Classics, Ancient History, Linguistics, Academia and more
Last week, as I was writing a chapter on alphabets and writing in ancient Italy, I asked the people of Twitter whether they thought the Praenestine fibula was fake or real. The results were intriguing (although most people, understandably, hadn't heard of it). https://twitter.com/Katherine_McDon/status/1310874027901284352?s=20 Most of the people who had heard of it thought that... Continue Reading →
Today is my first day back from maternity leave - and I think it's fair to say that this year hasn't gone at all how I'd expected! That is probably how most people feel about having a baby, but the added factor of the 2020 pandemic has made this a very strange year for many... Continue Reading →
Over the last few years, the field has been hugely enriched by lots of innovative new books on pre-Roman Italy and its populations. Many of them have really committed to interdisciplinary methods, combining historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence - with great results. Even better, these books are perfect to set for undergraduate reading (if you... Continue Reading →
As part of my AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship, I am lucky enough to have funding for several research trips to Italy. The first major trip, in April this year, took in a huge number of sites and museums - I really wanted to get a feel for parts of Tuscany and Umbria which I'd... Continue Reading →
It's been an extremely busy April on the 'Connectivity and Competition' project. After an intense two-week research trip (blog post forthcoming), there was the Workshop on Digital and Practical Epigraphy at the ICS in London, co-led by Dr Gabriel Bodard, which took place from 29th April - 4th May 2019. The concept of the workshop... Continue Reading →
A couple of days ago, Kristina Killgrove asked me a very intriguing question: where can you learn a bit of Oscan online? https://twitter.com/DrKillgrove/status/1105091790556811264 I had no answer to this, other than to say that Buck's Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian is old enough to exist in PDF form online. But as soon as I thought... Continue Reading →
Now that we're well into 2019, some of the events connected to my AHRC fellowship are beginning to take shape. The first of these is the Workshop on Digital and Practical Epigraphy taking place 29th April - 4th May, and generously co-hosted by Gabriel Bodard and the ICS. The aim of this workshop is to... Continue Reading →
From the CREWS project blog, here's a great new blog post by Pippa Steele. It's the result of an experimental archaeology investigation into the types of styli used for different types of clay tablets around the ancient Mediterranean. I saw Pippa give a paper based on this research in Cambridge a few weeks ago, and... Continue Reading →
This term, I'm working on the translations for my Italy Before Rome sourcebook. (Among other things, I've learned very swiftly that I am not capable of translating more than one language in the same day, so I have to block out each day for different things.) The result of reading these texts so closely is... Continue Reading →
You can never predict how the internet will react to something. On Friday, I tweeted a picture of a bronze Etruscan statuette which I described as 'Etruscan Lisa Simpson'. I'd actually tweeted this already, about six months previously, but came across it again as I was revising a chapter. This time, Lisa caught everyone's imagination,... Continue Reading →
Katherine McDonald 