get access without a IMC registration. Check the performances and tours & exhibitions parts if there's anything of interest for you!

The U of Leeds also posted this article about 8 ways to get a cultural fix back in April.

I spent a wonderful weekend, here at home and at the same time virtually at Lauresham, learining a lot about draft cattle, hearing about the pit houses, and connecting with a lot of fellow experimental archaeology people via Discord. That was definitely the first conference where I was able to learn about pit houses by listening to the discussion while at the same time tidying up in my kitchen, or removing some old leaves from plants in the wintergarden.

It was very new (and very exciting!) for me to connect via the voice channel, answering questions regarding the Albecunde reconstruction project, but I think it went quite well (and hope I did not ramble too much in my answers). I was also very amused by textile people taking over the channel with their discussion at one point... well, as we tend to do.

If you missed the weekend, you can still watch all the videos on the Lauresham Youtube channel, and I'm told that EXARC (who graciously hosted the event on their Discord channel, and who did an absolutely splendid job with all the tech in the background) are planning to make the voice discussion parts available as well, once they've tidied up the files.

Speaking of EXARC - do check out their website for the #FinallyFriday events, where an archaeological topic is discussed every last Friday of the month, and where you can find a list of virtual events and tours to keep you amused.

I'm a little random-brained today, so you're getting random links.

First of all, amid all the cancelled conferences, EXARC will be holding theirs as a digital conference, live-streamed and later on available as well.

[caption id="attachment_5136" align="alignnone" width="864"] Note the genius symbol thingie in the bottom right corner. I take off my hat to whoever made this.


Tune in on their official website to learn about Documentation Strategies in Open-Air museums, free of charge, on March 26 and 27. (There will even be a Discord pub get-together, because there's no archaeology conference without a drink and a chat with the colleagues!)

The open-air laboratory Lauresham (where the European Textile Forum took place last year) has started a youtube channel where they plan to show clips of various places and activities taking place. Text is in German, but you can enjoy a view of that beautiful place no matter your language:


If you're looking for something else to do, you could try yourself in folding proteins - basically playing games for science. Relevant games, too, because there are puzzles related to the proteins in the Corona virus. You can download the programme on the official website (no phone apps available yet) and get going right away.

And that's it for today... different stuff tomorrow!