Classics, Ancient History, Linguistics, Academia and more
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 →
The ancient blogosphere has been alive with excellent blog posts this week (is it an end-of-term thing? Must be). Two posts particularly caught my eye for their new perspective on well-known ancient objects. In her post 'A Reversed Perspective: Looking at Greek and Roman Art from Behind(s)', Sarah Bond presents a round-up of some of... Continue Reading →
Here's a lovely post by CREWS Project colleague Philip Boyes on some of the fictional writing systems used in Star Wars. The examples of handwriting are particularly fun ways in which the filmmakers have used writing in very human ways. Philip also has interesting things to say on how useful or 'realistic' these strategies actually... Continue Reading →
This week on the CREWS project blog (which has a lovely redesigned website!), PhD student Natalia has written about the various different Greek and Roman myths relating to the creation of the alphabet. The most famous mythical progenitor of the alphabet is perhaps Cadmus, who is often credited with inventing or popularising the Greek alphabet.... Continue Reading →
The Partial Historians podcast uses Roman historical sources to discuss the founding of Rome and the city's early history. This week, they use accounts by Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy to talk about the Roman relationship with their Oscan-speaking neighbours in the fifth century BC. I love the style of this podcast - their close... Continue Reading →
This morning the blogosphere has obligingly brought me the answer to a question I couldn't answer yesterday. Natalia Elvira Astoreca, of the CREWS project in Cambridge, has written a blog post on the different ways that people learn the alphabet in modern Europe. A colleague asked me a question about this at my talk yesterday, which I... Continue Reading →
Amazingly, it is now a year since I started this blog in its current form. I had a website previously, which was mainly just for sharing teaching materials, but on 2nd June 2015 I revamped this site and wrote my first research-driven blog posts. This year has been busy in general, and has flown by... Continue Reading →
It's All Greek to Me is a brand new blog by my colleague Anna Judson. Anna is an expert on Linear B, linguistics and Greek in general, so I know that lots of readers will be interested in her site. Anna has long been a major contributor to the Res Gerendae graduate student Classics blog, but... Continue Reading →
Because sometimes you ask the internet a question, and someone out there writes a whole post dedicated to answering it for you. This week, my excellent internet friend and fellow Early Career Researcher Emma Southon has posted a blog on why Roman emperors get assassinated so often compared to monarchs in other states. (Even if you definitely... Continue Reading →
Here's a nice post by Matteo Calabrese on the meaning behind the name of the Roman dramatist Plautus, with a reference back to the post I wrote on the Pietrabbondante tile in January. If you were wondering, his name is derived from a nickname meaning "flat-footed" - but as far as I know, we can... Continue Reading →
Katherine McDonald 