Classics, Ancient History, Linguistics, Academia and more
It was a real treat to host the first part of our Digital Italy seminar from my new office in Durham. We had participants and speakers from all over the world today, and we heard about a range of new and existing digital projects linked to ancient Italy. This post serves as a link round-up,... Continue Reading →
I'm very pleased to say that Italy Before Rome: A Sourcebook is now under contract with Routledge, as part of the Routledge Sourcebooks for the Ancient World series. The book is based on my module 'Italy Before Rome', which ran in 2017/18 - but with plenty more material and, crucially, new translations of the material we covered.... Continue Reading →
This week has been very difficult and sad for many of us. Even writing that feels like a ridiculous understatement, but I don't know what else to say. Those of us working and studying at UK universities are worried (among many many other worries) about our colleagues and our students from outside the UK, and... Continue Reading →
Last week I enjoyed a nice afternoon off, checking out the British Museum's "Sicily: Culture and Conquest". I highly recommend it - the displays are fascinating, though somewhat crowded (as always). The exhibition focusses mainly on the Greek and Norman periods of Sicilian history, so go with that in mind if you're expecting lots of... Continue Reading →
On the 27th and 28th May, the E Caucus and the Greek in Italy project are hosting the Laurence Seminar 2016, a yearly conference at the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge. This year, our theme is Migration, Mobility and Language Contact in Italy and the Western Mediterranean. Over the past decade, language contact has become a key... Continue Reading →
I've just got back from my RAC/TRAC 2016 trip, and I can't leave it too long before posting some pictures. The conference was absolutely excellent, and it was a joy to catch up with some old and new friends over at La Sapienza. Highlights of the conference for me included Maureen Carroll's paper on the votive... Continue Reading →
I'm still working away at my maps of the languages of ancient Italy. Going through all the examples of Greek inscriptions from Italy in the SEG, I found one from Narnia. I'd come across the ancient city of Narnia (modern-day Narni) when I was writing my book, and then kind of forgotten about it until this... Continue Reading →
One of my favourite things about studying an unusual language is that your research is very memorable. Once people associate you with a particular obscure language, they will immediately think of you whenever they hear about it elsewhere. And - even better - they will send you sources that you never could have found otherwise.... Continue Reading →
For the past few weeks I've been doing something which has been rewarding and frustrating in almost equal measure (in between some weekends visiting family in Sussex and Yorkshire, with some Roman sites and a grinning she-wolf thrown in): namely, building up a complete corpus of all the extant inscriptions in the ancient Venetic language.... Continue Reading →
Katherine McDonald 