The Archive for The New Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Volume 2 (2011)

William R. Caraher University of North Dakota

New Archaeology of the Mediterranean World by William R. Caraher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

 Table of Contents
Title
Why the New Blog? Googled Book Data and Byzantium Old School Vacation in an Old School Motel Christianization and Churches in the Peloponnese A Good New Blog for the New Year The Roots of Student Resistance Digital Humanities and Digital Archaeology Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota Two quick thoughts on Paperless Archaeology Teaching Graduate Historiography: A Final Syllabus Digital Humanities and Craft Archaeology, Method, and Inequality Digitizing Theses on North Dakota Denim, Gibson, and Archaeology Retrieval, Content Mapping, and Student Study Practices More Ambivalent Landscapes of Early Christian Corinth More Ambivalent Landscapes of Corinth A Proposal for a Low-cost Teaching Fellows Program Some Thoughts on Unlocking the Gates Teaching Historiography Pots to People in Late Roman Cyprus Some thoughts on Academically Adrift More on Pots and People Teaching Thursday Trifecta Modern Abandonment, Squatters, and Late Antiquity Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic Date 12/19 12/21 12/30 1/4 1/5 1/6 1/10 1/11 1/12 1/13 1/18 1/19 1/20 1/24 1/25 10/5 1/26 1/27 2/1 2/3 2/7 2/8 2/9 2/10 2/14 2/15 Views 0.150684932 0.112947658 0.152542373 0.35243553 0.074712644 0.109510086 0.204081633 2.596491228 0.093841642 1.541176471 0.208955224 0.065868263 0.198198198 0.191489362 0.164634146 0.573333333 0.159021407 0.113496933 0.171339564 0.156739812 0.263492063 0.114649682 0.073482428 0.198717949 0.227272727 0.397394137 Page 1 3 11 14 16 17 21 23 25 27 32 34 36 41 43 45 45 47 51 54 57 60 62 64 68 70

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More than four reasons to teach more than four classes (sometimes) St. Ambrose and Milan Grado and Aquileia Visiting Justinian in Verona The Centrally Planned Buildings of Ravenna The Basilicas of Ravenna The Future of the Computer Lab Blogging and Archaeology: A Few Contributions Blogging and the Public Face of Archaeology Posters and the Scholarly Forum The Grammar of Excavation Blogging Archaeology and Comments Blogging for Publication in Archaeology Theory and Medieval Archaeology Producing Peasants from Pottery Three Observations about Publishing and the Blog A Catalogue of Cypriot Churches The Site of Pyla-Vigla on Cyprus The Bullarium Cyprium and the History of Medieval Cyprus Bruno Latour, Aramis, and Excavation Postcolonialism and Cricket on ESPN More on Academic Publishing and Blogs Bronze Age Redistribution More on the Bullarium Cyprium Practicing Prepared Procrastination Five Things About Online Teaching Convergence in a House Burial in Early Byzantine Sicily Grand Forks Architecture for Graduate Students 2/17 2/21 2/23 2/26 2/28 3/1 3/3 3/7 3/8 3/10 3/14 3/15 3/16 3/17 3/21 3/23 3/24 3/28 3/29 3/30 4/2 4/4 4/5 4/6 4/7 4/11 4/12 4/13 0.236065574 0.079734219 0.120401338 0.175675676 0.292517007 0.081911263 0.701030928 0.097560976 0.132867133 0.091549296 0.107142857 0.125448029 0.107913669 0.263537906 0.146520147 0.225092251 0.166666667 0.097744361 0.222641509 0.166666667 0.088122605 0.177606178 0.135658915 0.093385214 0.1015625 0.166666667 0.175298805 0.084 74 76 79 80 81 83 86 89 91 94 96 98 100 102 106 109 111 114 116 118 124 125 127 129 130 134 136 138

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Pompeii in the 21st Century Talk May 4 Blogging and Peer Review The Architecture of Learning Some Events and an Awards The Great Strawman Massacre Friday Varia and Quick Hits The Fortifications of Athens More on Polis Notebooks In the Classical Tradition The Archival Turn Digital Pompeii and the Future of Archaeology Periods and Peasants Pompeii in the 21st Century Replay Reflections on Teaching More than Four Classes More on Peasants Lists and Ranking of Archaeology Journals Friday Quick Hits and Varia Postcolonial Archaeology Old and New Technologies Twitter, Curation, and the UnMuseum Summer Cyprus Reading List Basket Handles like a Longaberger Party The Poor Little Sherd Job in Classics at University of North Dakota Harmless, and very effective. The Sling Pellets of Vigla Five things that I learned in Cyprus this summer The Church at E.F2 4/14 4/18 4/19 4/20 4/21 4/22 4/25 4/26 4/27 4/27 5/3 5/4 5/11 5/10 5/11 5/12 5/13 5/16 5/19 5/23 5/24 5/30 5/31 6/8 6/14 6/29 6/30 7/5 0.120481928 0.236734694 0.110655738 0.111111111 0.082644628 0.199170124 0.676470588 0.210970464 0.105932203 0.084745763 0.213043478 0.091703057 1.531531532 0.112107623 0.121621622 1.660633484 0.209090909 0.428571429 0.210280374 0.247619048 0.224880383 0.123152709 0.311881188 0.458762887 0.154255319 0.184971098 0.174418605 0.167664671 139 141 143 145 146 147 149 151 153 154 161 162 164 168 170 172 174 175 180 182 184 188 189 196 200 208 209 213


Anchorites in Grand Forks The Angels of Miletus Final Church Sketch of the E.F2 Basilica Thesis Defense: Neoplantonism and Monotheism in Late Antique Rome The Rough Roads of Corinth A Neighborhood Church Rough Draft: Liminal Time and Liminal Space in the Middle Byzantine Hagiography of Greece and the Aegean Where I work House for Sale A Byzantine Roof Three Things about Blackboard Hybridity in Byzantine Archaeology Methods, Questions, and Digital Archaeology Friday Varia and Quick Hits Archaeology as Remix The Peirene Fountain Teaching Thursday: Five Teaching Strategies More on a Grand Forks Church Five Easy Tools to Digitize Your Workflow Friday Varia and Quick Hits Barbarians The Diolkos of David Pettegrew Other Byzantine Bodies Corinths Byzantine Countryside Cyprus Research Fund Lecture 2011: Kostis Kourelis' Byzantium and the Avant Garde Friday Quick Hits and Varia Sampling the Byzantine Landscape 7/7 7/14 7/20 7/21 8/3 8/1 0.127272727 0.240506329 0.131578947 0.430463576 0.282608696 0.278571429 216 223 230 231 246 253

8/16 8/18 8/11 8/24 8/25 8/28 8/30 9/2 9/6 9/8 9/15 9/21 9/22 9/23 9/28 10/4 10/10 10/12

0.168 0.382113821 0.376923077 0.247863248 0.172413793 0.318584071 0.810810811 0.990740741 0.192307692 0.617647059 0.452631579 0.280898876 0.545454545 0.310344828 0.243902439 2.368421053 4.371428571 0.470588235

259 261 265 269 271 274 276 280 281 285 293 298 299 301 304 311 316 319

10/13 10/14 10/19

0.358208955 0.303030303 0.327868852

321 322 325

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Thinking about Collaboration and Digital History in Practice Friday Varia and Quick Hits Some Comments on Writing History in the Digital Age Byzantium in Transition at the University of Cyprus More on Byzantine Settlement The Substance of the Syllabus Friday Varia and Quick Hits Byzantium and the Avant Garde Streamed LIVE on the Web The Process of Christianization in the Greek Islands Some Punk Archaeology Trade and Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean More Archaeology of Man Camps: Some methodological and historical perspectives Teaching Thursday: Teaching Writing Guest Post: Using GIS to Document Archaeological Looting Digital Humanities and Professional Advancement 10/20 10/21 10/25 10/27 11/2 11/3 11/11 11/14 10/17 11/22 11/23 11/30 12/1 12/5 12/8 0.95 0.474576271 1.690909091 0.641509434 0.425531915 0.586956522 0.657894737 4.942857143 6.46031746 1.296296296 0.961538462 1.421052632 1.555555556 5.214285714 4.727272727 327 330 332 335 341 343 353 355 359 365 367 373 375 378 384

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<title>Why the New Blog?</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/19/why-the-newblog/</link> <pubDate>Sun, 19 Dec 2010 17:36:23 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=31</guid> This is the first post on the new blog! For those of you interested in what will happen to the old blog (or Volume 1 as I think of it), go and check out <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/">The Archive of the Archaeology of the Mediterranean World here</a>. For those of you who are always looking to the future, I am sure some of you are wondering why in the world I would decide to inconvenience my daily readers, fragment my audience, and go through the trouble of creating a new blog. Here are my initial thoughts: 1. The weight of the past. The more I looked at the "first volume" of the Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, the more I decided that I need to bring on iteration of the blog to a close and start again with a clean slate. After all, print publications regularly define separate volumes annually in a rather arbitrary format to define content. Blogs, of course, are the opposite. They tend to be massive, rambling, and undefined. I was satisfied with that for a while, but with each passing post, I felt greater and greater pressure to lend some continuity and coherence to my blog. I spent more and more time searching for earlier posts and linking to them or creating indexes around particular themes. The more that I did this, the more nervous I became about maintaining links within the blog to ensure a cohesive user experience. I imagined a future where the need to link to literally hundreds of earlier posts and ideas would exceed my ability to manage, so I decided just to start over. I am sure that I will continue to link back to posts on the earlier blog (now housed in "The Archive"), but I want to use the new blog to look ahead. 2. My Tenure Application. As loyal readers know, I submitted my application for tenure and promotion this fall. I mentioned the blog in passing in a space on my curriculum vitae for "non academic projects" (video, blogs, popular writing, et c.), but I think that I can say that it did not factor at all in the decision to award me tenure (or not as my proposal is still coursing through system). This was both gratifying and disappointing. After all, the blog represented a significant body of work associated closely with my professional life. Moreover, it did detract from time that I could have spent preparing material for teaching, research, or even service. I had hoped in some perverse way that the blog would inspire conversation or pique interest. It seems to have done neither. People know about the blog, and it even gets mentioned in the dry-as-dust introductions before academic talks, but no one cared. At all. So the second volume of this blog will proceed with that in mind. I will formally abandon my hope that a blog could at least generate some conversation about how we imagine ourselves as members of the academy and members of society. I can be more self-serving in the blog and write it without any "political" or professional goals. 3. The need for fixity. I think part of the anxiety I came to feel about maintaining my blog and making sure that it mattered was because I had come to think of it as a fixed thing (despite knowing and sometimes saying otherwise). I saw its reassuring appearance on the screen, the networks of links, the connection between different media as girded about by an expectation of permanence. Maintaining these permanent places and connection (in an environment where such relationships are largely impossible!) was stressful and pointless. So wrenching the blog from this false expectation of permanence, doing violence to the various links (while still acknowledging that such connections did

exist), and disrupting the connection between various forms of media was a relief in that it reminded my that electronic transmedia texts like blogs are not ossified, but dynamic. 4. Typepad. When I first started blogging, I really liked Typepad. It was different from the growing legion of Blogger and Wordpress blogs. It featured nice design quirks and allowed me to edit (to the extent of my abilities) my CSS. I still like the statistics page (although I think it is fairly optimistic) and the way that it lets you manage comments and posts. On the other hand, the company was recently sold. I have increasingly found the prospects of migrating from my custom CSS (that feeds into my Google Analytics site) to a new theme or layout be daunting. I have found the detailed and sophisticated back end of the site to be increasingly onerous to navigate. For example, I couldn't figure out how to add my Twitter feed to the blog. And I already have a few other blogs in Wordpress.com. Since I was looking at some significant changes to my blog anyway, I decided to move to Wordpress to consolidate my blog empire. 5. Who are my readers? The great thing about a blog with a substantial archive is that it become increasingly visible to search engines. So each week more and more people (or bots of various kinds) visit my blog. While I like that my blog is visible and to some extent popular, I'd also like to get a true metric of my daily readership. 6. Boredom. Over the last few months, I've been a bit bored. So I decided to do something different and shutting down and archiving the old blog provided me with a new challenge for my early morning work hours. Over the next few weeks, I'll be working to get this blog up and running. The holidays, travel, and the start of the new semester will both provide some content, but also some distractions for my blogging routine, but rest assured that I will continue to write just as regularly as with the old blog. It's the only way I know how to work.

<title>Googled Book Data and Byzantium</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/googled-book-dataand-byzantium/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 21 Dec 2010 13:50:52 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=43</guid> There is a good bit of buzz lately about the new <a href="http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/">Google Ngram application</a> which allows anyone to do some basic data mining on the huge collection of Google books. I love simple to use applications, but like any scholar I am always suspicious that most applications that appear simple are, in fact, hiding deep-seated interpretive complexity. In other words, I am sure that this Google Ngram thing is problematic, but I haven't really figured out how and why. That being said, here are a couple of interesting Ngrams. The first looks at the frequency of the terms Late Roman (blue), Late Antiquity (red), Late Antique (green), Early Byzantine (yellow) in Google's collection of scanned books between 1900 and 2000. Nothing makes you feel less special as a scholar than seeing your career as a the product of a 30 year trend in your particular area of specialty. I can also imagine the influence of two important books. A.H.M. Jones' <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/later-roman-empire-284-602-a-socialeconomic-and-administration-survey/oclc/503447597">Later Roman Empire</a> (1964) almost certainly produced the blip in the blue colored line in the late 1960s. P. Brown's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/world-of-late-antiquity-ad-150-750/oclc/19976956"> The World of Late Antiquity </a> (1972) correlates closely with the steep rise in the use of the term Late Antiquity in the first part of the 1970s. The University of California's monograph series, the <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/series.php?ser=tch">Transformation of the Classical Heritage</a> , would have further propelled the popularity of the terms Late Antiquity after its inception in 1981. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="LateAntiquity.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/lateantiquity.jpg" border="0" alt="LateAntiquity.jpg" width="450" height="278" /> Another Ngram of interest is the comparison of Byzantine History (blue), Byzantine Architecture (red), and Byzantine Archaeology (green). I ran the analysis based on both words being capitalized. It is worth noting that the same analysis with only Byzantine being capitalized produced different results as the second graph shows. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Byzantium.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/byzantium.jpg" border="0" alt="Byzantium.jpg" width="450" height="279" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ByzantineLowerCase.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/byzantinelowercase.jpg" border="0" alt="ByzantineLowerCase.jpg" width="450" height="263" /> Isolating Byzantine Archaeology shows that it more or less follows the trends in the top graph. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ByzantineArchaeology.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/byzantinearchaeology.jpg" border="0" alt="ByzantineArchaeology.jpg" width="450" height="279" /> The significant spike in the late 1920s and throughout the1930s finds parallels in the tie between the Avant Garde and Byzantium recently explored by <a href="http://www.atyponlink.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.76.2.391?journalCode=hesp">Kostis Kourelis in his 2007 </a> <a href="http://www.atyponlink.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.76.2.391?journalCode=hesp">Hesperia</a> <a href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.76.2.391?journalCode=hesp"> article</a> (76, 391-442). The popularity of the term Byzantine Architecture from the mid-1960s may well represent the influence of Richard Krautheimer's contribution to the Pelican History of Art, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/early-christian-and-byzantine-architecture/oclc/523677">Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture</a> (1965) and the influence of his students. The spike in blue

line of Byzantine History most like reflects the influence of<span class="gl" style="white-space:normal;"> </span>G. Ostrogorski's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/history-of-the-byzantinestate/oclc/404147">History of the Byzantine State</a> (1957). These graphs, of course, only represent one aspect of the ebb and flow of popularity of these topics. Ngrams do not capture, from what I understand, data from Google Scholar, nor is it easy to compare trends across languages. For example, to understand the boom in scholarship on Late Antiquity it would be instructive to compare the graph for the words "Late Antique" with the graph for the "Antiquit Tardive". <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Antiquit Tardive.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/antiquitecc81-tardive.jpg" border="0" alt="Antiquit Tardive.jpg" width="450" height="272" /> At the same time, the ability to query this data through time is really remarkable and the relative transparency of the application will invariably help scholars to link general trends to specific works. The potential for using this application in historiography classes, for example, is remarkable.

<title>The New Website at UND</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/the-new-website-atund/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 13:45:17 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=58</guid> Yesterday slightly after noon, the University of North Dakota rolled out its new website. I was on the "Web Oversight Committee" which played a role in the site's overall design and organization. Over the past 8 months, a team on campus took on the challenge of taking a design and making it a functional website. They have also worked to mate the site with a new approach to developing content for the web and to bring to the site a new commitment to social media. The site clearly shows signs of haste with dead links, proofreading issues, and questionable functionality throughout. On the other other hand, the new site now has a content management system operating behind the scenes which will make it much easier to iron out cosmetic and functional issues on the fly. While I would have probably cleaned up some of the more glaring issues prior to launch, it is difficult to stop progress (as they say). The hope is that by the end of the academic year the entire university will follow the same basic set of design cues with a much clearer set of global navigation menus. There is thought that this will promote a sense of shared identity. This re-design has marked probably the 15th major redesign to the university home page since it was introduced in 1996. The Internet Archive began collecting examples of the web page beginning in 1998. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND1998.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und1998.jpg" border="0" alt="UND1998.jpg" width="450" height="600" /> The clean appearance and good use of negative space in the first archived site carried onto the next few iterations where the most significant design adjustments tended to be in the header. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND1999.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und1999.jpg" border="0" alt="UND1999.jpg" width="450" height="823" /> There were at least three different headers in 1999 alone: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND1999_2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und1999_2.jpg" border="0" alt="UND1999_2.jpg" width="450" height="779" /> 2000 marked the first significant redesign to the page with less of an emphasis on negative space and design and more of an emphasis on functionality. I love the Geocities-esque UND-branded wall paper. The prominent menus hardly seem appropriate for any homepage, so at first I wondered whether the archived copy of the site was corrupt. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND2000.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und2000.jpg" border="0" alt="UND2000.jpg" width="450" height="447" /> But the same basic design appears in 2001: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND2001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und2001.jpg" border="0" alt="UND2001.jpg" width="450" height="589" /> By 2002, however, better design sense prevails. Even without the menu bars in the archived copy of the page, the basic design present a content in a far more accessible and aesthetically pleasing way: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND2002_1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und2002_1.jpg" border="0" alt="UND2002_1.jpg" width="450" height="676" /> This version seems to have only been a stepping stone to a major redesign in late 2002. I am partial to the bold fonts, the simple header, and the nice use of negative white space, but perhaps the page lacked visual impact. It is possible to see the beginning of the three column layout that UND will continue to

adapt even until today. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND2002_2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und2002_2.jpg" border="0" alt="UND2002_2.jpg" width="450" height="426" /> The 2003 redesign was to be one of the most enduring. The white background is gone and replaced with a matte-grey. Images feature prominently on the page and a basic three column layout emerges from the more chaotic earlier designs. The link box to the left of the picture shows a continued interest in sacrificing some visual impact to functionality by using prime space for images as space for menus. Also note that the bold and stark colors of the header have given way to subtle shading adding a bit of depth to the page. The logo is huge. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND2003.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und2003.jpg" border="0" alt="UND2003.jpg" width="450" height="500" /> 2004 continued the basic design of 2003 but refined the space below the main picture to include links to a wide range of content. The right column has become a bit cluttered compared to earlier versions of the page suggesting that the main site was increasingly used as the basic point of access to daily information and web based applications like email and Blackboard. This was the home page when I started at UND so I have some sentimental attachment to it. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND2004.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und2004.jpg" border="0" alt="UND2004.jpg" width="450" height="565" /> By 2005, perhaps people reconsidered the huge UND in the header of the page and improved bandwidth and server software made it easier to include snazzy images across the entire page and include a smaller image in the central column. Otherwise the basic design remained the same. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND2005.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und2005.jpg" border="0" alt="UND2005.jpg" width="450" height="487" /> 2006 marked a major redesign in the page. The return menu items to the upper part of the page but also return the image to the size that it was in 2004. The same three column design exists for the section "under the fold", but with a better use of negative space and less abrupt horizontal divisions. The menu on the left shows a slight change in priorities for the webpage. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND2006.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und2006.jpg" border="0" alt="UND2006.jpg" width="450" height="389" /> The last major redesign prior to 2010 came in late 2008 or early 2009. The page has a slightly greater emphasis on content. It continues the basic three column design, but features content below a basic menu area which now divides the screen between image space and content space (the menu isn't visible in this screen shot). Note also the appearance of social media icons in the right column. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UNDHomePage.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/undhomepage.jpg" border="0" alt="UNDHomePage.jpg" width="450" height="520" /> The new page uses the main image space more completely and keeps the menu bar as the division between the image and the rest of the page. Below the menu bar the long-standing, 3-column organization continues. Below that, however, is yet another set of column designed to bring social media to the home page. The struggle with UND branding on the page appears to continue. In the newest page the logo and name are smaller and appear on a transparent band the gives the site some depth and contrast (and saves our eyeballs from the onslaught of kelly green). <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UND2010.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/und2010.jpg" border="0" alt="UND2010.jpg" width="450" height="751" />

<title>Teaching Thursday: Writing Reflexive History</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/teaching-thursdaywriting-reflexive-history/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:50:29 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=60</guid> Here is a brief description of my grading criteria for my Graduate Historiography Seminar. The main assignment is an experiment in reflexive historical analysis. The rather draconian requirements largely serve to prevent graduate student require course malaise. 10% Weekly Journals Each week you should write a reflective journal entry on the readings from that week. There is no fixed format for these journal entries. They should be between 1000-1500 words in length (although longer is certainly acceptable). They should be typed. Each journal should represent a series of book notes. Typically, these include the topic and thesis of the book, the major elements of the authors argument, and some reflection on the books significance. My book notes tend to include some discussion of how the book could fit into my own research interests. I generally cite the book throughout my notes including page numbers in parentheses. These ensure that your notes are clearly tied to book. I will expect book notes to be submitted each week after class. Failure to have book notes completed will result in a 5 point deduction from your final grade. This means that you have to take preparation for class seriously. 60% Synthetic Analysis This analysis will draw upon your weekly journals as the primary source for a synthetic analysis of your own interpretations over the course of the semester. If, as Collingwood argued, all history is the history of thought, your goal is produce a history of your thought over the course of the semester. The weekly journals must stand as a foundation for your analysis. Invariably, your understanding of difficult texts, the relationship of these texts to your own research interests, and the relationship of these texts to other texts discussed over the course of the semester will inform your synthetic analysis to a considerable extent. Moreover, you may find the additional readings from the supplemental bibliographies provided for many of the weeks will help you produce a more effective synthetic understanding. The best papers with draw upon your archive of weekly journals as a source for exploring the texts and concepts. This means attempting to address these texts as both historical sources (with a logic of their own) and as texts with a relationship to other texts (classroom discussion, the books under discussion, and any other readings). As all historical writing, your analysis must have a thesis and a method for engaging the material from your archive of weekly journals. The best synthetic analysis will show a willingness to stretch outside of any narrow intellectual comfort zone. Since the class has an explicitly conceptual (or theoretical) foundation, you must address and critique the theoretical foundations for the discipline of history in your paper while at the same time demonstrate some ability to consider your own study of historiography in a historical way. This is a creative project, and I will reward in equal measure creativity and hard work. The final product must include both your archive of weekly journals (approximately 15,000 words) and a complementary synthetic analysis of around 10,000 words. 30% Class Participation For some reason, it has become popular to sit silent and stone-faced during the discussion of difficult texts. Many of the texts in this class will pose significant challenges and push us out of our comfort zone. Every graduate student in the class is expected to participate in the analysis, interpretation, and critique of the texts. Students who do not contribute to the work of the seminar will be penalized. While I will not grade individual performance in each class, I will maintain a running assessment of each students participation.

<title>Christmas Reading List</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/christmas-readinglist/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:55:35 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=62</guid> So instead of a quick hits and varia, I thought I'd share my admittedly random reading list for this Christmas break. (And those of you who read my blog regularly, will see that many of these books were started weeks ago, but never finished!) W. Gibson, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/zero-history/oclc/505419399">Zero History</a> . New York 2010.<br />S. Freud, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/totem-and-taboo-somepoints-of-agreement-between-the-mental-lives-of-savages-and-neurotics/oclc/223102">Totem and Taboo</a> . New York 1952.<br />C. Li and J. Bernoff, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/groundswell-winning-in-a-world-transformed-by-socialtechnologies/oclc/172980082">Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies</a> . Cambridge, MA 2008. <br />G. Blix, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/from-paris-to-pompeii-french-romanticism-and-the-culturalpolitics-of-archaeology/oclc/475362530">From Paris to Pompeii : French romanticism and the cultural politics of archaeology</a> . Philadelphia 2009. Happy Christmas Eve and Merry Christmas!!!!!

<title>Polis Notebooks</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/polis-notebooks/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:05:28 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=78</guid> Happy Holidays to all my readers. Over the last few days, I've spent some quality time with the field notebooks that describe the excavation of site <a href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/Archaeology/rp/polisexhibit/polis1.html">E.F2 at the site of Polis on Cyprus</a>. The project's directors at Princeton graciously scanned all the notebooks making it easy to do basic research on the site from a laptop computer. By the time we get to Polis in the summer, our plan is to have parts of the notebooks transcribed into a database so that we can focus our relatively limited time on site on documenting more thoroughly the finds, architecture, and stratigraphic relationships visible in Cyprus. <img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/0001.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="137" /><img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/00011.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="125" /><img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/00012.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="119" /> <img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/00013.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="125" /><img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/00014.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="126" /><img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/00015.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="127" /><img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/00016.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="126" /> <img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/00018.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="123" /><img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/00019.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="125" /><img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/000110.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="126" /><img title="0001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/000111.jpg" border="0" alt="0001.jpg" width="100" height="128" />

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<title>Old School Vacation in an Old School Motel</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/old-school-vacation-inan-old-school-motel/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:27:14 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=85</guid> My lovely wife and I have spent the last few days at the Postcard Inn in St. Pete Beach, Florida. The motel is a vintage 1950s era hotel with rooms arranged around a central courtyard and swimming pool. Since I am officially on vacation, I will make only a few little observations. The rooms are small! So I can only assume people in the 1950s must have been much smaller or taken up less space. I've been fortunate enough to stay in quite a few nice hotels over the last few years and almost without exception the rooms were far larger than I needed to do what it was that I was doing at the hotel (mostly sleeping and showering). The pink tiles in the bathroom are just a bonus! <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Room.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/room.jpg" border="0" alt="Room.jpg" width="450" height="337" /> The arrangement around the courtyard assumes that people want to interact with one another. The rooms lack private balconies. Instead the focal point of the motel is public, communal space. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Courtyard2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/courtyard2.jpg" border="0" alt="Courtyard2.jpg" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Lobby.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/lobby.jpg" border="0" alt="Lobby.jpg" width="450" height="337" /> Finally, the hotel lobby has a polished concrete floor. These are great archaeological objects because no matter how hard you polish them, they preserve some evidence for the past organization of the space. The floors shows at least two tile patterns, the line of a now destroyed wall, and the general organization of the various organizations of the lobby. So the nostalgic theme is carried from the organization of the motel space (and its social implications) to the very physical fabric of the architecture. The photos are by my wife.

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<title>A Teaching Sabbatical</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/a-teachingsabbatical/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:29:09 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=87</guid> This semester I am going to do something that I haven't done for 6 years: I am going to teach 4 classes. I did this one semester when was at the University of North Dakota on a one year contract. Unlike that year, however, this semester I will teach 4 different preps and possibly run some kind of digital/public history practicum. Traditionally, sabbatical give faculty a time to focus on research and writing. I feel like I write a good bit and have a strong research focus most semesters, so I am turning the traditional idea of a sabbatical on its head (in a playful way) and using to justify spending a semester focusing on teaching. To do this, I shifted the emphasis in my contract heavily to teaching. Next, I am going to teaching a range of courses involving different classroom environments, subject matter, and pedagogical strategies. The plan is for the different course types to provide a kind of totalteaching work out where I am made to switch from one kind of environment to the next, sometimes on the same day. I imagine that this will help me develop "flexible habits of mind" the same way the circuit training develops different muscle groups. History 101: Western Civilization - 60-80 students, asynchronous online course with podcast lectures and a range of primary source and secondary source reading assignments. The course is relatively writing intensive for a 100 level course with various assignments totaling 6000-8000 words. This course focuses on both basic content and a generic introduction to the methods used in the humanities and social sciences. History 240: Historians Craft - 20-30 students, small classroom environment with a blend of lecture, discussion, and primary source reading assignments. The course will have a midterm exam and require a handful (5000 words) of short and highly polished writing assignments. The course will focus on the history of the discipline of history and its methodology. The first 7 weeks are a lectures with discussions of primary sources and the second seven weeks are a practical seminar in writing a formal, professional research proposal. History 502: Graduate Historiography. 10-15 students in a seminar environment. The course will require weekly writing an longer, synthetic paper for a total of 20,000 - 25,000 words. The focus of the course will be on contemporary approaches to the study of the past. Classics 202: Second Year Latin II. 10-15 students in a language readings course. This course will focus on weekly reading assignments first in Livy and then in Virgil as well as lectures and readings about Augustan culture and society. The focus of the course will be on daily preparation, but it will also include at least 2 exams and a short (2000 word) paper. Digital/Public History Practicum. 1-3 students. This course will focus on the creation of a digital archive of M.A. thesis written by graduate students in the department of history over the past 100 years. The goal of the course is a proof-of-concept level digital archive with the interpretative texts, a post on the project at a local forum focusing on graduate research, and a formal proposal outlining the requirements for creating a comprehensive digital archive of all M.A. theses. I fortify my emphasis on teaching I also want to incorporate a number of reflexive activities in my courses. Over the past few days, I've blasted through <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/why-dontstudents-like-school-a-cognitive-scientist-answers-questions-about-how-the-mind-works-and-whatit-means-for-the-classroom/oclc/255894389">Daniel Willingham's </a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/why-dont-students-like-school-a-cognitive-scientist-answersquestions-about-how-the-mind-works-and-what-it-means-for-the-classroom/oclc/255894389">Why Don't Students Like School</a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/why-dont-students-likeschool-a-cognitive-scientist-answers-questions-about-how-the-mind-works-and-what-it-means-forthe-classroom/oclc/255894389"> (Jossey Bass 2009)</a> and was pleased to see that he endorsed several of my own efforts to improve my teaching.

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First, I was to get back to keeping my teaching diary. I did this rather religiously for the first few years teaching. In fact, it became the basis for my first Teaching Thursday blog posts. Over the last few years, however, I've stopped maintaining it regularly and have, as a result, lost a bit of resolution on the effectiveness of my classroom activities, assignments, and discussion prompts. So with my teaching sabbatical, I plan to make time each week (if not each day) to be reflective on what works and what doesn't work in my classroom. Second, I need to be more active seeking peer critique of my classroom performance. I am lucky enough to have some outstanding colleagues who are willing to take the time to visit my classes and provide some important critiques on my performance. Finally, I want to set some goals for the semester in terms of student performance, retention, assessment, and my own teaching reviews. I have to go through my reviews from last semester and crunch the numbers from the last few semesters to determine where I can realistically improve my performance over the course of a single semester. The hope is that a teaching sabbatical can, like a research sabbatical, set my teaching on a sound foundation for the future.

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<title>Christianization and Churches in the Peloponnese</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/christianization-andchurches-in-the-peloponnese/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 04 Jan 2011 13:50:37 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=89</guid> I was pretty excited to see Rebecca Sweetman's new article, <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/summary/v003/3.2.sweetman.html">"The Christianization of the Peloponnese: The Topography and Function of Late Antique Churches" in the </a> <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/summary/v003/3.2.sweetman.html">Journ al of Late Antiquity</a> <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/summary/v003/3.2.sweetman.html"> 3 (2010), 203-261</a> yesterday afternoon. The article is a sweeping and careful consideration of the 130-odd Early Christian churches in the Peloponnesus. This is a topic near and dear to my heart as these churches made up the majority of buildings that I studied in my dissertation. In fact, I think Sweetman's article represents the most significant contribution to our study of these buildings as participants in the Christianization process since my dissertation appeared in 2003. In almost every way (as one might suspect), Sweetman's article is a more refined, if more conservative perspective, on the role of churches in the spread of Christianity throughout southern Greece. She begins with the observation that scholars have tended to approach churches from the perspective of architectural development rather than with an eye toward their socio-political significance. When scholars have turned to social or political considerations, they have tended to see churches as evidence for the large scale contraction of Late Antique society in the 6th and 7th century usually as a result of the Slavic invasions documented in the Chronicle of Monemvasia. Sweetman argues that we need to free our interpretations from the constraints of "hindsight bias" or "creeping determinism" to reveal the interpretative potential for these buildings. This was a reassuring paragraph to read in part because I have offered similar (but by no means identical) arguments in <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/f76u0jl18w4k1506/">a recent publication in the</a> <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/f76u0jl18w4k1506/"> International Journal of Historical Archaeology</a> . With her arguments grounded in something of a theoretical foundation, Sweetman goes on to offer observations on the relationship between the spread of Christian architecture and the spread of Christianity. She argued, plausibly, that the dates of Christian churches show that Christianity spread from north to south in the Peloponnese and from coastal areas to more remote inland areas. While we should always be cautious in accepting the published dates of these Early Christian buildings (if we've learned anything from folks like the Director of Corinth Excavations, Guy Sander, who has relentless questioned of established chronologies), the general pattern of gradual expansion from the more densely populated and "important" coastal centers in along the northern coast of the Peloponnese (Corinth, Patras, Argos, et c.) to the less densely populated and less well-connected regions of the southern coast of Greece seems almost intuitive. In fact, we know that Byzantines made the same assumptions about the spread of Christianity; in the Life of St. Nikon , we learn that the Mani in the far southwestern corner of the Peloponnese, was still un-Christianized in the 10th century. It is difficult to know whether this is true or not, but it conforms to a long-standing trope that more remote areas remained pagan longer. Of course, remote areas tend to have less monumental architecture almost be definition. So, if there is a rough equivalence between monumental architecture and the spread of Christianity, remote areas will always present less evidence for religious change. Finally, scholars have spent less time looking for monuments in remote areas of Greece so there might be another kind of bias present in Sweetman's work related to the priorities of archaeological investigation. Despite these potentially problematic issues in her analysis, her general point stands as plausible. Urban areas and their territories likely manifest Christianity earlier than rural areas. (Her arguments for the relationship between pagan monuments and Early Christian monuments

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likewise represents a plausible and well-considered interpretations. There is little evidence for the large scale conversion of temples to churches across all of Greece. It is likely that the relationship between the two religious perspectives was, as Sweetman argues, "inconsistent" and highly localized.) Sweetman's arguments for how churches actually spread Christianity were somehow less satisfying. On the one hand, her work shows a strong command over the architectural and archaeological evidence for churches in the Peloponnese. The greatest weakness of my dissertation is that I let theory (at best, and imagination, at worst) dictate my interpretation to a significant extent. Sweetman's work remains firmly grounded in the archaeological evidence and takes few speculative leaps. Her discussion of baptisteries, for example, emphasizes how the baptistery buildings tend to have structured relationships with the main sacramental areas of the churches allowing the newly baptized to move, probably in a highly-ritualized way, from baptism to the more sacred space of the church itself. (She also makes the interesting observation that baptisteries are less common in the southern Peloponnese and suggests that this may reflect a different ritual or type of baptismal architecture there. As an alternative consistent with Sweetman's general arguments, it may be that by the later date of conversion in the southern Peloponnesus, baptism had come to occupy a somewhat less ritually-central place to the life of the community). The interior arrangement of space within the churches was likewise treated with the same careful, if conservative, approach. Sweetman argued that the diversity of interior arrangement may well reflect the different ritual needs and tastes of local communities responsible for constructing the church buildings. The variations between churches ensured that these buildings could represent the unique character of each community and stand out as distinct markers of identity. A catalogue of Peloponnesian churches dating to between the late-4th and late-7th centuries takes up the final twelve pages of her article. This catalogue will be a boon to anyone interested in these buildings. The catalogue is necessarily brief, but nevertheless presents a nice summary of the features and setting of each church and provides some basic references. Yiannis Varalis catalogue remains the gold standard for basic descriptions of churches in Illyricum Orientalis (although it is a dissertation at the University of Thessaloniki rather than the University of Athens as in footnote 40) and, in a pinch, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/church-society-and-the-sacred-in-early-christiangreece/oclc/59019454">my dissertation catalogue </a>provides an English language alternative (although, it has too many little mistakes to be used without a critical eye). I do have a few little issues with the article. One is not the author's fault at all. For some reason some of the footnotes "appeared" behind some of the images. I'll admit to being vain. I discovered this as I was searching for any reference to my dissertation only to find it behind figure 5!! I also was disappointed to see so relatively little Greek scholarship in the footnotes. For example, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/xylostegos-palaiochristianike-basilike-tes-mesogeiakes-lekanesmelete-peri-tes-geneseos-tes-katagoges-tes-architektonikes-morphes-kai-tes-diakosmeseos-tonchristianikon-oikon-latreias-apo-ton-apostolikon-chronon-mechrisioustinianou/oclc/38085384">Orlandos' massive contribution</a> to the study of Early Christian architecture did not appear (from what I could tell) in the footnotes. Very little of Demetrios Pallas' later work appeared. These sometimes obscure articles make a significant contribution to how we understand the relationship between liturgy and space within Early Christian churches. I do not always accept his arguments, but these articles are the point of departure for any study of ritual in the context of Early Christian Greece. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/palaiochristianika-baptisteria-tesellados/oclc/78472842">Volanakis nice, if now slightly outdated catalogue of Early Christian baptisteries in Greece </a>was also omitted. Some of these oversights probably relate to the nature of the publication - after all, it was an article - but I would have liked to see more of my familiar Greek "friends" in the footnotes and the texts. When so many western archaeologists were digging through Byzantine and Late Roman layers looking for the Classical foundations of Western culture, Greek scholars were doing the tough work of excavating, documenting, and curating Early Christian and Byzantine monuments.

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<title>A Good New Blog for the New Year</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/a-good-new-blog-forthe-new-year/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:22:47 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=91</guid> I think that there are some important things afoot in the Late Antique and Byzantine blogging community. Not only is the Byzantine Studies Association of North America looking to enhance its web presence, but the venerable David Pettegrew appears to have made a serious commitment to blogging his ongoing research on all things Corinthian. <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Check out his blog here</a>. Most recently, his blog has featured translations of Niketas Ooryphas dragging his fleet over the Isthmus in the 9th century. Apparently he was an admiral in the Byzantine navy who was tasked with the suppressing the Arab navy that had held Crete since the 820s. David took the time to translate <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2010/12/30/niketas-portages-the-isthmus-and-exacts-fiercevengeance/">the text from Theophanes Continuatus </a>that describes the dragging of Niketas' navy over the Isthmus and, few days later, supplemented this translation with<a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2011/01/04/niketas-ooryphas-transfers-his-fleets-skylitzeskedrenos-editions/"> translations of related texts from Kedrenos and Skylitzes</a>. I'll offer three random observations on these texts: 1. Baptism and the Flesh. At the conclusion of all three texts Niketas tortures apostate Christians captured from the Cretan fleet by flaying them alive or by dipping them in kettles of boiling pitch. Niketas explained the former punished by "saying that this skin that was separated from them was not their own." The latter had obvious parallels with Christian practices of immersion. In both cases the spiritual rite of baptism was completely inverted and positioned as a physical ritual. 2. Nostaligia in 9th century in Greece. Niketas actions fit into a larger pattern of nostalgic behavior in 9th century Greece. By dragging his fleet across the Isthmus, Niketas re-enacted the heroic deeds of earlier admirals. In this way, they remind me, broadly, of the work of Paul of Monemvasia which looked back to traditions of the desert fathers to edify residents of his Peloponnesian city. They also remind me of the deeds of another Niketas who wrote the <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;ved=0CCEQFjAB&amp;u rl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.doaks.org%2Fpublications%2Fdoaks_online_publications%2FHolyWome n%2Ftalbch4.pdf&amp;rct=j&amp;q=Theoktiste%20Lesbos&amp;ei=s20kTaeeMo6tngef6JyAQ&amp;usg=AFQjCNGOJ-0SiORIDemeMdrDkdQswofVpA&amp;sig2=jjlEmeVEWV1uROszornlQ&amp;cad=rja">Life of Theoktiste of Lesbos</a> blending the Early Christian story of Mary of Egypt with references to Homer, Thucydides, as well as the Early Christian Church Fathers. 3. Blogged Translations. David and I have talked a bunch about blogging lately, and our conversations have focused on the idea that our jobs as academic is to create and disseminating knowledge. Blogs (as short hand for any online, self-published, environment) make it easy to distribute texts that fall awkwardly at the margins of traditional academic correspondence. Translations are a perfect example of these kinds of texts that are not substantial or analytical enough to fit into a peer review publication, but nevertheless play a key role in the study of Ancient and Medieval society. David's blog is a great example of how a scholar can disseminate knowledge that might otherwise be lost in a peer-reviewed, final publication.

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<title>The Roots of Student Resistance</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/the-roots-of-studentresistance/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:14:35 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=94</guid> As readers of this blog know, I am fascinated by the roots of student resistance. In general, I have argued that student resistance to the industrialized model of higher education derives from political and economic foundations of the university. In short, students don't want to be good citizens or cogs in the capitalist, industrial machine and it's our job as faculty to force students into taking up their places in the community. Pretty bleak, isn't it? (For some archival posts see <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/teaching-thursday-more-onstudent-resistance/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/grading-detroit-and-studentresistence/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/teachingthursday-grading-and-resistance/">here</a>, and <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/audit-culture-and-history-ascraft/">here</a>. I was pretty happy, then, to read over Christmas break <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/whydont-students-like-school-a-cognitive-scientist-answers-questions-about-how-the-mind-works-andwhat-it-means-for-the-classroom/oclc/255894389">Daniel Willingham's </a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/why-dont-students-like-school-a-cognitive-scientist-answersquestions-about-how-the-mind-works-and-what-it-means-for-the-classroom/oclc/255894389">Why Don't Students Like School: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom</a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/why-dont-students-likeschool-a-cognitive-scientist-answers-questions-about-how-the-mind-works-and-what-it-means-forthe-classroom/oclc/255894389">. (Jossey-Bass 2009)</a>. My brother who works in the North Carolina public school system got a copy of the book for Christmas and it seemed like something that I should read, so I Kindled it. Willingham's basic argument is that students don't like school because the brain is designed to avoid thinking. He proposed a simple model for thought with two main parts: a working memory where awareness and thinking take place and a long-term memory where factual and procedural knowledge reside. To simplify it further, our working memory is where we think and our long-term memory is where we store the information and operations upon which thinking depends. When human action is optimized, it draws almost entirely on stored procedures and facts in long-term memory. This is why such basic acts as driving or playing a sport or even just walking require relatively little thought. These activities depend very little on working memory. School work, in contrast, tends to draw heavily on working memory and the more that we use our working memory, the more frustrating tasks become. The goal then of a good classroom exercise is the balance the use of the working memory with the use of the long-term memory and thereby balance the frustrating and sub-optimal thinking part of the brain with the optimized, memory functions that allow most of us to navigate successfully through everyday life. Willingham argues that many of the typical assignments in schools push the working memory too hard and this leads to unsuccessful results in problem solving activities and frustration. Working memory work is hard work! This is not to say that working memory work can't be rewarding. In fact, Willingham suggests that the move from working memory to long-term memory is crucial to make learning effective. Moreover, successfully solving problems with working memory does generate a feeling of pleasure. So there are incentives for students and teachers alike to manage effectively the use of working memory. At the same time, Willingham suggests that the capacity of our working memory to manipulate new ideas, facts, procedures, and objects and combine them for thought is rather fixed. Our long-term memory may well be more flexible. Thus the goal of teaching is to push as much as possible into long-

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term memory in order to free up space in working memory for the manipulation of new ideas. Willingham's use of spatial metaphors (e.g. working memory has a maximum amount of "space") makes these arguments quite clear. Having established his basic model for cognition, Willingham spends a good bit of time talking about how to move knowledge from working memory to long term memory without boring students. When students lose interest in material, the teaching process stops. At the same time, creating a rich and powerful long-term memory requires constant and, to some extent, repetitive practice. Students who have better background information on a topic (which Willingham places in long-term memory), for example, have improved reading comprehension skills. Expertise and the ability to improvise and problem solve come from the ability to lean on long-term memory factual information and models to test hypothesis and to free up working memory for the manipulation of new ideas, facts, and experiences. Willingham's model for learning paralleled my experiences working with students in Latin over the past few years in Latin Friday Morning. Many of the students who join me for coffee and Latin on Fridays have less the thorough knowledge of the word endings, forms, and paradigms central for understanding the Latin language. As a result, they spend most of our time struggling to identify parts of speech (at worst) or cases, tenses, and potential functions of words (at best). They do not seem to be able both to identify the words and to process the relationships between the words and other words in the sentence. And understanding the relationship between words in a sentence is essential to reading. The reason for this, according to Willingham's model of cognition, is that students overload their working memory with the almost innumerable variables present in a single sentence because they have not pushed any of the basic factual knowledge (and here we really mean basic word paradigms) into their long-term memory. The goal of improving their ability to read Latin, then, is to expand the content of their long-term memory freeing up working memory space for the difficult process of reading a foreign language. To return, then, to the idea of student resistance, Willingham's model of cognition places student dislike for school at the intersection of biology and pedagogy. The relentless pressure exerted on the working memory by the sometime ham-fisted tendency to expose students to problem solving exercises which go far beyond the resources available to them in their long-term memory. At the same time, the brain's desire to work at the lowest level possible offers biological push back against both teaching and learning. Willingham notes that emotionally positive experiences with content and processes contribute to the development of the long-term memory and these positive experiences tend to derive from measure use of working memory and incremental improvements in long-term memory resources.

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<title>Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/varia-and-quickhits/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 07 Jan 2011 12:38:29 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=96</guid> It's a cold and dark Friday morning, but some quick hits and varia will make it seem like spring. John Wallrodt's Paperless Archaeology promises to be a must read blog for folks interested in digital workflow in archaeology. Wallrodt is one of the leaders in the digital archaeological movement among Mediterranean archaeology and designed many of the processes that powered Steven Ellis's famous use of iPads at Pompeii. (Here is <a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/pompeii/">a link to the Apple story</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/digital-workflowand-microhistory/">my response</a>, and <a href="http://classics.uc.edu/pompeii/index.php/news/1latest/142-ipads2010.html">something from Ellis's Pompeii project site</a>.) <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/audio/academic_pulse/the_ipad_in_higher_ed">Here's something short on using the iPad in the management classroom</a>. This is <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/jason-and-the-argot-land-wheregreeks-ancient-language-survives-2174669.html">a neat little story about the dialect used by some Greek speakers in Turkey</a>. Apparently, Greek speakers near Trabzon still use the infinitive! Here is <a href="http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/01/mobile-learning-could-be-key-in-achievementgap/">an interesting blog post</a> that considers <a href="http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Government-Online.aspx">a (somewhat, but not very) recent report from the Pew Research Center</a> about how the proliferation of relatively inexpensive mobile internet devices promises to make access to government information (and data) accessible to more people. This, in turn, holds the potential for breaking down the "digital divide" that still follows along social and economic divisions within society. The short blog post suggests that breaking through this digital divide may have important implications for teaching. <a href="http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=341">Here's an article from Dissent that asks the question: are English departments killing the humanities?</a> <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Historians-Continue-to-Face/125794/">Bleak times are getting less bleaker for historians according to the American Historical Association</a>. If you are going to the Archaeological Institute of America's annual meeting and really interested in Corinthian things, David Pettegrew provides <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2010/12/13/corinth-at-the-archaeological-institute-of-americajanuary-2011/">a quick guide to papers on Corinthian topics</a>. <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis is blogging again</a>! And (via Kostis) here is<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmVlOqCKqCs"> a link to a YouTube versions of Penn Museum's "famous" What in the World? television show</a>. (Let's try to will Kostis to blog on it!) <a href="http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/books/">Here's a digital copy of Mark Poster's </a> <a href="http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/books/">Marx, Foucault, and History</a> . (Cambridge 1984) I am still fascinated by ruins, abandonment, and urban decay (even though these themes are getting a bit tired). <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photographydetroit#/?picture=370173054&amp;index=0">Here is another gallery on abandoned buildings in Detroit</a>. And here is <a href="http://www.sleepycity.net/posts/252/Demolition_of_the_Paris_Metro">a story on abandoned stretches of the Paris Metro</a>. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2010-11/engine/current/match/428753.html">I don't want to talk about this at all</a>, but <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2010-

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11/content/current/story/495801.html">I'm really happy to hear that Cricket Australia in not in crisis</a>. What I am listening to: <a href="http://louismackey.bandcamp.com/album/the-dioscuri">Louis Mackey and Dr. Quandry, </a> <a href="http://louismackey.bandcamp.com/album/thedioscuri">Dioscuri</a><span style="font-style:normal;">, and Charles Mingus, </span>The Black Saint and Lady Sinner<span style="font-style:normal;">.</span> <span style="font-style:normal;">What I am reading (and how did I never read this book earlier?): D. Hayden, </span><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/power-of-place-urban-landscapes-as-publichistory/oclc/31077172">The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History</a><span style="fontstyle:normal;">. (MIT 1995).</span> </ul> Some good football this weekend. Go Eagles!

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<title>Digital Humanities and Digital Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/digital-humanities-anddigital-archaeology/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:07:56 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=99</guid> It's been pretty interesting to watch (from a safe distance) the little storm that has come out of a recent MLA session on the history and future of digital humanities. The eye of the storm seems to have been <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/pannapacker-at-mla-digitalhumanities-triumphant/30915">a post on the </a> <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/pannapacker-at-mla-digital-humanitiestriumphant/30915">Chronicle</a> <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/pannapacker-atmla-digital-humanities-triumphant/30915">'s Brainstorm blog by William Pannapacker</a>. Pannapacker argued that the scholars who identify themselves as digital humanists have become an even more exclusive and sometimes cliquish group over the past few years with the senior figures in the group venerated as gods. He is not entirely clear how this has occurred but he seems to suggest that this trend marks the end of the grass roots days and usher in a new, more exclusive and structured field of digital humanities. As one can imagine, Pannapacker's reaction to the panel has stirred up some conversation in the <a href="http://musematic.net/">blogosphere</a> and across <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Pannapacker">Twitter</a>. On some level, his argument simply places digital humanities in the specific institutional context of the modern, industrial university. As disciplines and sub-disciplines develop, they become more specialized as a means of justifying their position within the university structure which continues to privilege areas of study that produce distinct and discrete types of knowledge. In short, some of the perceived exclusivity of the digital humanities "movement" is almost certainly a produce of practitioners drinking their own kool-aid; to get recognized in the academy an area of student needs boundaries. Digital archaeology provides an interesting contrast. While digital humanities has become a vibrant sub-field, digital archaeology remains a bit of a orphan in the discipline of archaeology. Many archaeologists use digital tools in their research, there is <a href="http://www.leidenuniv.nl/caa/">a conference</a> and <a href="http://www.internetarchaeology.org/">a journal</a> dedicated (to some extent) to projects that make innovative use of digital tools, and there are vibrant and ongoing conversations among scholars who use digital tools, but these practices have never crystalized into the call for expanded numbers of academic positions dedicated to the approach (in fact, I can't specifically recall ever seeing a job description for a tenure track position in digital archaeology). It also seems like the digital archaeology community is far less exclusive than Pannapacker describes the digital humanities crowd. There are certainly some individuals who stand apart in the expertise, experience, and theoretical sensitivities (you know who you are...), but as a rule, the community <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Symbols">seems distinctly low-grid</a>. It may be valuable to contrast Pannapacker's observation with <a href="http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digital-humanities/">the paper given by Alan Lui at the same panel</a>. Lui argues that digital humanities has not quite made the leap from vibrant subfield to a leading field in the humanities. He seems to suggest that the commitment to technically demanding projects that involve massive quantities of data or specialized tools has perhaps cut digital humanities off from the pressing, cultural questions central to almost every discipline within the humanities. By embracing technical issues at the expense of the larger project of cultural criticism digital humanities runs the risk of isolating itself further from other areas of study in the humanities. While this would certainly contribute to maintaining digital humanities in a exclusive position in the academy (as people how know how to do things), it also runs the risk of isolating digital humanists in an area where unlimited growth is not necessarily guaranteed. Digital archaeology, in contrast, seems to include a significant number of scholars who are approaching archaeological, historical, and methodological problems in fundamentally similar ways to non-digital

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archaeologists (if such people exist). Digital archaeologists might have different methodological commitments and almost certainly have more robust technical knowledge, but ultimately they seem to be working on the same project as the rest of us dirt and boot archaeologists. At least this is how things seem in my sub-field of Mediterranean archaeology.

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<title>Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/archaeology-and-mancamps-in-western-north-dakota/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:15:16 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=105</guid> North Dakota recorded a 4.7% increase in population in the 2010 census. Most of these new residents appeared in the western counties of North Dakota and particularly Williams, Montrail, and McKenzie counties. You can check out <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/north_dakota_map.html">the basic statistics here</a> or check out the map below. Note that for North Dakota "below average" is really quite exceptional. The two "high growth" counties are Burleigh and Cass where Fargo and Bismarck are located. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/newimage.jpg" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="422" height="199" /> The growth in population in the western counties is primarily tied to the North Dakota oil boom and particularly the recent efforts to extract oil from the Brakken and Three Forks oil fields. For some basic information on these fields check out <a href="http://www.bakkenblog.com/">the Bakken Blog </a>or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation">the wikipedia page</a>. For <a href="https://www.dmr.nd.gov/OaGIMS/viewer.htm">a live GIS map, check out the North Dakota Oil and Gas Division</a>, or check out the more basic map below: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="shaleoil1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/shaleoil1.jpg" border="0" alt="shaleoil1.jpg" width="450" height="582" /> The boom in oil production in western North Dakota (and presumably Eastern Montana and southern Saskatchewan) has led to significant problems with housing. The community of Williston and outlying area, for example, has found it impossible to accommodate wide range of people who have come to work in the oil fields or as engineers or other support. As a result, these areas have experienced a building boom. Note in the map below that North Dakota is one of the few states with a positive number of housing starts in the last year: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="2009usmapbystatepercentages.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/2009usmapbystatepercentages.jpg" border="0" alt="2009usmapbystatepercentages.jpg" width="450" height="347" /> This map does not capture the significant number of people living in temporary accommodations. Across the western counties of the state a whole series of so-called "man camps" have sprung up to serve temporary residents in the area. These camps typically consist of prefabricated trailers purchased or leased by one of the companies involved in prospecting or extracting oil. They are then grouped in accordance with local regulations. The most dramatic group of trailers to enter the area came from the support area of the Vancouver Olympics. The construction of temporary "company towns" has a long tradition in the western United States dating back to the mining and logging camps of the 19th century. <a href="http://www.du.edu/ludlow/cfarch.html">Recent archaeological work on the site of Ludlow Massacre</a> sought to document the mining camp organized, in part, by the Rockefeller owned Colorado Fuel and Mining Company. This work has contributed to the site being designated as a National Historic Monument In the spirit of this work, the material culture of life in these boom counties has attracted my attention. It is almost impossible in Ancient or Medieval contexts to identify the impact of short-term and rapid settlement change in settlement patterns on the local social, economic, and natural landscape. For example, the work crews who labored to build or repair the <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/more-in-inequality-in-justinianscorinth/">Hexamilion wall in the Corinthia</a> have left almost no trace of their living and working conditions. In western North Dakota, however, rapid settlement change is producing a new archaeological landscape even as we speak. Temporary or sub-standard living conditions, gender

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imbalance (man camps, are, apparently overwhelmingly male), transient labor, limited engagement with the social or cultural life of the more permanent, local communities, difficult working conditions, and, by all accounts, significant wealth, all should leave a distinct imprint on site formation in the local archaeological record. I've begun to think about collaborating with some colleagues here at the University of North Dakota to document the material and social conditions of the North Dakota man-camps. Ideally this project would be a combination of voluntary collaboration with the various companies that operate these camps (including Halliburton) and some guerrilla archaeology (inspired, for example, by <a href="http://academia.edu.documents.s3.amazonaws.com/1389412/Myers__2010___Camp_Delta__Google_Earth_and_the_ethics_of_remote_sensing_in_archaeology.pdf">Adrian Meyer's recent article in </a> <a href="http://academia.edu.documents.s3.amazonaws.com/1389412/Myers__2010___Camp_Delta__Google_Earth_and_the_ethics_of_remote_sensing_in_archaeology.pdf">World Archaeology</a> <a href="http://academia.edu.documents.s3.amazonaws.com/1389412/Myers__2010___Camp_Delta__Google_Earth_and_the_ethics_of_remote_sensing_in_archaeology.pdf"> 42 (2010), 455-467</a> where he used Good Earth images to document changes at Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay). Working with social workers, environmental policy folks, geographers, public historians, photographers, geologists, and environmental scientist types could produce a holistic approach to documenting rapid, localized, settlement change. The possibilities for this kind of project are pretty exciting so I've created an entry and put it in my idea box .

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<title>Two quick thoughts on Paperless Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/two-quick-thoughtson-paperless-archaeology/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:25:03 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=109</guid> I am absolutely loving John Wallrodt's exploration of digital workflow over at <a href="http://paperlessarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Paperless Archaeology</a>. In fact, I liked some of his observations enough to offer a comment and<a href="http://paperlessarchaeology.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/comment-on-new-math/"> I was pleased to read his response</a>. Wallrodt's blog is exploring the implementation of technology at the <a href="http://classics.uc.edu/pompeii/">PARP:PS (Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia) project</a>. This project received significant attention this past fall for using iPads as one of their primary data collection devices, but they have also used technology in other innovative ways. Wallrodt's discussion of "Paperless" archaeology stirred me to think about two crucial and interrelated issues facing any project considering the use of digital technology to replace paper. These are very tentative observations that are still barely formulated, but they do capture some of my instincts regarding paperless archaeology. 1. What are the specific advantages to a specific digital approach? In my rush to implement digital "solutions", I have often overlooked this particularly basic question. For example, collecting survey data on paper and keying it later is not a particular problem for most of the projects on which I have worked. First, manpower for data entry tends to be relatively abundant (student volunteers, graduate students, various project directors at loose ends). The process of data entry familiarizes an individual with the data collected over the course of the season. And the paper copies of data collection forms can easily become digital artifacts while preserving their integrity as physical artifacts. We scan all of our paper collection forms. In short, using paper data collection forms in the field do take longer to manage, but this is not a major liability for most of the projects with which I have been associated. They also have the added bonus of data duplication and they represent a more flexible medium than most basic forms of primary digital collection. That being said, paper forms do not make it as easy to normalize data coming out of the field. A trench supervisor or survey team leader can record data in any way he or she wants. So, for example, in a box for "Percent Visible" a survey team reader can write "kalamboki". This obviously creates problems. A digital form could easily prevent this kind of error or tomfoolery. At the same time, there are obvious limits to even how digital forms can prevent data issues. There would be no way for a form to correct a the entry of an incorrect number, for example, as long as it fell within the plausible range of responses. Proofreading of field data collection sheets is a time-consuming, boring, and frustrating project, but it will always be necessary whether the sheets are paper or digital. The kinds of normalization errors that I have seen most frequently occur at the stage of in-field data collection are often the most easily caught either by the human eye or digital means. Of course, economies of scale become significant here as data sets become larger and more complex. I am fairly certain that the quantity of data coming out of a project like PARP:PS is larger than the quantity of data that we produced at PKAP, for example. So, normalization at the point of data collection may have significant advantages. Issues of curation of paper and digital artifacts are, of course, always a concern and there are real benefits to collecting data in digital form, implementing some kind of version control, and instantly saving it in many places. There remain serious issues, however, with the infrastructure necessary for the long-term and responsible curation of digital data. Of course, digital data can be saved down in paper form, but again, there isn't a massive savings of time or energies here. To be clear, I am not advocating against the use of digital analysis in archaeology or even the systematic collection of data in digital form. I think that an increasingly digital workflow is the way forward in archaeology. On the other hand, I am still struggling to position our digital workflow in way to reap the maximum benefits. As I imagine future projects, I imagine that I will remain committed to primary data collection in the field in paper, but I am open to being convinced otherwise.

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2. How is digital data different? I have thought about the second issue in greater length <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/27328060/Digital-Archaeology-Technology-in-theTrenches">here</a>. One thing I am constantly wondering about is how does our increasingly digitized present change the kind of data that we collect (in our every day lives). Our interaction with technology changes our patterns of thought, conditions our every day rituals, and transforms the creative and interpretative potential of our research. Digital data collection produces different data. My Point 1 considers the specific benefits of digital data collection in terms of real digital workflow; this point makes both a more simple and more complex observation. Notebooks and paper forms represent a particular relationship between the individual collecting information and the archaeological context. Digital data collection changes this relationship and, as an extension, the kind of data produced and preserved. Of course, there is nothing universal about digital data collection and production (any more than there are simple and universal features associated with notebook style data collection and production), but I am convinced that certain features of digital data capture are consistent enough to allow us to generalize about them as an approach. What are they, you might ask? Well, I am still trying to get that sorted and I hope the John Wallrodt's detailed discussion of his own implementation of a robust digital practice with PARP:PS will help!

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<title>Teaching Graduate Historiography: A Final Syllabus</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/teaching-graduatehistoriography-a-final-syllabus/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:13:12 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=111</guid> This is probably my last semester teaching our Graduate Historiography course. The course is probably the most demanding that I have ever taught. It is a rollicking ride through major issues in contemporary historical theory. On any given week, I am completely out of my depth teaching or even leading discussion on any of these books. This is the basic syllabus at its final development. There are obvious holes in it. For example, I make the significant concession to a class full of modernists, public historians, and Americanists when I left out most pre-modern historiography (Ancient, Medieval, and even Early Modern). While I obviously think that this work is important, I just could not justify cutting more contemporary authors from this syllabus as these works not only have so shaded my reading of ancient authors, but are likely to have a more immediate impact on the work of the students in the class. The class is a combination of the wonderful and the frustrating. I look forward to teaching it this semester because it will probably be my last chance to teach it (and graduate students!) for a while, but I'll also be glad to see it passed on to someone else. Part 1: An Introduction to Historiography Introduction to Historiography 1 <br />R. G. Collingwood, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/idea-of-history/oclc/392272">The Idea of History</a> . Oxford 1946. Introduction to Historiography 2 <br />Robert M. Burns and H. Rayment-Pickard, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/philosophies-of-history-from-enlightenment-topostmodernity/oclc/246995585">Philosophies of History: From Enlightenment to Postmodernity</a> . Blackwell 2000. 1-217. Introduction to Historiography 3 <br />Robert M. Burns and H. Rayment-Pickard, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/philosophies-of-history-from-enlightenment-topostmodernity/oclc/246995585">Philosophies of History: From Enlightenment to Postmodernity</a> . Blackwell 2000. 218-327. Part 2: Critical Issues in 20th Century Historiography History and Memory<br /> J. Le Goff, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/history-andmemory/oclc/26014680">History and Memory</a> . Trans. S. Rendall and E. Claman. New York 1992. 1-98.<br />M. Carruthers, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/book-of-memory-a-study-ofmemory-in-medieval-culture/oclc/20633586">The Book of Memory</a> . Cambridge 1990. 145.<br />P. Geary, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/phantoms-of-remembrance-memory-andoblivion-at-the-end-of-the-first-millennium/oclc/30358155">Phantoms of Remembrance</a> . Princeton 1994. 1-22. History and Marx<br /> E. P. Thompson, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/making-of-theenglish-working-class/oclc/178185">The Making of the English Working Class</a> . New York 1966. <br />A. Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks , short excerpts. History and the Nation <br /> B. Anderson,<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/imaginedcommunities-reflections-on-the-origin-and-spread-of-nationalism/oclc/23356022"> Imagined Communities </a>. London 1991 Freud and History <br />S. Freud, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/totem-and-taboo-somepoints-of-agreement-between-the-mental-lives-of-savages-and-neurotics/oclc/223102">Totem and Taboo</a> . New York 1950.<br />P. Gay, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/freud-forhistorians/oclc/12051187">Freud for Historians</a> . New York 1985. The Annales School <br />F. Braudel, T<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/structures-ofeveryday-life-the-limits-of-the-possible/oclc/8620584">he Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible</a> . Trans. by S. Reynolds Philadelphia 1979.<br />E. LeRoy Ladurie, Motionless

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History, Social Science History 1 (1977), 115-136. History and Foucault <br />M. Foucault, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeology-ofknowledge-and-the-discourse-on-language/oclc/23347591">Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language</a> . Trans. A.M.S. Smith. New York 1972. Microhistory, Anthropology, and Cultural History <br />B. Latour, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/aramis-or-the-love-of-technology/oclc/246836458">Aramis or The Love of Technology</a> . Cambridge, Mass. 1996.<br />C. Geertz, Thick Description Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture, in <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/interpretation-ofcultures-selected-essays/oclc/737285">The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays</a> . (New York 2000), 3-32. History and Literature <br />H. White, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/metahistory-thehistorical-imagination-in-nineteenth-century-europe/oclc/569790049">Metahistory: The Historical Imagination of Nineteenth Century Europe</a> . Baltimore 1973. Women and Gender <br />J. Scott, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/gender-and-the-politicsof-history/oclc/41231445">Gender and the Politics of History</a> . Revised Edition. New York 1999.<br /><br /><strong>History Space and Place <br />D. Hayden, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/power-of-place-urban-landscapes-as-publichistory/oclc/31077172">The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History</a>. Cambridge 1995. History and Postcolonialism <br />D. Chakrabarty, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/provincializing-europe-postcolonial-thought-and-historicaldifference/oclc/43076852">Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference</a> . Princeton 2000.<br />E. Said, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/orientalism/oclc/4004102">Orientalism</a> . New York 1979. Introduction. Digital History <br />Various Authors, <a href="http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/issues/952/interchange/index.html">JAH Interchange</a> <a href="http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/issues/952/interchange/index.html">, The Promise of Digital History, </a>95 (2008) <br />D. J. Cohen and R. Rosenzweig, <a href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/">Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web</a> . Philadelphia 2005.

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<title>Firday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/firday-varia-and-quickhits/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:24:04 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=113</guid> Some varia and quick hits on a snowy Friday morning. <a href="http://campustechnology.com/articles/2011/01/01/literacy-redefined.aspx">Some interesting thoughts on literacy in the digital realm</a>. Lots of digital humanities buzz this week, and <a href="http://lenz.unl.edu/wordpress/?p=340">here is one of the best things I've read</a>. I'm am not a builder. <a href="http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/getting-to-know-dh-if-you-work-incultural-heritage">Some questions and answers for people interested in digital humanities</a>. <a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/01/2170">The incomparable Matthew Milliner continues his conquest of the blogosphere</a>. If you have issues with academia, then <a href="http://www.selloutyoursoul.com/2011/01/09/10-essential-non-academic-blogs/">these 10 blogs are for you</a>. <a href="http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/getting-to-know-dh-if-you-work-incultural-heritage">A toolbox for the digital Oral Historian</a>. <a href="http://tapedeckapp.com/">I love the old school look of this tape deck application</a>. <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology awoke from its long slumber</a>. <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday awoke from its short winter (break) nap</a>. I know it's just a Twenty20 match, but <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-201011/engine/current/match/446961.html">this is still a nice thing to see</a>. What I'm reading: R. G. Collingwood, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/idea-ofhistory/oclc/392272"> The Idea of History </a>. Oxford 1946. (What I'd prefer to be reading: A. Liu, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/local-transcendence-essays-on-postmodern-historicism-andthe-database/oclc/192048211">Local Transcendence</a> . Chicago 2008) What I'm listening to: Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz. (via Kostis Kourelis). </ul> Have a great weekend!

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<title>Metadata Monday</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/metadatamonday/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:25:27 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=118</guid> I haven't put up any metadata for a while, so I thought that a snowy Monday morning would be as good a time as any. One of the downsides of moving to a blog hosted by Wordpress.com is that they do not provide as robust a set of statistical data and so far have not provided a way to integrate with Google Analytics. Also it seems like they record fewer page views and visits than Typepad did. In fact, Typepad consistently recorded more visits than Google Analytics for the same blog so their algorithm for determining visits must be exceptionally sensitive. For fun, I decided to compare the page views over a 28 day stretch from December 20th to January 16th. I picked this span because my new blog saw its first 1000 (1030 to be exact) page views. It is also a time when people tend not to visit blogs very often choosing (I imagine) to spend time with families and away from the office and work. I also tend to blog less regularly at the holidays. So this period of time is least likely to be distorted by a sensational blog post (cough, cough) and is most likely to reflect he baseline visibility of the blog. Here is a pretty dense chart showing the trends over this period from 2007-2008 to 2010-2011. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/newimage1.jpg" border="0" alt="NewImage.jpg" width="500" height="296" /> Here are the figures: 2007-2008: Total Views: 1081. Average: 38.6. <br />2008-2009: Total Views: 2317. Average: 82.8. <br />2009-2010: Total Views: 2369. Average: 84.6. <br />2010-2011 (Old Blog): Total Views: 1668. Average: 59.6. <br />2010-2011 (New Blog): Total Views: 1030. Average: 36.8. As you can see, the new blog (despite the less generous stats provided by Wordpress.com) has some catching up to do. Of course, it does not have hundreds of blog posts providing content visible to search engines behind it either, so my guess is that over this same span of time next year, there is likely to be some improvement.

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<title>Why the Northern Plains Produces Archaeologists</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/why-the-northernplains-produces-archaeologists/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:32:29 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=121</guid> I have often wondered why the Northern Plains produced so many elite archaeologists - Carl Blegen being the best known. Perhaps it has something to do with our every day encounters with an excavated, stratified landscape. The great trench, this morning: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GreatTrench.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/greattrench.jpg" border="0" alt="GreatTrench.jpg" width="400" height="668" /> The scarps need work, but most people don't excavate in the dark. This is mostly tongue in cheek.

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<title>Digital Humanities and Craft</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/digital-humanities-andcraft/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 18 Jan 2011 12:52:01 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=124</guid> I've been fascinated by the recent debates centering on the nature of digital humanities. While the debate has gone on for years, the most recent round of posts (<a href="http://www.philosophi.ca/pmwiki.php/Main/InclusionInTheDigitalHumanities">some of which are summarized by Geoffrey Rockwell here</a>) were spurred by an MLA panel on the history and future of digital humanities. One of the most interesting (although unsurprising) developments from this discussion is that several scholars have argued that digital humanities has a strong connection with craft. In some ways, this attitude is a response to <a href="http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/where-is-cultural-criticism-in-the-digitalhumanities/">the critique that Digital Humanities lacks theoretical development </a>and, by implicit extension, the sophistication associated with other areas of the "pure humanities". In a recent response to this attitude Geoffrey <a href="http://www.philosophi.ca/pmwiki.php/Main/InclusionInTheDigitalHumanities">Rockwell has gone so far to suggest that digital humanities is "under theorized the way carpentry and computer science are"</a>. It is unfair to reduce his entire critique to this simple observation, but others (like Alan Liu) have developed this observation in a more critical direction. Part of the impulse behind the association of digital humanities with craft derives from the longstanding perspective that associated being <a href="http://lenz.unl.edu/wordpress/?p=340">a digital humanist with coding or, more broadly, building things</a>. This is consistent with larger directions in the digital discourse which emphasize the making of things, and has overlap with the larger DIY movement through such projects as the <a href="http://www.diybookscanner.org/">DIY book scanner</a> and other more intentionally subversive gestures toward industrialized, manufactured, commodified reality. The notion of craft and DIY has a strange relationship with the institutional expectations of the modern university. Universities developed to accommodate the needs of an industrializing world and disciplinary boundaries and academic professionalism emerged hand-in-hand with an interest in creating a specialized educational process that paralleled industrialized production. In short, the modern, western university as an institution stood in contrast to older models of learning rooted in apprenticeship and craft production. On the one hand, this availed the modern university to the mantle of progress which held the industry represented a far more democratic approach to society. Goods would be more freely available, and the dignity of work accessible to even the least skilled in the labor pool. Craft production in contrast was understood to be more socially constrained and, in general, to represent a less efficient, fair means of organizing labor. Of course, all parties did not agree on this dichotomy. So arguments that have focused on the craft nature of digital humanities not only share something with more radical conceptions of higher education that emphasize craft, but also, ironically, allude to more conservative traditions of knowledge production. While craft can claim for itself an anti-modern mantle of authenticity, it is also a form of productive organization that depends heavily upon access to informal social networks. These networks tend to have less institutional structure and rely less heavily on expertise and and more on personal relationships. So, ironically, the rhetoric of craft alludes to exactly the kind of exclusivity that <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogPost/The-MLAtheDigital/19468/">William Pannapacker decried in his recent Chronicle of Higher Education blog post</a>. There is another angle to the rhetoric of craft, however. <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/282303">Archaeology has interestingly enough occasionally seen craft </a>as a way to articulate its peculiar approach to knowledge production; <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/audit-culture-and-history-as-

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craft/">anthropology has also made use of this metaphor</a>. Movements like<a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/toward-a-definition-of-punk-archaeology/"> Punk Archaeology</a> embrace the DIY movement's efforts to resist the commodification of both knowledge itself and experience or process of knowledge production. In contrast to claims that these perspectives are "under theorized" DIY, punk, craft, and other subversive anti-industrial, antiinstitutional, and anti-establishment perspectives tend to derive from the most highly theorized corners of the discipline. There is, of course, an element of dissimulation here. By embracing craft, punk, "doing" and "making" scholars intentionally create a dichotomy between those who produce things and those who, for lack of a better word, "think". The former becomes the mantle for active resistance to institutional expectations; the latter, passive, quiet acquiescence. The willingness to structure the debate in this way, demonstrates a certain sophistication in how a certain group of digital humanists (or at least their caricatures) are willing to articulate their craft theoretically. Moreover, it provides a useful case study for how our efforts to articulate assumptions about knowledge production implies attitudes toward social organization, access to expertise, and ultimately the structure of the academy, the classroom, and the lab.

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<title>Archaeology, Method, and Inequality</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/archaeology-methodand-inequality/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:15:49 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=126</guid> Most archaeologists know that there is a clear link between our the material remains of the past, the methods that we use as a discipline to document them, and our view of past social organization. I've been thinking about this a good bit over the past two month as I work to revise for publication a paper that I gave at the <a href="https://webspace.utexas.edu/sjf365/CC3/Intro.html">Contrast in Contrast</a> conference this past fall. (For more on that paper see <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/more-in-inequality-in-justinianscorinth/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/christiansin-roman-space/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/corinth-in-contrast-somereflective-notes/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/ambivalent-landscapes-of-the-6thcentury-at-corinth-in-contrast/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/even-more-contrastingcorinth/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/morecontrasting-corinth/">here</a>, and <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/more-contrastingcorinth/">here</a>). The subtitle for the conference was "Studies in Inequality", and this got me thinking about how we understand inequality in the archaeological record of Late Roman Corinth. In general, scholars have tended to emphasize discrete groups within Late Roman society (the church, the local elites, pagans, or even laboring classes), but with the exception of the relationship between pagans and Christians said little about the relationship between these groups. As a result, it has been pretty difficult to understand social relationships and potential inequality in a Corinthian context. In fact, the massive quantity of archaeological evidence produced by elite interests in the area of Corinth in Late Antiquity, has tended to dominate the archaeological discourse. The tendency for elite landscapes to dominate the archaeological discourse is not, of course, unique to Corinth. The most cynical view of this tendency understands the relationship between social standing and archaeological evidence as rooted in the historical development of archaeology (or even the humanities, more broadly). In this view, elite white men studied archaeology to understand what their counterparts were doing in antiquity. To do this, they studied monuments, elite art, elite texts, and the places named in these texts. A less cynical (and maybe more naive) view holds that archaeologists are prisoners of their evidence. In other words, elite monuments, texts, and objects tended to survive better in the archaeological record. Since our discipline is predicated on the study of material objects from the past, we are by necessity a discipline biased to the production of elite narratives, particularly for the ancient Mediterranean world where elite material seem so much prevalent. As I revise my Corinth in Contrast paper, I am really struggling to extract from the archaeological evidence present in the Corinthia, a narrative of the 6th century that both accommodates the expansion of imperial power in the region and local resistance to this expansion. My goal is less to argue that resistance occurred and more to find space for resistance among the archaeological remains of the region. There are few texts that describe what people were doing in the Corinthia during this time so the traditional routes to understanding how people responded to the 6th century building boom are blocked. The relationship between various contemporary buildings holds forth some promise, as does various graffiti pressed into the wet mortar of an imperially funded building. We may be able to argue that the productive landscape changed in some ways too, but subtle shifts in settlement do not speak directly to

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shifts in attitudes. The more pressing question, however, remains whether these traces in the landscape, architecture, and epigraphy are sufficient basis for stimulating new kinds of questions from ancient evidence. These new questions would seek to examine inequality by challenging the epistemological basis for archaeological knowledge. This may mean that arguments for inequality are less convincing by contemporary archaeological standards (and our standard of evidence is lower or different), but it could produce greater space for groups who traditionally excluded from narratives about the past. And this could challenge methods and perspectives on the past that tend to reproduce the privileges of the dominant class.

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<title>Digitizing Theses on North Dakota</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/digital-historypracticum-spring-2011/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:55:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=129</guid> This semester I am once again directing a public/digital history practicum. The goal of this little course, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/dippingmy-toe-in-the-public-history-pool/">like the one before it</a>, is to develop a digital history collection that might be of interest to some kind of public. The course is designed for a small group of students with almost no background in digital history. The focus of the practicum will be on a collection of Master's Theses (for list, see below) produced at the University of North Dakota between 1909 and 1955. These theses are currently housed in the Department of Special Collections at the Chester Fritz Library. These theses present a significant body of more or less original scholarship produced over the course of 100 years of graduate education in the field of history at the University of North Dakota. Our first emphasis will be on theses that contribute to the history of the state or the region. Most of these theses were written under the direction of Orin G. Libby or <a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/elwyn-robinsons-autobiography/">Elwyn B. Robinson</a> (and a number of these works contributed to his <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/history-of-north-dakota/oclc/190890">History of North Dakota</a> ). The specific objectives of this practicum involve creating a proof of concept. This will specifically involve the following steps: 1. A basic collection of digital objects with appropriate metadata. 2. Interpretative material in association with the digital objects that makes the collection accessible and understandable to the general public. 3. An academic presentation that details the creation of the digital collection, its historical context, and its significance. 4. A program for publicizing the collection over the course of the semester. This includes developing a media strategy and setting goals to assess its success. 5. A grant proposal for future funding for the project based on methods and results of the proof-ofconcept level work. This practicum I think should proceed along four overlapping phases: Phase 1. Familiarize ourselves with other comparable projects and the tools of the trade (in terms of equipment and software). Identify and scan a group of theses to determine time and procedure and document this work. Produce a prioritized list of theses to be scanned this semester and establish a schedule for scanning. Phase 2. Scan the theses on the prioritized list. Adjust procedure document as necessary. Discuss search and mark-up strategies for these texts. Determine how to brand these theses. Phase 3. Publication and publicity. Release scanned theses to public in a systematic way and leverage digital, new media, old media (press release?) and social media tools to make these theses visible and valuable. Phase 4. Prepare a formal report and proposal for completing the job of scanning M.A. theses and presenting them to the public.

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More to come as this work continues! Here's a list of theses produced by the students in the practicum: (Theses marked with an asterisk appeared in Robinson's History of North Dakota .) 1. Myrtle Bemis 1909, History of the Settlement of Swedes in North Dakota 2. Charles Denoyer 1909, History of Fort Totten 3. Evelyn Leigh Mudge 1914, The Development of Western Protestant Churches 4. William Charles Whitford 1915, The Establishment of Overland Connections Between the Region East of the Mississippi and Red River 5. Bertha M Kuhn* 1917, History of Traill County, North Dakota 6. Axel Martin Tollefson 1917, History of Norwegian Settlement in Grand Forks County 7. Alexander Aas 1920, History of the City of Grand Forks to 1889 8. Waldemar E. Lillo 1923, History of the Whig Party to 1840 9. Elmer Ellis 1925, Minor Parties from the Civil War to 1900 10. Ethel Mautz 1929, The Factory Reform Act of 1833 in England: A Survey of Events Immediately Preceding and Accompaning 11. Eva Grace Syre 1930, The London Housing Problem, 1840-1875 12. Isabel Johnston 1930, Geographic factors in the history of Grand Forks, North Dakota 13. Frances H. Owen 1932, Social influences in Colonial Days 14. Lillian Viola Bangs 1932, The Effect of Parliamentary Legislation Upon the Development of Railroads in England from 1825-18 15. Leal R. Edmunds 1932, Congressional Reconstruction and the Radical Program 16. Clarence Chester Shively 1933, History of the Policy of the United States Toward Arbitration from 1789 to 1933 17. Anna Swenson 1933, Cleveland and the Hawaiian Question 1893 18. Flossie Burson 1934, The Transition of Agriculture in the Great Plains from 1920 to 1929 19. John C. McKinnon 1934, The Star Route Frauds 20. Clara Mae Kjos 1934, Origin of the Irish Free State, 1800-1922 21. John Almon Page 1934, History of North Dakota Public High Schools 22. Albert Freeman Arnason 1935, The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey During the Moroccan Crises, 1906-1911 23. Arnold Olaf Goplen 1935, Congressional Opposition to Lincoln in the Early Years of the Civil War 24. Raymond Joseph Gwewrth 1936, Some Political and Diplomatic Aspects of the Treaty of Washington 25. Ella S. Quam 1936, History of Homestead Legislation 26. Edwin O. Tilton 1936, American Expansion Toward the Canadian Northwest, 1865-1870 27. John Louis Rezatto 1937, Albania, The Adriatics Problem Child 28. Clayton L. Baskin 1938, Political and Constitutional Development in India Since 1920 29. James Price Scroeder 1939, A History of Organized labor in Fargo, North Dakota 30. Alfred Jerome Cole 1939, History of Health Legislation Affecting the Public Schools of Minnesota 31. Ingeborg Fjalstad 1939, Constitutional and Political Problems of the Irish Free State Until 1932 32. Henry Nelson Symons 1939, Bismarcks Relation with England, 1870-1878 33. Joseph B. Voeller* 1940, The Origin of the German-Russian people and their role in North Dakota 34. Albert George Selke 1940, A History of the Initiative in North Dakota 35. James Nelson Kent 1941, A History of Education in Grand Forks County 36. Bertil Maynard Johnson 1941, The Ethiopian Crisis of 1935-1936 and its European Repercussions 37. Clarence Victor Johnson 1942, The European Diplomatic Crisis of 1935 38. Clifford Arnold Solom 1944, History of the North Dakota Congress of Parents and Teachers 39. William M. Grindeland 1944, History of public school system of Ransom County: 1881-1944

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40. John Hove 1946, History of Public School Financial Legislation in North Dakota 41. Norman H. Hanson* 1946, History of consolidated schools in North Dakota 42. Otto C. Schultz 1947, A History of the State normal and Industrial School at Ellendale, North Dakota 43. Edward Archibald Milligan* 1948, The Standing Rock Sioux: 1874-1890 44. Thamar Emelia Dufwa 1948, Lincoln and Secession, 1858-1861 45. Agnes McCorkell Stee*1948, History of the Minot State Teachers College 46. Lawrence Blood 1948, A History of South Dakota Boys State 47. Lucy Kidder Leobrick 1948, History of School District Number One 48. Julian John Rolczynski 1949, The History of the State Educational Institution at Mayville, North Dakota 49. Asbjorn B. Isaacson 1949, Farm Mechanization in the Red River Valley: 1870-1915 50. Vernon Alfred Johnson 1950, History of Public School System of Kittson County, 1881-1950 51. Robert Samuel Anderson* 1951, A Social History of Grand Forks, North Dakota 52. Glenn Alden Hanna 1951, History of the Valley City State Teachers College 53. Adrian Ritchey Dunn 1951, A History of old Fort Berthold 54. Steven Hoekman 1951, The History of Fort Sully 55. Robert J. Murray 1951, History of Education in the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota 56. Ralph Arthur Larson 1951, History of Education in Clearwater County 57. James D. Johnson 1952, A History of the Midland Continental Ralroad, 1906-1950 58. James E. Palm 1952, A History of Dilworth school System at Dilworth, Minnesota 59. Lenora Isaacson Johnson 1952, The History of Ada, Minnesota: The Friendly City in the Heart of the Red River Valley, 1876-195 60. Lambert J. Mehl 1953, Missouri Grows to Maturity in North Dakota: A Regional History of the Lutheran Church--Missouri 61. Gerald C. Caskey 1953: A History of Northern Montana College to 1951 62. Rovert J. Murray 1953: History of Education in the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota 63. Embert J. Hendrickson 1954, The City Where the Two Rivers Meet: The Background and Early History of Thief River Falls, Minn 64. Marian Elizabeth McKechnie 1955, Spiritual Pioneering: A History of the Synodof North Dakota, Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., 1885 65. E. Bruce Hagen*1955, The North Dakota State Mill and Elevator Association: History, Organization, Administration 66. Sinclair Snow 1955, American Reaction to the Mexican Church-State Conflict of 1926-1929

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/friday-varia-and-quickhits/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:28:14 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=132</guid> It has been a cold week (-25 F when I went to bed last night), but here are some warm quick hits and varia on a warming Friday morning: We have arranged to have<a href="http://www.geoffreyrockwell.com/"> Geoffrey Rockwell</a> to campus in March. Rockwell is a professor of philosophy and humanities computing at University of Alberta, one of the leading Digital Humanists in North America, and the project leader of <a href="http://portal.tapor.ca/portal/portal">TAPoR</a> (Text Analysis Portal for Research). The Working Group in Digital and New Media will coordinate his visit in collaboration with EPSCOR, the departments of English, History, and the Communications program. He'll be on campus on March 1st and 2nd. On a more mundane note, <a href="http://realtime.springer.com/">these visualizations of the distribution and circulation of digital media published by Springer</a> are really really cool. <a href="http://realtime.springer.com/icons">Check out the icons</a>. <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">A new Teaching Thursday on concept mapping</a>. Two bizarre stories involving religious artifacts from Cyprus this week. First, a monk from Kykkos and several accomplices were stopped at the Athens airport when they attempted to smuggle the skeleton of a relatively recently deceased nun back to Cyprus (<a href="http://www.cyprus-mail.com/graverobbery/church-condemns-theft-woman-s-remains/20110119">for more here</a>). Next Boy George returned a stole 18th century icon to Cyprus that he had purchases in 1985 (<a href="http://www.cyprus-mail.com/church/archbishop-moved-boy-george-gesture/20110121">for more here</a>). I guess it's been a week for Furta Sacra! <a href="http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/artoflearning/teaching-and-learningwith-omeka/">This is a great article on using Omeka in a classroom environment</a>. I particular like the idea that it's acceptable for students to feel some discomfort in the digital environment. For folks interested in baptistery, this would be a great exhibit: <a href="http://www.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/take-me-to-the-water">Take me to the Water</a>. The idea that there existed postcards showing river baptisms has a nice parallel with the public monuments that marked out the baptismal ritual in antiquity. Someone linked to this on Facebook, but I don't remember who. <a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon">It's a great poster by The Oatmeal on how to use the semicolon</a>. This is <a href="http://readitlaterlist.com/blog/2011/01/is-mobile-affecting-when-we-read/">a fun blog post suggesting that people who own the iPad read at different</a> times of day based on data from Read it Later. Some thoughts on <a href="http://hmprescott.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/aha-report-part-3-digitalhistory/">Digital History at the American Historical Association annual meeting</a>. This is a cool group of essays from the Edge World Question Center on <a href="http://edge.org/q2011/q11_11.html">what scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit</a>. David Pettegrew continues to produce <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">some great translations and discussions on Corinth</a>. And <a href="http://paperlessarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Paperless Archaeology should be on all digital archaeologist's reading list</a>. It's great to see <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-201011/engine/current/match/446963.html">Australia's one-day cricket side going up 2-0 against England</a> while lacking an (out of form) Ricky Ponting and (an emphatically in-form) Michael Hussey. Maybe the handwringing over the state of Australia Cricket is misplaced a bit. After all, it's

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good for world cricket for the Australian test side to stumble. If we've learned anything from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rozelle">Pete Rozelle and the NFL</a>, parity in sport attracts interest. What I am reading: R. M. Burns and H. Rayment-Pickard, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/philosophies-of-history-from-enlightenment-topostmodernity/oclc/246995585">Philosophies of History</a> . (Blackwell 200). What I am listening to: The National, Boxer. </ul>

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<title>Denim, Gibson, and Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/denim-gibson-andarchaeology/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:22:42 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=139</guid> Over the holidays I read William Gibson's newest book, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/zero-history/oclc/505419399">Zero History</a> . One of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History">the main plot elements</a> was a search for the creator of a secret brand of denim called Gabriel Hounds. Without going into too much detail and giving the story away, the search for clues as to who produced Gabriel Hounds leads the main character of the book - the former punk rocker Hollis Henry - to the edges of the underground fashion world and allows the Gibson to indulge in a few of his famously detail-laden discussions of global merchandise. Denim represented a global product and even the secret Gabriel Hounds brand left traces of its secret existence in Australia, Japan, France, Italy, Canada, and the US. Denim was a global phenomenon. At the same time, the brand itself was hyper-individualized and almost custom made. Just to purchase it, you had to know people who knew people, so every example of a Gabriel Hounds product marked you as someone with a place in a very small circle of people in the know. This past weekend, I read over <a href="www.ulb.ac.be/socio/anthropo/OGosselain/MillerDenim.pdf">D. Miller and S. Woodward, "Manifesto for a study of denim," </a> <a href="www.ulb.ac.be/socio/anthropo/OGosselain/MillerDenim.pdf">Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale</a> <a href="www.ulb.ac.be/socio/anthropo/OGosselain/MillerDenim.pdf"> 15 (2007), 335-351</a>. This article calls for a approach to denim as an globalized social artifact that, nevertheless, functioned in very distinct, even individualized ways, on the local or personal level. To collect data for a project that both affirmed the global reach of a particular commodity and affirmed its unique place in highly localized social practices, the authors called for a network of scholars to investigate local practices around the world. Some of the facets of this <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/global-denim-project/">Global Denim Project appear on the project's website</a>. Like denim itself, this network of related projects are at once a manifestation of the spread of modern anthropology (and modern, western ways of describing our society) and intensely local practices. The individual practices of the collaborating scholars fit local conditions, individualized scholarly predilections, and To say that work on material culture finds neat parallels with archaeology is to point out the similarities between a puma and a house cat. That being said, this manifesto does offer some nice observations on the relationship between the personal, local, and global. Archaeologists confront the tension between the local and global every time they contemplate methods to document, produce, and study such highly localized phenomena as settlement patterns, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/archaeology-method-andinequality/">resistance</a>, or economic integration. They confront this issue again when they try to compare their results with results gathered from elsewhere in the world. As I have documented in this blog (<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/archaeologicalethnography-part-2/">here</a>), archaeology is a global brand brought together by only the slimmest of professional and disciplinary affinities. To bring this back to Gibson, I've blogged on <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/sprawl/">Gibson before in the context of Punk Archaeology</a>. He was one of the founding fathers of the cyberpunk genre and has a brilliant eye for landscapes and objects in his work. Punk rock with its fetishized anti-comercialism and radical individuality presents an ideal - if ironic - complement to the tension between local and global in denim, social anthropology, and archaeology. In some ways, we're all doing the same thing as we wrestle with the age-old tensions between the unique and universal. Most of Gibson's work, seem to include characters who constantly push against the undifferentiated void which he variously identifies as

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"the sprawl", the net, or even our globalized, commodified existence. By projecting the tension between the local and global into popular culture, we take a long standing philosophical distinction and consider it against the backdrop of the lived space. In effect, we take the abstract notion of the "universal" and make it real by adhering it to the limits of our world. These physical limits allow us to apply the universal to objects and bring archaeology and the study of material culture into a venerable conversation.

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<title>Retrieval, Content Mapping, and Student Study Practices</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/retrieval-contentmapping-and-student-study-practices/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:55:09 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=141</guid> <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/01/19/science.1199327.abstract">This past weekend an article appeared in </a> <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/01/19/science.1199327.abstract">Science</a> <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/01/19/science.1199327.abstract"> </a>indicating that "retrieval practice" produced better responses that more elaborative learning activities such as concept mapping. Those of you who read <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/01/20/conceptmapping-a-tool-for-promoting-deep-learning/">Teaching Thursday know that "concept mapping" and "deep learning"</a> are important buzz-words in the present teaching and learning discourse. Informed by cognitive psychology and class room practices, these concepts have become watchwords among faculty engaged in more sophisticated conversations on teaching and learning and form an easy parallel with terms like "active learning" or "learning centered" which marked out engaged faculty ten or twelve years ago. J. Karpicke and J. Blunt's article, however, argues that using more elaborate techniques like concept mapping to stimulate deep learning does not actually produce better results than the more tried-andtrue retrieval practices. Retrieval practices in the experiments run by Karpicke and Blunt involve reading passages and then recalling information from these passages in what the author's call a "free recall test". The students then repeated this practice over a controlled period of time while another group of students built more complex content maps. Without going into great detail about either of the two experiments, the results showed that students engaged in the more simple and olde skool retrieval practice produced better results than students trained in content mapping. The authors suggest that this is because retrieval practices requires students to organize information in a more context specific way than content mapping which relies upon a set of flexible, yet abstract models for understanding the relationship between ideas. In other words, the retrieval method encouraged students to understand the intrinsic organization of ideas in a text whereas content mapping allows students to re-order these ideas and, in the processes, translates them to a different, and perhaps less useful context. This study made me think a bit about student study environments and the place of elaborative learning activities in student practices. At the same time, I've been looking at some of the videos produced by Michael Wesch's Kansas State students in his Visions of Students Today project (check out the project <a href="http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=276">here</a> and <a href="http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=288">here</a>). I wondered how the life styles documented in these short YouTube videos (you can find them under the hashtag <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=VOST2011&amp;aq=f">VOST2011</a>) would accommodate practices like content mapping. It seems that retrieval practices may be better suited to accommodate the unstructured environments where most students spend their times. I know as a students that I used very simple retrieval exercises to learn basic data in history and foreign languages. For example, I made flash cards and sorted them constantly into piles of words that I knew and words that I didn't know. I would then go through the pile of words that I didn't know and resort them again. This very easy and basic retrieval exercise allowed me to make use of unstructured moments. I also tended to rewrite my class notes into more and more condensed form. Typically the first time through my notes, I relied heavily on the notes that I took in class. When I condensed these notes for studying for a test, I tended to rely less and less on earlier versions of these notes and more and more on my memory. I assumed that I learned by compressing the course content into a more manageable and structured unit; in fact, I probably learned by making the notes which was a very simple retrieval exercise. Again, this practice was simple and seemed directed toward a goal: managing and compressing the quantity of information that I needed to learn for the exam. Content mapping

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would have struck me as a mediating exercise that made studying content take more time. At the time, I saw my life as too busy to indulge in activities that did not result in my immediate goal: doing well on the exam. At the same time, concept mapping appears to assume that there is a disjunction of some kind between the context for the content presented in class and some kind of deeper foundational meaning. Retrieval practices would tend to assume that the foundational meaning intended by the instructor is somehow inherent in the material presented in class. In other words, the foundational meaning is already mapped onto the content of the class and any additional remapping of this content runs the risk of obscuring important relationships between idea. Concept mapping, then, becomes an unnecessary step between the deep (or shallow!) learning goals of the class and the retention practices.

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<title>More Ambivalent Landscapes of Corinth</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/more-ambivalentlandscapes-of-corinth/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:54:57 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=143</guid> I have finally completed (well, almost) a pre-publication draft of an article based on my conference paper in October at the Corinth in Contrast conference in Austin. For more on this paper and my struggle to understand the ambivalence in the 6th century AD Corinthian landscape check out the posts <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/archaeologymethod-and-inequality/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/more-in-inequality-in-justinianscorinth/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/christiansin-roman-space/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/corinth-in-contrast-somereflective-notes/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/ambivalent-landscapes-of-the-6thcentury-at-corinth-in-contrast/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/even-more-contrastingcorinth/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/morecontrasting-corinth/">here</a>, and <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/more-contrastingcorinth/">here</a>; you may also want to read <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/28019578/Epigraphy-Liturgy-Justinianic-Isthmus-Caraher">this pre-publication article</a>.) The paper is about 50% longer than the conference paper (<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/38304843/Caraher-Ambivalent-Landscape-2010">which you can read here, if you want</a>). I have expanded my introduction and clarified how I used the term resistance in the paper. Much of this content came after some good conversations and conscientious editing by one our Ph.D. students Elizabeth Mjelde who passed on some of James Scott's work on peasant resistance and the fantastic E.P. Thompson article from <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/albions-fatal-tree-crime-and-society-in-eighteenth-centuryengland/oclc/1532024">Albion's Fatal Tree</a> . Thanks, Elizabeth! I have also expanded, albeit in a rather speculative way, my discussion of the rise in monumental Christian architecture in the Corinthia. My approach owes a good bit to Kim Bowes' recent book (which <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/some-thoughts-onkim-bowes-private-worship-public-values-and-religious-change-in-late-antiquity/">I discuss in more detail here</a>) and can perhaps be compared to the recent article by <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/summary/v003/3.2.sweetman.html">Rebe cca Sweetman (</a> <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/summary/v003/3.2.sweetman.html">JLA< /a> <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/summary/v003/3.2.sweetman.html"> 2010) </a><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/christianization-andchurches-in-the-peloponnese/">which I discuss here</a>. I know that there are still a few small issues with citations and the paper must contain some of my trademark typographical errors. I hope to clean most of that up over the next day or so and upload a revised version by Friday or so. Since I know some students from Tim Gregory's Late Antiquity and Byzantium seminar are checking my blog from time to time, I encourage any comments that they might have to add to my paper. As the links in my post today show, this was not an easy paper for me to write and I ended up thinking at the ragged edges of my evidence.

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[scribd id=47591826 key=key-1ev3j122ay69f8paw86q mode=list]

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<title>A Proposal for a Low-cost Teaching Fellows Program</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/a-proposal-for-a-lowcost-teaching-fellows-program/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:13:33 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=146</guid> Over the past few years I have slowly come to feel more and more alienated from the actual levers of power on my university campus. In some ways, this is good. It means that I am less distracted by temptations to "change my world" and more inclined to focus on the things that I can control (scholarship, research, teaching, advising). Any romance associated with service work or innovation here on campus gets dashed on the growing mass of administrative procedures and rules. On the other hand, I am a meddler by nature and despite my promises to myself to remain detached and aloof from my immediate environment, I find that I can't fight the urge to "do something". As a result, I have helped create a Working Group in Digital and New Media with a lab (<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/digital-humanities-white-paperat-the-university-of-north-dakota/">by co-authoring this White Paper</a>). I have served on my share of committees and contributed to the development of our new web presence (in such a way as to remain out of the line of fire and not responsible for any of its shortcomings). Finally, I find that I can easy burn off any frustrations or surplus ideas and energy by simply proposing things. I have created on this blog an "idea box" where I stuff ideas for <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/a-proposal/">programs and projects that I know will never go anywhere</a> (<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/37922545/Proposal-for-the-Development-of-Open-LearningCourses">or see here</a>) for so many, complex, administrative and procedural (and practical and ideological reasons) that it would be utterly pointless to push the idea personally beyond the proposal stage. At the same time, writing the proposal and circulating it here gives me a sense of accomplishing something. I'll send this proposal along through proper channels over the next few weeks (so feel free to provide me with feedback), but the goal is frankly the proposal itself and articulating and circulating ideas that appeals to me. So, here's my newest contribution to my idea box: [scribd id=47657269 key=key-11ro3794gtyy29vlq5yz mode=list]

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/friday-varia-and-quickhits-2/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 13:31:40 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=148</guid> It's already moving toward 30 F here (and, yes, that's 30 above zero), so I can offer you these varia and quick hits from balmy comfort. <a href="http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/">This is pretty cool way to rock your Mac</a>. But if you swing the PC way, you should certainly check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrhDaAmn5Uw">this 30 minute, public history-esque, movie about the history of IBM on their Centennial</a>. The film is by Errol Morris and the music by Philip Glass. <a href="http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2011/01/25/the-most-popularuniversities">The University of North Dakota is apparently the 9th most "popular" university in the U.S.</a> based on the percentage of admitted students who attend. <a href="http://www.guernicamag.com/spotlight/2281/leary_1_15_11/">Some interesting thoughts on the recent upsurge in our interest in "ruin porn" </a>based on the city of Detroit. <a href="http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2011/01/24/digital-fonts-23-new-faces-in-momas-collection">The MoMA explains why they purchased 23 fonts</a>. The <a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Axis of Access</a> has sprung back to life with <a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-studio.html">a really nice image of Ryan Stander's studio</a> (<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/making-theprofessional-office/">our former dean would certainly not approve</a>!) and <a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/2011/01/nyc-architecture-flatiron.html">his pictures of New York and the Flatiron building at night are brilliant</a>. <a href="http://www.historybloggingproject.org/">The History Blogging Project</a> in the U.K. is sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It's a pretty cool initiative designed to - get this - encourage Ph.D. students in history to blog. I was sort of underwhelmed by the Rome Reborn project when I first saw it and so I didn't pay much attention to it, but <a href="http://vimeo.com/15808133">the most recent rendering of the city is pretty remarkable</a>. It seems like the <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Educators-Zero-In-on-What/126080/">Lumina Foundations's "Degree Qualification Profile" </a>has generated remarkably little buzz. It's hard to know exactly how important a document like this is. If you haven't read yesterday's post over at <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>, you should because lots of other people are reading it. What I'm reading: T. Walsh, <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Unlocking the Gates: How and why leading universities are opening up access to their courses</a> . (Princeton 2011) What I'm listening to: No Age, Everything in Between . </ul>

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<title>Practical Thoughts on a New Archaeological Data Project</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/practical-thoughts-ona-new-archaeological-data-project/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 31 Jan 2011 13:19:14 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=150</guid> This weekend, I began to think seriously about my summer fieldwork with the <a href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/Archaeology/rp/polisexhibit/intro.html">Princeton Polis Expedition</a>. This summer our plan is to clarify the chronology of one of the two basilicas at the site initially built during the Early Christian period and, then, modified over time. Our goal is to use stratigraphic information, a careful examination of existing architecture, and an analysis of ceramic finds from the site to date more clearly the various architectural modifications <a href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/Archaeology/rp/polisexhibit/polis1.html">to one particular basilica known as EF2</a>. We hope that our work this summer will help us to develop an approach to documenting the relationship between archaeological material and architecture that we can then apply to the more complex basilica at the nearby site of EG0. As part of this work, I began to consider how to translate information recorded <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/category/polis/">in excavation notebooks</a> into a more formal and consistent structure. I reasoned that the notebook information could form the basic framework for the other archaeological data that we will ultimately collect from the study of the ceramics, wall plaster, architecture, glass, coins et c. The notebooks are actually in pretty good shape (although it will still be a challenge to extract the stratigraphic relationships from every context), but the basic data structure developed for Polis is rather underdeveloped. At present the context database is a single, flat table without any primary key or other tools in place to control how data is entered. Moreover, the various fields were not defined in an easily understood way and it wasn't clear at all what the most basic record would be. For example, should we record information only for each "level" (which coincide to gross stratigraphic or spatial divisions in the trenches) or do we record information for each "pass" which represents a single context of material removed from a level. The reason for this ambiguity is that this database was not designed for my research project. In other words, the data base isn't the problem (although it is inelegant and doesn't necessarily follow best practice); the problems rests with how I need to use the existing data structure. So I am left with the prospect of re-designing the existing database to suit my needs (and to make sure that it is backwards compatible to suit the needs of the designer of the original database). I have been diligently reading John Walrodt's <a href="http://paperlessarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Paperless Archaeology</a> over the past few weeks. This blog documents in detail how a project implemented their digital workflow. From what I have seen so far, the tools that they developed and deployed served to facilitate their ongoing, in the field, research (although I am sure that there are provisions for archiving the data in a responsible way). I could approach the Polis notebooks in a similar way. I could develop a data structure best suited to answer our immediate research questions. (As an aside, very few of the other people involved in documenting the basilica use Microsoft Access which is my preferred database. I have used Access extensively for other projects (making it easy for me to borrow structure from other databases), integrates well with ArcGIS (our GIS software), and is the database that our ceramicist uses. So, it is possible that I could create a database that few of my colleagues can actually use! This tempts me to be even more practical (read: idiosyncratic) in how I organize data.) On the other hand, I could imagine a data structure (undoubtedly more complex) best suited to preparing the Polis data for some form of digital publication (or at least archival storage). Few projects in the Eastern Mediterranean with a Byzantine focus have made their data publicly available. In this regard, the Polis data could be an important step toward making stratigraphic, typological, and chronological data from the Byzantine period available in digital form. At the same time,the two Early Christian churches represent just one part of a much larger and more complex site. Taking the time to produce a thorough and well-structured dataset could be a fool's errand if it ends up being incompatible

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with other work ongoing at the site or finds very few comparable datasets elsewhere in the region. So as with so much of archaeology, the key is to find the best balance between immediate utility and long term value.

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<title>Some Thoughts on Unlocking the Gates</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/some-thoughts-onunlocking-the-gates/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 01 Feb 2011 13:32:28 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=153</guid> Over the weekend, I finished reading Taylor Walsh's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/unlocking-the-gates-how-and-why-leading-universities-areopening-up-access-to-their-courses/oclc/649418945">Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities are Opening up Access to Their Courses</a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/unlocking-the-gates-how-and-why-leading-universities-areopening-up-access-to-their-courses/oclc/649418945">.</a> (Princeton 2011). The book examines the efforts by several elite universities - Yale, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Cal-Berkeley, and ITT in India - to develop open content courses for the public. Walsh sets the programs of these schools against the early efforts by collaborative ventures like Fathom and AllLearn to produce online content using a paidaccess model. While the latter failed by any measure, Walsh argues that the jury remains out regarding the impact of even the most ambitious open projects (namely OCW at MIT) which are expensive to maintain and continue to lack clear measures for their impact and success. In short, it seems like these programs preserve a moment in the engagement of universities with the internet rather than the blueprint for future projects or a foundation for long term development. As someone who has thought about open course initiative on campus here at the University of North Dakota I was struck my three things in book: 1. Massive Expense. The least expensive project in the book, Berkeley's home-brewed webcast.berkeley cost $700,000 in 2008-2009. The most expensive range easily into the millions of dollars (with continuing costs). The Hewlett Foundation provided most of the start up costs for projects like MIT's OCW, Yale's OYC program, and Carnegie Mellon's innovative OLI project and these grants all exceeded one million dollars. With such substantial costs involved few of the programs have models to ensure that these projects can be sustained into the future even on a limited scale or with transformed goals. While Walsh did not go into specific budgets, it appears that many of these programs invested heavily in creating high-quality user interfaces, polished and well-edited content (in the case of CMU's OLI, the interactive, incremental self-testing required a significant invest in technology, pedagogy, and content development), and a support staff to assist in the production of material. Most of these projects, even the relatively "grass roots" webcast.berkeley have full time staff who help faculty manage the technical aspects of the distributing content online. 2. Wine in Wine Skins. Most of the content produced for these open course initiatives originated in the bricks-and-mortar classroom. In other words, part of the expense and technical aspect of the program was the conversion of classroom style teaching to an online experience. In fact, the basis for these programs seems to be that they provide the world with a glimpse into the classroom based experiences at an elite university. For a growing number of people, however, the classroom is not a bricks-and-mortar place, but is already an online experience. This is not to suggest that these initiatives are anachronistic, but simply to point out that converting content from the physical classroom to an online space has occurred thousands of times in universities across the US. Moreover, many teachers are now on the third or fourth (or 10th or 20th) revisions of their material for online teaching and have tailored and refined their approaches to online teaching to reflect the potential of the new medium. And this content already exists meaning that the expense and effort required to bring a bricks-andmortar class to an online environment has already occurred. Of course, some of these courses are effectively locked into various online learning platforms (like Blackboard or Desire2Learn). On the other hand, I would predict that I could port all of my online, content-rich Western Civilization class onto a Wordpress.com blog in less than 8 hours with the possible exception of automated content focused quizzes. My point with this observation is that the expense going into the creation of various open course initiatives represented a moment in higher education where the prestige and authority of schools like MIT, Yale, and CMU, remained tied to an

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expectation of classroom instruction. Bringing this product to an online space required the schools to develop a unique approaches to gathering content, managing it, and presenting it to an audience. Less than a decade after most of these initiatives received funding, online content distribution has become the norm for many students across the country. These new and increasingly discerning consumers of online course materials realize that while MIT and Yale are, indeed, prestigious places with great faculty and storied traditions, there is a difference between a good and a bad online course. I expect to see a shift in open course initiatives that come to privilege the best quality online learning environments rather than the vested prestige of the bricks-and-mortar classroom. Moreover the proliferation of easy to use, hosted sites like Wordpress.com, YouTube, Flickr, various Wikis, et c. has made the need to create distinct spaces for online courses an exercise in vanity (at worst) or clever online branding and marketing (at best?). Not to get all <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/edupunk/">DIY/EduPunk</a> on you, but one could create a robust interface for online learning through a combination of easily accessible, free, open, and hosted online services. 3. Top Down and Bottom Up. With the exception of webcast.berkeley (and perhaps Yale's OYC) all of the approaches documented in this book began as top-down initiatives managed and developed by administrators. As a result, these programs took on university wide priorities and significance. Certainly, the abilities to leverage economies of scale, marshal enthusiasm and manage diverse stakeholders, and provide official imprimatur helped to ensure that these programs were successful. On the other hand, in most cases the success or failure of a course is typically bound up in the willingness of an individual faculty member to find a way to reach his or her students. The physical space and institutional prestige offers little to the educational experience. It struck me as odd, then, that this book did so little to capture the faculty perspective on these programs or to consider how a faculty led initiative could manage to accomplish similar goals with less overhead and complexity. Using off-the-shelf parts, a co-op of faculty could easily offer a wide range of content online for free. The university could be an important stakeholder in this initiative and offer technical assistance, branding, and marketing support, but the ultimate control over the content and its presentation would remain the responsibility of individual faculty members. This de-centered approach to open course ware captures the radically de-centered nature of the internet and the removes expensive (and limiting) mediators from the process.

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<title>What to wear...</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/what-to-wear/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 02 Feb 2011 12:50:36 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=156</guid> ... when walking home in -10 F temperatures (with wind chills around -20). My walk home is about a 2 mile walk and takes me 30-40 minutes. (<a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/192071/group/Sports/">The cold can be dangerous as a UND hockey player recently discovered</a>! (via <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/DMSkjelver/">Danielle Skjelver</a>)) I try to<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/walking-home-and-thephenomenology-of-landscape/"> walk home every day </a>and consider it part of my vocation as a landscape archaeologist. Walks in the winter are always the most peaceful. It's amazing how few people are out-and-about when the temperature slips below 0 F. These walks are also a great way to decompress after a long day in the office and provide me with an opportunity to solve the worlds problems while reconnecting with a landscape that feels strangely three-dimensional after a long day staring at a computer screen. The trick is staying warm. There are two schools of thought on this. New school goes with state of the art materials designed for maximum comfort and warmth. Old School goes with layers. I try to combine the two. Blundstone 550 boots Bamboo socks from an Australian country store (from my mother-in-law) Good cotton boxer briefs Eddy Bauer -30 tested thermal tights Eddy Bauer lined cargo pants cotton t-shirt Katmandu nylon long-sleeve t-shirt cotton sweater Old Navy Hoodie L.L. Bean Polyester Fleece Pullover Carhartt Jacket (designed for 30 degree F) Knit wool balaklava Knit wool hat EMS mitten/gloves

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<title>Teaching Historiography</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/teachinghistoriography/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:02:37 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=162</guid> This semester I will teach our graduate historiography seminar for perhaps the last time. The course is one of the most difficult to teach in our department not only because it is required for all graduate students (so there is no self-selection process), but also because the course has an explicitly theoretical goal. For most of our Master's level students, this is their first class that touches on topics like historical epistemology, critical and social theory, and methodology (as in the study of method rather than method itself). The course generally evokes two reactions. Some like the opportunity to explore more abstract approaches to history; others resent the technical language, difficult texts, and disconnect from history as a discipline rooted in practice. Readers of this blog know that I am interested in the idea of craft in academia. I've blogged on archaeology and craft, graduate education and craft, and most recently followed with interest the debate among <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/category/craft/">digital humanists</a> regarding <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/01/27/on-becoming-a-digital-humanist/">the role of practical skills in the formation of this vital sub-discipline</a>. For some reason, I have not discussed history and craft much even though I teach a class every semester for undergraduates called "<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/teaching-tuesday-readings-forhistory-240-the-historians-craft/">The Historians' Craft</a>". Nowhere does the desire for history to articulate itself as craft come through more clearly. One of the standard critiques of the class is that it has too little to do with the practical practice of history. The emphasis on the clear link between education and practice clearly echos the practical emphasis of craft training (see <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/audit-culture-andhistory-as-craft/">my comments on Herzfeld, for example</a>) and suggests models of apprenticeship. The goal of graduate training in history, for these students, is master of a set of technical skills rather than a self-conscious understanding of the philosophical, epistemological, and theoretical foundations for the field. In fact, for some drinking too deeply of the abstract, theoretical discourse risks alienating history from its true social power as a field that DOES things, produces actual knowledge, and endows society with clear sense of place in time. Time spent dissecting the epistemological grounds for historical knowledge not only detracts from the training needed actually TO DO history, but undermines the validity of the final product of historical work: new knowledge. The call for craft, so to speak, captures a kind of impatient anti-intellectualism that has long existed around the fringes of fields like history that have struggled with sophisticated amateur practitioners and the limits to its own status as a profession. Much of undergraduate education in history is geared toward doing. Students take classes where faculty model historical thinking, write research papers where they the practical lessons of historical thought, and are assessed based on their ability to mimic key characteristics of the craft whether they are rooted in practice (style, use of evidence, proper citations) or so-called foundational knowledge (names, dates, places, events, causal links, et c.). Any engagement with larger intellectual concerns is typically focused clearly on the production of history by means of methodology or relegated to the fringes of the curriculum (perhaps in a historiography class or as part of a larger "required" course). In short, historians learn history through DOING history. So, it is hardly a surprise that students struggle when confronted with a class that seems to care less about DOING history and more about understanding or even contemplating what it is that the historians does. In taking this approach, I try to place the work of the historian in an intellectual framework following the lead of 18th and 19th century thinkers and taking as a point of departure R. G. Collingwood's wonderful, if flawed, efforts in his Idea of History . (Oxford 1946). I am clear, however, that the philosophy of history or an emphasis on the intellectual underpinning of disciplinary practice need not always stand in direct opposition to the actual practice of historical knowledge production. Unfortunately, this argument only convinces the choir; most students committed to

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historical work as craft production see my efforts as a kind of pedagogical sophistry (at best) or Socratic corruption at worse. So teaching graduate historiography places me in the belly of the beast. The conflict between historical practice as common sensical, almost certainly universal, and subject to refinement through practice, and historical practice as a baffling contradiction requiring us to mediate between a intellectually elusive past and a problematic present.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/friday-varia-and-quickhits-3/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 04 Feb 2011 13:19:45 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=165</guid> Freezing rain today and then some snow for good measure. I thought North Dakota was too good for freezing rain, so I am disappointed. <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/ckp24grk17hg7882/">P. Nick Kardulias (et al.) on world-systems analysis and archaeology in the </a> <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/ckp24grk17hg7882/">Journal of Archaeological Research</a> . <a href="http://rameshsrinivasan.org/2011/01/28/social-medias-power-wheres-the-netdelusion/">Some good thoughts on social media and the events in Egypt</a>. <a href="http://www.everythingisaremix.info/">Everything is Remix Part 2</a> (<a href="http://www.everythingisaremix.info/?p=20">and Part 1</a>). (via <a href="http://daringfireball.net/">Daring Fireball</a>) <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/video_audio/498987.html">A five part documentary on Cricket in the U.S.A. produced by the ICC</a>. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/video_audio/498986.html">A major cricket stadium in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida</a>! <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/usa/engine/match/318995.html">First, ever, international cricket match</a>. Read <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>. And follow the <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/oidatund">Office of Instructional Development on Twitter</a>. Check out the <a href="http://www.exoticaproject.com/">Exotica Project</a> and its sister blog <a href="http://officenaps.com/">Office Naps</a>. (via <a href="http://boingboing.net/">Boing Boing</a>) <a href="http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2011/01/twenty-four-hour-view-of-the-sky.html">A 24 hour sky view over Cape Sounion</a>. (via<a href="http://www.kottke.org/"> kottke.com</a>) What I'm listening to: <a href="http://www.exoticaproject.com/">The Exotica Project</a>. What I'm reading: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/from-pots-to-people-a-ceramic-approachto-the-archaeological-interpretation-of-ploughsoil-assemblages-in-late-romancyprus/oclc/670473800">Kristina Winther-Jacobsen, </a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/frompots-to-people-a-ceramic-approach-to-the-archaeological-interpretation-of-ploughsoil-assemblagesin-late-roman-cyprus/oclc/670473800">From Pots to People: A ceramic approach to the archaeological interpretion of ploughzone assemblages in Late Roman Cyprus</a> . (Peeters 2010). </ul>

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<title>Pots to People in Late Roman Cyprus</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/pots-to-people-in-lateroman-cyprus/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:27:45 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=167</guid> I spent the last week contemplating Kristina Winther-Jacobsen's new monograph: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/from-pots-to-people-a-ceramic-approach-to-the-archaeologicalinterpretation-of-ploughsoil-assemblages-in-late-roman-cyprus/oclc/670473800">From Pots to People: A Ceramic Approach to the Archaeological Interpretation of Ploughsoil Assemblages in Late Roman Cyprus</a> . (Peeters 2010). This slim volume is an important contribution to not only the archaeology of Late Roman Cyprus, but also intensive pedestrian survey archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean. Her analysis rests on the analysis of pottery from the <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/archaeology/research/projects/taesp/">Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project (TAESP)</a> which is a descendant of the Sydney Cyprus Survey Project (SCSP). My project <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">PKAP</a>, is an ugly cousin of SCSP as well, and we both PKAP and TAESP approached intensive survey in similar ways. Both projects recognized that intensive data collection was an essential first step in interpreting ploughsoil assemblages, both projects used version of the chonotype system to document the ceramic material from the field, and both projects placed significant emphasis on a transparent approach to our procedures, methods, and conclusions. The biggest difference, is that TAESP was conducted on a regional scale, whereas PKAP sought to document a large coastal site and its immediate hinterland. The central argument in her book is that Late Roman sites on Cyprus produce ceramic material in certain predictable ways. The consistency in the relationship between light and heavy utility wares, table wares, cooking wares, and transport vessels allowed the author to draw conclusions regarding the function of the various sites and their relationship to wider productive landscape. From the TAESP survey area, Winther-Jacobsen identified farmsteads, mining settlements, an agro-church (a church that played a role in agricultural production), a seasonal settlement, and a market village. She reinforces her arguments for the utility of these settlement types through comparison with other projects on the island and in Greece. As has become my practice, I am not going to offer a full review (although I think that I'll probably divide my remarks on this important little book into two posts), but instead offer some observations on her methods and conclusions. <ol> Formation Processes. The author paid particular attention to the way that formation processes contributed to the production of surface and ploughsoil assemblages and summarizes a good bit of relevant scholarship on these matters. Here her work parallels some of the important <a href="http://www.equinoxjournals.com/JMA/article/view/2766">contributions of David Pettegrew </a>who argued that the full-range of discard behaviors, curation techniques, and natural and cultural activities contribute to the assemblage of material in the plough zone. Framing the discussion of ploughsoil assemblages in the context of formation processes is vital to understanding the meaning and distribution of artifacts in the landscape. Winther-Jacobsen makes some good observations regarding breakage rates, use, and discard practices of particular types of pottery suggesting that cooking wares, which are particularly common in her various assemblages, endured particularly difficult life-cycles with many opportunities for breakage and discard. Heavier vessels (with the possible exception of transport amphora) tended to be handled less frequently in the household, in contrast, would have had longer life-cycles and lower breakage rates making them appear less frequently in the ploughsoil assemblages. Method and Procedure. Winther-Jacobsen makes clear that the ceramicist and other field archaeologists participates in archaeological formation processes when the define and document an assemblage for analysis and interpretation. To this end, she includes a detailed meditation on her own sorting and analysis practices. While it is commendable that she recognize the archaeologist as another participant in the life-cycle of an object, I would have been keen to understand in a more specifc way

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how her practices - from sorting, to measuring, to documenting - had an impact on the kinds of analysis and interpretations found in her larger study. Like many projects that recognize the importance of reflective practices, Winther-Jacobsen seems to stop just short of demonstrating the fundamentally arbitrary nature of "archaeological material". In other words, a cooking pot does not exist outside of the unique interaction between the ancient potter, the Late Roman cook, and 21st century archaeologist. Typologies. Observing the arbitrary nature of archaeological knowledge, does not in any way detract from its meaning (except among scholars committed to increasingly tenuous views that privilege the rhetoric of objective). The author understand that typologies are utilitarian things that facilitate the answering of particular questions. As a result, the team from TAESP modified the typology introduced by SCSP called the chronotype system. I have blogged on the strengths and weaknesses of this method for documenting pottery endlessly over the past several years (<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/?s=chronotype">just run a search over at the archive</a>). Whatever its weaknesses, its strength for our project has rested in two areas: 1. we are forced to identify each sherd that comes from the field and place it in some kind of chronological and roughly functional category; and 2. our dataset is in some way comparable to data collected by SCSP and the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey where the chronotype system was developed. Winther-Jacobsen is clear that her efforts to refine the chronotype system eroded its comparability between projects. In particular, her creation of three categories Transport Amphora, Heavy Utility Ware and Light Utility Ware created two types of pottery that incompatible with the implementation of the chronotype system on other projects where we tended to use Medium Coarse Ware and Coarse Ware to identify utility ware sherds. While Winter-Jacobsen was obviously free sort her pottery however she wanted, it was odd that she didn't make a greater effort to make her new chronotype categories "backward compatible" with similar categories from earlier chronotype projects. This was particularly problematic because her argument rested, in part, on comparing her assemblage to projects elsewhere. For this to be meaningful, some allowance must be made to compensate for the different typologies. The inherent flexibility of the chronotype system, which tends to parse assemblages into very fine categories, would seem to be ideal for this, but the author did not necessarily maximize this comparative potential in the book. On-Site and Off-Site. While TAESP was a "siteless" survey project, Winther-Jacobsen's dataset derived almost entirely from dense concentrations of material identified as sites. On the one hand, this makes sense: she was interested in documenting and interpreting assemblages and sites produce sufficiently robust assemblages for interpretation. On the other hand, the interpretation of sites has never really been a massive problem for survey archaeology projects. Over the past 20 years, the more substantial issue has focused on how we understand off-site material. In fact, David Pettegrew's efforts to link formation processes to ploughsoil assemblages had less to do with the interpretation of distinct sites in the landscape and more to do with how we understand the activities that produced off-site scatters. In short, the "continuous carpet" of low to moderate density artifact scatters in the countryside represent a far more challenging set of formation processes and require a more sophisticated set of interpretative practices than the robust assemblages produced by high-density concentrations of material. Scalability. This difference between on-site and off-site scatters and their interpretation shines light on issues of scalability in the methods that the author advocates. Winther-Jacobsen advocates for near total collection of material in order to produce assemblages susceptible to the kind of proportional analyses that she advocates in this book. Various forms of total collection are common practice for most survey projects when documenting a site. For off-site scatters or massively extensive, high-density scatters like those encountered by PKAP on Cyprus, such time-consuming, storage-straining, analysis-intensive practices are simply not viable. Taking nothing away from the author's careful typologies of sites, largescale, "large site" scatters and the ubiquitous and monotonous extensive low and medium density scatters require some form of sampling technique if they are to be documented at all. Any form of sampling will make problematic the proportional analysis of ceramic types that Winther-Jacobsen demonstrated because sampling will almost necessarily reduce the level of complexity present in the assemblage and create ambiguity in the relationship between the sample and the putative total assemblage present on the ground. </ol> None of these issues should take away from the significance of Winther-Jacobsen's book. It represents

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on of the most thorough and systematic treatments of the analysis of Late Roman material from the Eastern Mediterranean and establishes some valuable comparative standards that other projects will want to consider as they make the move from pots to people in their analysis.

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<title>Some thoughts on Academically Adrift</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/some-thoughts-onacademically-adrift/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Feb 2011 13:14:37 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=170</guid> Over the past week or so, I've read over R. Arum an J. Roska's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/academically-adrift-limited-learning-on-collegecampuses/oclc/587209637">Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses</a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/academically-adrift-limited-learning-on-collegecampuses/oclc/587209637"> (Chicago 2011)</a>. The book and accompanying report, generated some buzz a few weeks ago with the claim that based on their study 45% of college sophomores showed no improvement in critical thinking skill from the start of their freshman year. They backed up this claim with a study based on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) test administered to over 2,362 college students at 24 schools. They take significant efforts to control for variables ranging from race to levels of preparation and to the level of school. Despite the complexity of their analysis and the myriad variables that influence the learning process, the authors were able to conclude that the academic rigor of the college experience was the single most significant variable in the whether a student will develop critical thinking skills. In fact, the authors suggested that 40 pages of reading a week and a 20 page paper mark a level of rigor sufficient to promote critical thinking skills. They also observe that the humanities and social sciences are one of the best areas in the university to have classes with these kinds of requirements. In fact, social sciences and humanities courses ranked second only to science and math for predicting the best CLA scores and, by extension for this book, the best critical thinking outcomes. Business, education and social work, health, communications, and even computer science and engineering fall short. While this is an interesting ranking, it is a bit difficult to understand how many students would be engaged in major level coursework in their freshman and sophomore years. In fact, I might suggest that courses in the humanities tend to have fewer prerequisites (and require less remediation) than upper level courses in other disciplines meaning that freshmen and sophomores could more easily enroll in upper level classes. The same might hold for math and science courses where students can become engaged in their major at an earlier point in their careers. Business schools and specialized programs in education, health sciences, social work, and even engineering often require substantial amounts of introductory level coursework before one can be admitted to a program. These courses, by dint of being "required", tend to be held in a certain amount of contempt and could well breed a particular kind of social pressure as most of the students in these classes are at the same academic rank. In contrast, upper level courses in the major (particularly in the humanities) tend to attract students from the full range of ranks exposing underclassmen to the more developed approaches to learning (on can hope) among more advanced students. Despite the relatively small sample of colleges, there was little attention to the actual curriculum that students pursued. Instead, the authors focused many of their most poignant observations on the culture of university life and student and faculty expectations. While the authors were careful not to make causal connection between the specific facets of university life and student learning outcomes, they point to scholarship that shows a pattern of changing academic values both among students and among faculty members. Students have progressively spent less and less time studying, and, at the same time, many universities have incentivized activities other than teaching among faculty. They tied these trends together suggesting that students come to college with the expectation that social activities would provide as much of their education as actual course work, and university faculty are loath to challenge this percept out of concern for student backlash and poor performance reviews on standardized teaching evaluations. The lack of formal education training among faculty, a tendency to evaluate performance using standardized assessment tools, and a general disengagement from the teaching and learning process has eroded the will to push back against student expectations. The authors show how a willingness to meet with students outside of class, a rigorous curriculum, and well-

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conceived student exercises can improve student performance on critical thinking exercises. For students, they showed that studying more hours actually does improve performance. In particular, they suggest that students who study more alone tend to do better than students who study in groups. The idea that more work produces better results is hearteningly simple. (And more or less consistent with arguments based on cognitive psychology and summarized in D. Willingham's recent <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/why-dont-students-like-school-a-cognitive-scientist-answersquestions-about-how-the-mind-works-and-what-it-means-for-the-classroom/oclc/255894389">Why Don't Students Like School</a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/why-dont-students-likeschool-a-cognitive-scientist-answers-questions-about-how-the-mind-works-and-what-it-means-forthe-classroom/oclc/255894389"> (Jossey-Bass 2009)</a> that <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/the-roots-of-student-resistance/">I commented on here</a>). At the same time, deeply-rooted student resistance to learning (and an inability or even reluctance among faculty to break through this resistance) does produce demonstrable, quantifiable, effects on students' abilities to think critically. While our students here at UND are generally speaking pleasant, there is a palpable barrier between faculty expectations and student expectation. My courses are regularly criticized as being "too much work" for their academic level, and, as a result, I struggle with the need to balance course expectations, workload, and student tolerance for work loads (<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/the-challenge-ofmidlevel-courses/">for some comments along these lines here</a>). This is particularly the case in online courses where the only contact between faculty and students come in the form of written work (responses to discussion prompts, papers, essays on exams) and where expectations and work load levels vary widely. The most striking thing, of course, is that while the cost of higher education continues to rise, the willingness for students to get more for their money seems to decrease. Students want to work less despite having to pay more. Arum and Roska conclude with a proscriptive chapter that calls for university administration, faculty, and even the government to take a more active role in monitoring critical thinking outcomes among students. If the US is going to continue to tout its system of higher education as focused on critical thinking skills "for the changing world" then we must do more to demonstrate whether students actually achieve these goals. Institutional transparency, more robust assessment practices, more rigorous coursework, and changing student expectations must occur if the US system of higher education should continue to be a world leader.

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<title>More on Pots and People</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/more-on-pots-andpeople/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Feb 2011 13:18:18 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=173</guid> Earlier in the week, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/pots-to-people-in-late-roman-cyprus/">I offered some comments on Kristina Winther-Jacobsen's new book on ceramics from intensive survey on Cyprus</a>. One of this book's strengths is its openness to reflecting on the role of the ceramicist in the process of producing archaeological knowledge from assemblages. Even such seemingly mundane activities as preparing sherds for analysis, sorting them into lots, and adjusting typologies in small ways on the fly influence the kinds of conclusions one tends to reach from the material collected from the field. For example, our ceramicist, Scott Moore, tends to read units in no particular order in order to avoid allowing the location of the units or their proximity to other known units from biasing his analysis of the material. Winther-Jacobsen, like many ceramicist, prefers to read site and units with some attention to their spatial arrangement allowing them to observe any natural connections between units from the same area. Neither procedure produces inherently "better" results, although one can easily imagine benefits and drawbacks to either process. This past week, <a href="http://paperlessarchaeology.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/the-parppsdatabase/">John Wallrodt has been laying out how he organizes data for the PARP:PS project at Pompeii</a>. This is part of a larger study on "Paperless Archaeology". <a href="http://paperlessarchaeology.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/ceramic-data-at-ilion/">He made available as a pre-print an article that he co-authored with Sebastian Heath and Billur Tekkok</a> on the structure of the ceramic database from the site of Troy. One thing that stood out to me in the database described in this article is that it included no field linking the ceramic object to the ceramicist. In other words, when the ceramic object becomes a database object it acquires an identity that preserves no record of the role of the ceramicist in this change. In our first version our PKAP finds database, we attempted to include a reader number field in the our basic data structure. Each ceramicist had a unique number. The reader number would become part of the unique number for each digital object and make it clear that each digital object was the product of an individual's interpretative decision. The physical, archaeological, object would not include the reader number as a concession to its existence outside of the ceramicist's analysis. So each object in the database had a number based on a unit of space, an arbitrary unique number within that unit of space (a lot or a batch), and a number associated with a particular reader. It was our how that with this design, if the interpretation or identification of the object changed, the object would get a new digital record with a new reader number. As a result, the new identification of an object would not overwrite an older identification of an object, and the digital record would stand as record of analysis rather than as a digital stand-in for the physical object. In practice, the design was hard to manage. We did not have a method in place for new identifications of objects by the same ceramicist. While this was not insurmountable, we also did not quite know how to separate what qualified as a "new" analysis by a ceramicist from an "old" analysis of an object. Was the production of a digital record complete when we entered the object into our database? Or was it complete at the moment the artifact received a clear identification? More problematic still was the prospect of a ceramicist later dividing a lot of artifacts that he or she originally grouped together into separate lots based on a new identification. How could we manage to keep a record of one large lot produced by one ceramicist and two or more separate lots of the same artifacts produced by another? (This was most likely to occur in the case of coarse and utility wares). Winther-Jacobsen's typologies based on wallthickness, for example, would cut across typologies that our project used for grouping coarse wares, utility wares, and amphora. How could such a system be integrated into our existing data structure? Projects often tell excavators to maintain working interpretations in their notebooks and not on scratch paper because their working hypotheses, no matter how incorrect or problematic they ultimately

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become, form a key context for decisions made during excavation. Of course, there are technical solutions to these issues but they all add a layer of additional complexity to our finds database and make using the finds database to understand larger patterns of ceramic distribution across the landscape or stratigraphy even more complex. Our effort to implement such a system was eventually scrapped, but we did feel that our work acknowledged a key (if somewhat unrealized) aspect of Winther-Jacobsen's study: archaeologists produce archaeological data.

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<title>Teaching Thursday Trifecta</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/teaching-thursdaytrifecta/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:51:13 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=175</guid> <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Cross-posted to Teaching Thursday</a> The next few weeks are pretty exciting ones here at the University of North Dakota. This spring we have a tremendous trifecta of teaching related activities on campus. First, <a href="http://ci.ndepscor.nodak.edu/2011/speakers.html#GeoffreyRockwell"><strong>Geoffrey Rockwell </a><strong> will be on UND's campus from March 1-3 for the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/academically-adrift-limited-learning-on-collegecampuses/oclc/587209637">North Dakota EPSCOR Cyberinfrastructure Conference</a>. Rockwell is a leader in Digital Humanities from the University of Alberta, and is best known for his work with TAPoR (Text Analysis Portal for Research), which is a leading cloud-based text analysis portal for scholars in the humanities. The most exciting news is that Rockwell will also speak at a <a href="http://webapp.und.edu/dept/oid/programsEvents/onTeachingLunchSeminars.php">OID Box Lunch Seminar on March 1 12:30-1:30 on the topic "Incorporating the Digital into your Humanities Class"</a>. His visit is supported by an excellent group of bedfellows: UND EPSCOR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research), the Office of Instructional Development, and small army of departments and programs (English, History, Communications), and the Working Group in Digital and New Media. Next, <a href="http://graduateschool.und.edu/learn-more/scholarly-forum.cfm">the<strong> UND Graduate School is putting on its annual Scholarly Forum </a> at the Memorial Union on March 8-9. The Scholarly Forum shows off the best in home grown research from faculty and graduate students. It always includes several panels on teaching related matters, and, perhaps more importantly, shows off how closely related the activities of teaching, learning, and research are in the modern academy. No matter how hard people try to set teaching and research opposite of each other (e.g. consider the recent arguments reiterated in <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/academically-adrift-limited-learningon-college-campuses/oclc/587209637">R. Arum and J. Roska's</a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/academically-adrift-limited-learning-on-collegecampuses/oclc/587209637"> Academically Adrift</a> (Chicago 2011)), a visit to the Scholarly Forum to see student and faculty research projects reminds us that good research is good teaching . Finally, the 42nd annualUND Writers Conference convenes March 29-April 2. Why am I telling you this now? Well, it's because their legendary Writers Conference 101 program has begun this past week. <a href="http://www.undwritersconference.org/">Here's a link to the Writers Conference page </a>and here's the schedule with the Writers Conference 101 Program. All Writers Conference 101 Sessions will be held at the UND Bookstore - Cafe on Sundays from 2:00-3:30. Feb. 6th - Discussion on the work of Carl Phillips with Heidi Czerwiec, Associate Professor of English/Co-Director UND Writers Conference. Feb. 13th - Discussion on the work of Maxine Hong Kingston with Colleen Berry, Assistant Professor of Chinese. Feb. 20th - Discussion on the work of Loida Maritza Prez with Kathleen Coudle-King, Senior Lecturer of English, and Lorenzo Serna. Feb. 27th - Discussion on the works of Jamaica Kincaid with Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, Associate Professor of English. Mar. 6th - Discussion of Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace with Sheryl O'Donnell, Professor of English, and Hugh Grindberg. Mar. 20th - Discussion on the works of Susan Deer Cloud with Sheryl O'Donnell, Professor of

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English.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/friday-varia-and-quickhits-4/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:23:15 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=178</guid> It is supposed to get to a balmy 30 F today. So with the hope of spring-like weather, I offer some modest varia and quick hits: One of our first posts over at <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/edupunk/">Teaching Thursday was on the EduPunk movement</a>, now there is (and ironically constructed) <a href="http://center4edupunx.com/">Center4Edupunx</a>. Pretty cool if a bit inconsequential. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/02/14/110214crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPa ge=all">A longish New Yorker piece on how the Internet gets inside us</a>. It's a nice review of recent literature on the influences of the internet on our daily lives. It's hardly surprising that most innovation does not originate in complex institutions. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/arts/10innovative.html?src=twrhp">A recent New York Times article describes a study that seems to prove just that</a>, and it makes reference to <a href="http://www.danreetz.com/">Fargo's own Dan Reetz</a> of the DIY Book Scanner, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/a-huge-tuesday-and-a-hugeweek/">a super righteous guy</a>. <a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/192874/">For those of you who missed it East Grand Fork's Whitey's has closed</a>. Let's hope that it re-opens soon. <a href="http://henryjenkins.org/2011/02/what_constitutes_an_open-book.html">Some cool thoughts from Henry Jenkins</a> on open book exams in the digital age. For fans of cool design, <a href="http://feltron.com/ar10_01.html">Nicholas Feltron has released his annual report</a>. <a href="http://www.daytum.com/billcaraher">I love his Daytum site and it has become part of my daily routine</a>. For another kind of report, check out the <a href="http://www.educause.edu/Resources/2011HorizonReport/223122">2011 Horizon Report</a>. It may not be cutting edge, but it's still required reading for anyone interested in higher education, teaching, and technology. Has anyone tried <a href="http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/">Sparrow Mail</a>? I just got my brand new 15-inch <a href="http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precisionm4500/pd">Dell Precision M4500</a>. It is completely pimped out with a quad-core i7 processor, highest end NVIDIA graphics card, 256 GB SSD, great screen, and all the bells-and-whistles. It's replacing Big Diesel II, a 17-inch Dell XPS. In contrast to the Big Diesel, the Precision is almost catastrophically ugly. And not just ugly, it has lots of poorly conceived features like the button to eject the media drive drawer (I've been installing software!) is immediately above the button that allows you to eject the entire media drive. How convenient! And despite being an $4,000+ computer, it is still made of cheap and flimsy black plastic. I purchases the computer for its functional characteristics, but some attention to form would seem to be warranted! My MacBook Pro which coast nearly $1000 less is a much more elegant (and almost as high powered) a computer. I've been thinking a good bit about <a href="http://thetechnomads.net/">pseudo-ascetic technomads</a> and Byzantine monasticism. I've also been thinking of the <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2011-0207/world/grande.hotel.mozambique_1_mozambique-squatters-cruise-shippassengers?_s=PM:WORLD">Grande Hotel in Mozambique</a> (and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJ1YPQK2lE">this haunting trailer for the documentary</a>) and the evidence for subdividing, spoliating and squatting in Late Antiquity. What I'm listening to: Alexander "Skip" Spencer, Oar.

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What I'm reading: Peter Gay, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/freud-forhistorians/oclc/12051187">Freud for Historians</a> . (Oxford 1985) </ul>

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<title>Modern Abandonment, Squatters, and Late Antiquity</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/modern-abandonmentsquatters-and-late-antiquity/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:56:35 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=180</guid> This blog has always had a soft spot for stories and images of abandonment (ruin porn, as it has become known; <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Detroit+Ruin+Porn">just Google it</a>). In general, the recent interest in abandoned places has emphasized their desolate character of neglected homes taken over by weeds (or prairie grasses). (<a href="http://interactive.nfb.ca/#/pinepoint">A recent interactive film funded by the National Film Board of Canada</a> shows how the town of Pine Point in the Northern Territories was physically erased from the landscape). Abandoned industrial facilities appear as empty, rotting hulks devoid of orderly bustle. The abandoned libraries, churches, hotels and train stations in Detroit have become icons of the cities once prosperous past. The neglect of many of these buildings seeks to reveal the folly of our so-called advanced capitalism and the waste prevalent in American society. Of course, the abandonment of these buildings is in many cases superficial. With the prices of copper, many of these structures have long seen any bits of metal stripped from their walls. A cottage industry has grown up recycling the windows, doors, fixtures, and any other (re)moveable fragments of these structures. Surely this process has parallels with ancient practices; the most dramatic examples of recycling practice appears in the <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/kourion-and-aba/">systematic quarrying of ruined monumental buildings</a>, but surely <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/spolia-in-the-g/">small scale acts of recycling</a> occured on a daily basis. One phenomenon that I have not seen explored in the recent explosion of ruin porn is squatting amidst the ruins. Of course, there have been many stories of families struggling withe mortgage crisis living on in foreclosed homes as squatters, but this hardly speaks to the role that monumental structures so hauntingly abandoned in Detroit and other major cities fit into a lived environment. This past month, however, <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2011-0207/world/grande.hotel.mozambique_1_mozambique-squatters-cruise-shippassengers?_s=PM:WORLD">CNN ran a story on the abandoned Grande Hotel Beira in Mozambique</a>. This luxury hotel was abandoned shortly after its construction in the early 1960s and since the 1980s, it has become the home to thousands of "squatters". These squatters have created a community amidst the crumbling concrete of this massive hotel despite the lack of running water or electricity. The have subdivided spaces, created room for commercial activities, and established a basic form of local administration. A Belgian documentary filmmaker, Lotte Stoops, has documented the history of the repurposing of this hotel and its community. I haven't seen the film, but<a href="http://www.grandehotelthemovie.com/"> its trailer is beautiful</a>. (I'll leave it to <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a> to compare this film, Grande Hotel, to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Hotel_(film)">its far more famous predecessor</a> (without the -e)). I wonder whether the recycling of the Grande Hotel Beira reflects better the process of squatting and abandonment in an Ancient context than images of abandoned buildings in Detroit or in foreclosed American suburbs. The creativity with which the community in the Grande Hotel approaches their physical space and organizes their world within it strikes me as a much more efficient use of physical remains than the modern tendency to discard the obsolete. While the squatters in the Grande Hotel have striped any object of value, they nevertheless still find use in the poured concrete walls and floors and rooms. I can't help but think of the squatter community who settled in the collapsed ruins of the <a href="http://isthmia.osu.edu/bath.html">Roman Bath at Isthmia</a>. In contrast, the central theme of most abandonment porn is our modern inability (for whatever reason) to make any use of even remarkable examples of architecture, and the tendency of modern society to discard a building when it

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<title>Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/simplicity-minimalismand-the-ancient-ascetic/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 15 Feb 2011 13:28:04 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=185</guid> I've been fascinated lately by the modern minimalist movement (not the minimalism movement in art, but the more popular minimalist movement careering around the blogosphere). In its purest form, this movement urges people to resist the pressure to acquire things and consume good that is so common in American society. Appealing to a kind of pop-psychology they see the appearance of hoarders as the most decadent and corrupt form of this need to surround ourselves with things, and calls for us to embrace a kind of practical asceticism. Ironically, some of the more recognizable voices in this movement like Dave Bruno, also encourage us to buy their book (in Bruno's case it's his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/100-Thing-Challenge-Dave-Bruno/dp/0061787744/"> 100 Thing Challenge (Harper 2010)</a>). As Bruno and many of his <a href="http://mnmlist.com/fear">minimalist colleagues</a> know, the call to reject over-consumption involves embracing <a href="http://guynameddave.com/2011/02/hoardersascetics-and-the-american-dream/">a kind of asceticism</a>, which often carried with it <a href="http://theminimalchallenge.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/soul-searching/">spiritual overtones</a>. This realization has firm roots in the ancient experience of asceticism. (<a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook3.html#monks1">Here are some nice examples of Early Christian and Byzantine Saints</a>. <a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/theodoresykeon.html">St. Theodore of Sykeon is my favorite</a>.) Discarding one's belongings and moving to the desert eliminated the distractions that made it difficult for a spiritual individual to contemplate God. The most powerful ancient ascetics found that they could not only reject "decadent" luxurious (which would have been fairly modest in a pre-industrial society) and even come to reject food and water for long periods of time. Half-starved, isolated, naked, and deeply committed to prayer, these ascetic warriors steeled themselves to take on a range of spiritual challenges. Demons, temptresses, deceivers, strangers, and even the pious witnessed the strength of their God-given spiritual power as they rejected so many of the very things that make us human, social animals. Among these ancient and modern ascetics, one curious group stands out: <a href="http://thetechnomads.net/">the technomads</a>. (Sean Bonner, one of the founding fathers of this movement<a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2010/09/10/technomads.html"> describes its origins here</a>. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10928032">The BBC puzzles over this phenomenon here</a>.) This curious group has emerged from the minimalist movement and embraced technology as a means to simplify their lives. With their (almost invariably) MacBook Pros in hand, these ascetic warriors leave the security of a settled existence and take off through the world pausing just long enough to recharge their computer and physical batteries. Most of these technomads make their living on the web, and many are professional bloggers or journalists. In earlier decades, of course, this group would be encumbered by bulky manual typewriters, duffle bags of paper books, and pockets full of loose change for filing their dispatches on the pay phone. Today, they simplify their lives through the use of smart phones, wireless network connections, and complete libraries of world classics neatly tucked away on their computer hard drives (or for the true tech minimalist in the cloud; nothing is more minimal than a cloud.) This group of technomads is a different kind of thing from our possession-sheding, modern-day, spiritual travelers. In place of physical things, these technomads have simplified their lives by rendering as much as possible into digital form. Gritty black notebooks become <a href="http://www.evernote.com/">EverNote files</a>; yellowed paperback books become .PDF files; audio tapes are music files, stacks of tear-stained love notes become carefully indexed emails stored in the cloud, et c. Whereas the our desert monks could store the complete text of scripture in their potent memories, our technomads embed their world on their hard drives, on smart phone sim cards, and in the ubiquitous, but decidedly immaterial cloud. Minimalism has become a critique of materiality.

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This attitude toward the material world strikes me as strange. In almost every case, objects are the product of labor, and, as anyone who deals even a little bit with databases knows, a digital object is no less a manifestation of work than a t-shirt or a four-poster bed. Embracing minimalism while, at the same time, filling a hard drive with digital objects hardly seems a path to enlightened asceticism.

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<title>Digital History Practicum: North Dakota History Goes Digital</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/digital-historypracticum-north-dakota-history-goes-digital/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:23:46 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=193</guid> This semester I am supervising a small digital history practicum. The goals (as I have explained elsewhere in the blog) is to begin the process of digitizing Master's Theses stored in Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections at the University of North Dakota. These theses document the early history of the study of history at UND and provide some valuable historiography for the study of the history of the state. In fact, some of these theses date to before the establishment of state or local archives or to times when these archives existed only at the most rudimentary levels. As a result, they could contain references to documents that are now lost. For example, we have Myrtle Bemis's 1909 M.A. Thesis on the Settlement of Swedes in North Dakota. Much of the evidence for her argument comes from conversations and interviews with Swedes who had settled there just 20 or 30 years earlier. This appears to be the earliest thesis in our collection here and it was prepared under the guidance of A. G. Leonard (Geology), <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/page/2/?s=Libby">Orin G. Libby</a> (History), and John Gillette (Sociology). Among the more interesting theses, however, does not touch on the history of North Dakota at all. <a href="http://mulibraries.missouri.edu/collections/ellis.htm">Elmer Ellis</a>'s M.A. thesis, followed in the footsteps of Orin G. Libby's work on the quantitative, geographical study of American political allegiances, but emphasized minority parties from the Civil War to 1900. As readers of this blog know, Ellis went on to earn his Ph.D. and become the 14th president of the University of Missouri. We hope to begin to release these theses by early March with short interpretative introductions, some discussion of our methods, and a proposal for digitizing the entire series of M.A. Theses in the archive. At present we are a bit stuck as to how present these theses to the public. Our initial instinct had been to use <a href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a>, an online collection management application, and, specifically, their hosted <a href="http://www.omeka.net/">Omeka.net</a> service. For public history students, learning to use these kinds of tools is an important skill, as many small to mid-sized museums and institutions have begun to develop their web presence in a more serious way. Omeka allows the students to familiarize themselves with the Dublin Core metadata for objects as well. Unfortunately, we have not been very successful in getting Omeka (or Omeka.net) to display textual artifacts. While the self-hosted version of Omeka (version 1.1) does allow for a document viewer installation (using <a href="http://docs.google.com/viewer">Google Docs viewer</a>), it is pretty limited in where it can be deployed. For example, it does not appear to work when arranging various items in the database for a formal exhibition. Omeka.net, while a great tool for image collections, does not support the viewer at all. So we can develop the metadata for these objects and even display images of their front page (like in this blog), but we can't actually display the text in a way that is easy for the visitor to the site to scroll through without downloading the entire thesis. This may be an acceptable solution for the present, but it is hardly optimal. Since the scanned theses will eventually (we hope) make their way into the libraries digital collection in <a href="http://www.contentdm.org/">ContentDM</a>, we are a bit reluctant to develop too much of a front end for their display. At the same time, the practicum had as its goal more than just creating a digital collection. We wanted to make sure that our collection could present our collection to interested members of the local community.

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<title>More than four reasons to teach more than four classes (sometimes)</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/more-than-fourreasons-to-teach-more-than-four-classes-sometimes/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:01:08 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=201</guid> To celebrate the filing of my application for tenure, I decided to indulge in <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/a-teaching-sabbatical/">a teaching sabbatical</a>. This involved dramatically increasing the amount of time dedicated to teaching for one semester. If a research sabbatical emphasizes research, a teaching sabbatical focuses on teaching. To do this, I decided to take an overload and teach a digital history practicum. This took my normal spring teaching load from 3 courses to four and a half course, and four and a half different preps. Each class is different. I am teaching a large (100 student) online introductory course, a smallish (20) midlevel course for majors, a four-credit language class, a graduate seminar, and a 2 student hands-on practicum. Many people offer condolences when they hear about my teaching load, but so far this semester (5 weeks in!), it has been a blast, and, more importantly, I've learn things about teaching, my work flow, and what it takes to be a productive and successful in academia. 1.<span style="text-decoration:underline;">A</span> lways<span style="textdecoration:underline;">B</span> e<span style="text-decoration:underline;">T</span> eaching. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/outliers-the-story-of-success/oclc/225870354">Malcolm Gladwell</a> has famously argued that expertise is only achieved after 10,000 hours of practice. My typical teaching load (2 or 3 classes) occupied 10 "contractual" hours per class per week. So each year, I earn about 750 hours of teaching practice. At this rate it will take me about 13 years to become an expert teacher. Adding one extra course a year, or 150 hours of expertise will cut over 2 years from that number. I think the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps attributed part of his dominance of the swimming world to his willingness to practice 7 days a week rather than 6 like many of his competitors. Over the four years between Olympic games, he gained 200 days of training or a 17% more practice than his competition. While there is a line between pushing oneself to exhaustion (over-training to continue our sports metaphor), I also think that the more we do, the better we get at things. Taking a semester periodically to increasing the intensity of our teaching commitment can give us an advantage in the classroom. Unlike many semesters, where teaching is a pretty modest part of a diverse, busy, and demanding week, I have discovered that the 4 course/4 prep combination makes it almost impossible to compartmentalize the responsibilities of teaching. As a result, I am always teaching this semester. So not only is one more class 10 more hours (or so) per week of experience, but, for me, those 10 hours per week are the tipping point. Teaching has become what I do this semester rather than one of the things that I do. 2. Efficiency. In order to survive my other responsibilities, however, I have had to become much more efficient. I hear colleagues who have had children say that they become much more efficient scholars as they learn to balance professional and family responsibilities. This semester, after only 5 weeks, I am feeling similar results. I am becoming better at getting things done in the interstices between classes, reviewing lectures while walking across campus, and answering student emails as they come in (rather than letting them pile up and having to deal with them as a unwieldy batch). I have come to think much more carefully about how I grade and comment on student papers to make sure that I focus my comments on the most valuable information and avoid my time-consuming habit of rambling remarks. I have also begun to review my reading and writing assignments and consider how well and efficiently they achieve the stated course goals. In a semester where I can feel even 20 extra pages of reading a week, I have become extra sensitized to how closely each page and assignment contributes to what I want to do in the course.

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3. Good Work Habits. At some point in my life, I stopped working much in the evening. I tend to be an early riser and I am usually at my desk by 6 am. For some reason, I began to declare my day done around 6 pm. While this is a nice long work day, I found that I typically wasted evening hours watching TV, reading, surfing the web, or just doing ... well ... nothing. This semester I have rediscovered my ability to do work in the evening. Even just an hour of work - typically course preparation or light grading - makes my day far more manageable and allows me to use my prime working hours (typically from around 7:30 am to 11: 30 am and from 2-5 pm) to accomplish more thinking-intensive tasks. I only rediscovered the evening as potential work time when I began to push my day to the limit with short term responsibilities of teaching. Long term research and writing goals can always be put off. Grading papers, designing tests, or working on lectures are pressing and immediate. 4. Being able to walk away. I am teaching a mid-level language class this semester for the first time. Sometimes the class goes well and I feel like I'm a genius, and sometimes the course goes poorly and I feel like fraud. When experiencing the ups and downs of teaching in the past, I would take time to revel in the high of a good class and linger over a botched explanation for hours. Now, I don't have time. Quick notes in my teaching journal and, if necessary, on my to do list (e.g. re-learn the gerundive), and I am on to the next class. Rather than dwelling on the emotions that come with teaching, I have had to channel my energies into pro-active practice. When I botch things, I note that I need to do them better. When I am successful, I write a quick note reminding myself of the success of a particular assignment. 5. Work-Life Balance. There is a good bit of talk in academia today about work-life balance. In college I developed some pretty unbalanced work habits which became more exaggerated in graduate school. I don't have much of life, but since I've never really had one as an adult, I am not sure that I understand what I am missing. That being said, the daily demands of teaching this semester have made me appreciate a lazy Friday or Saturday night with friends or Sunday evening in the kitchen with my wife far more. Simple things like writing this blog or reading a book have become far more pleasurable and important, because I have to make time for them. There are downsides to my all-teaching, all-the-time semester, of course. My modest research program has suffered. I am not writing as much as I usually do and when I do write it is less polished and more fragmentary. I am fortunate to have understanding colleagues who have picked up whatever I have dropped in terms of service. I am only on a few committees that have regular responsibilities. Finally, the intensity of always be teaching is probably not sustainable, but I do hope that some of the lessons in efficiency, good work habits, and being able to walk away will carry forward when my schedule returns to a more normal pace. Finally, I am concerned about student learning outcomes. While it is difficult to determine at this point in the semester whether I am still as effective in the classroom as I was with a lighter teaching load, it is something that I intend to monitor both through standard assessment practices, student grades, and my own continued reflections on classroom performance. Cross-posted to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>.

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<title>St. Ambrose and Milan</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/st-ambrose-andmilan/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Feb 2011 08:00:27 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/stambrose-and-milan/</guid> I've spent the past two days wandering the streets of Milan. We've done the best we can to retrace the steps of St. Ambrose and paid particular attention to his 4th century foundations. While little of these foundations survive in any sort of pristine state, the basic plan of four churches still exists. San Ambrogio: <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sanambrogio.jpg" alt="SanAmbrogio.jpg" width="480" height="359" /> <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sanambrogioint.jpg" alt="SanAmbrogioInt.jpg" width="480" height="360" /> <p style="text-align:left;">San Lorenzo is the most architecturally complex (and unlikely to have been founded by Ambrose himself). It originally featured a square, double-shelled, tretrachonc rising to a wood roof. The apsidal exedrae were massive and the central square of the church communicated with the external shell through colonnades. Today the church rises to an octagonal dome, but enough of its original plan survives that it is easy to reconstruct. External to central core of the church are a gaggle of earlier, contemporary, and chapels. The eastern atrium opened onto a colonnaded street part which survives. <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sanlorenzoint.jpg" alt="SanLorenzoINT.jpg" width="480" height="359" /> <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sanlorenzeexteast.jpg" alt="SanLorenzeExtEast.jpg" width="480" height="359" /> <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sanlorenzocolonnade.jpg" alt="SanLorenzoColonnade.jpg" width="480" height="359" /> <p style="text-align:left;">San Simpliciano was closed, but we were able to observe the complex history of the building. The massive transept finds echoes in churches across the Balkans throughout the 5th and 6th centuries: <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sansimplicianoeast.jpg" alt="SanSimplicianoEast.jpg" width="480" height="359" /> <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sansimplicianotransept.jpg" alt="SanSimplicianoTransept.jpg" width="480" height="359" /> <p style="text-align:left;">San Nazaro, consecrated as St. Ambrose's Holy Apostles, is similar to the 4th century church in Constantinople of the same name. It wasn't open and it was too crowded by other buildings to photograph very successfully (and it was rainy and I was hungry). <p style="text-align:left;">I did, however, photograph a nicely preserved section of the Late Roman city wall: <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/milanlrwall.jpg" alt="MilanLRWall.jpg" width="480" height="359" />

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<title>An Evening in Trieste</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/an-evening-intrieste/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 22 Feb 2011 08:00:10 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/an-evening-intrieste/</guid> Today I visited Aquileia and Grado and spent some quality time with the 4th, 5th, and 6th century basilicas there. The highlight of the day were the two 6th century churches at Grado, but instead of more churches, I'll show some pictures of my evening in Triesta. Trieste is Middle Europe complete with fin de <span style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;line-height:15px;"> sicle </span> buildings. Here are some images of Unification Square (Trieste was not part of Italy at the time of unification for folks who care about these things): <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/trieste1.jpg" alt="Trieste1.jpg" width="480" height="359" /> <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/trieste2.jpg" alt="Trieste2.jpg" width="480" height="359" /> <div style="text-align:left;">And the local tradition of delicious pork sprinkled with horse-radish and served with a side of mustard:</div> <div style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/triestepork.jpg" alt="TriestePork.jpg" width="480" height="359" /></div> <div style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/triestepork2.jpg" alt="TriestePork2.jpg" width="480" height="359" /></div> <div style="text-align:left;">More on churches tomorrow....</div>

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<title>Grado and Aquileia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/grado-andaquileia/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:11:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/grado-andaquileia/</guid> I managed to check out some of the 4th and 5th century mosaics in Aquileia. <p style="text-align:center;"><br /> <img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/aquileiawest.jpg" width="480" height="359" alt="AquileiaWest.jpg" /> <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/acquileiaeast.jpg" width="480" height="359" alt="AcquileiaEast.jpg" /> And, even more exciting, two 6th century churches on the island of Grado south of Aquileia. Check out the level of preservation: <p style="text-align:center;"><br /> <img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/grado1.jpg" width="480" height="359" alt="Grado1.jpg" /> the variation in the columns used in this church: <p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/grado2.jpg" width="480" height="359" alt="Grado2.jpg" /> <p style="text-align:left;">Yesterday was more time in Aquileia and today was an entire day in Ravenna. So, more soon!

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<title>Visiting Justinian in Verona</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/visiting-justinian-inverona/</link> <pubDate>Sat, 26 Feb 2011 07:24:32 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/visiting-justinian-inverona/</guid> This week I was able to stop through Verona on our way from Ravenna to Genoa. While it was not the most direct route, we were able both to make a whole series of "Two Gentlemen of Verona" jokes and visit a tiny bit of the Corinthia. One of the two inscriptions mentioning Justinian and Viktorinos from the Isthmus of Corinth is in the Museo Lapidario Maffeiano in Verona. Regular readers of this blog know that I <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/moreambivalent-landscapes-of-corinth/">have worked on two articles</a> dealing with these texts and considering what they tell us about the 6th century Isthmus. The text is remarkable because it is among the only texts specifically referring to Justinian from Greece and among the first to mention the Theotokos as protector, a role that would become very common in the 6th and later Byzantine centuries. <p style="text-align:center;">&nbsp;&nbsp;<img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/justinianinverona.jpg" width="480" height="360" alt="JustinianinVerona.jpg" /> <p style="text-align:left;">The most remarkable building in Verona, of course is the well-preserved Roman amphitheatre: <p style="text-align:center;"><br /> <img src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/veronaamphitheatre.jpg" width="480" height="151" alt="VeronaAmphitheatre.jpg" />

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<title>The Centrally Planned Buildings of Ravenna</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/the-centrally-plannedbuildings-of-ravenna/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:02:31 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=258</guid> It was pretty exciting finally to visit Ravenna! I can hardly believe that I wrote a dissertation on Early Christian basilicas without having spent time in this Adriatic city. But I did, and I guess I can justifying by saying that the basilica style churches are hardly the star of the show in this one-time imperial city. Centrally planned buildings are the order of the day in Ravenna. Centrally planned buildings still standing in the city date from 4th to 6th centuries. The most modest, perhaps, is the cruciform (so-called) mausoleum of Galla Placcidia which probably dates to the early or middle 5th century: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GalliaPlac1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/galliaplac1.jpg" border="0" alt="GalliaPlac1" width="450" height="387" /> It is adorned with spectacular mosaics: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GallPlac2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/gallplac2.jpg" border="0" alt="GallPlac2" width="450" height="337" /> Centrally planned mausolea were common in throughout the Roman period and continued into the 6th century at Ravenna with the spectacular mausoleum of Theoderic, the Gothic king: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="TheodericMaus1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/theodericmaus1.jpg" border="0" alt="TheodericMaus1" width="450" height="350" /> The best known centrally planned buildings in Ravenna are related to Christian ritual. It's possible that parts of the famous Neonian or Orthodox baptistery date to the 4th century and the mosaics likely date to the late 5th. The building is an octagon surrounding a similarly shaped font. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="OrthoBapt1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/orthobapt1.jpg" border="0" alt="OrthoBapt1" width="450" height="350" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="OrthoBapt3.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/orthobapt3.jpg" border="0" alt="OrthoBapt3" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="OrthoBapt2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/orthobapt2.jpg" border="0" alt="OrthoBapt2" width="450" height="337" /> The nearly contemporary Arian baptistery shares a similar plan (although the outer shell has been lost) and decorative program: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ArianBapt1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/arianbapt1.jpg" border="0" alt="ArianBapt1" width="450" height="373" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ArianBapt2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/arianbapt2.jpg" border="0" alt="ArianBapt2" width="450" height="337" /> The most spectacular of the centrally planned building is the 6th century church of San Vitale. The building is another octagon with an important group of 6th century mosaics preserved in its eastern end. The interplay between the outer octagon and inner, domed core frames dynamic perspectives both on the central space and the sacred eastern end. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="SanVitale1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sanvitale1.jpg" border="0" alt="SanVitale1"

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width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="SanVitale2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sanvitale2.jpg" border="0" alt="SanVitale2" width="449" height="600" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="SanVitale3.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sanvitale3.jpg" border="0" alt="SanVitale3" width="449" height="600" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="SanVitale4.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/sanvitale4.jpg" border="0" alt="SanVitale4" width="449" height="600" /> Of course, Ravenna also had its share of basilicas, but more on them tomorrow...

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<title>The Basilicas of Ravenna</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/the-basilicas-ofravenna/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 01 Mar 2011 12:30:15 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=273</guid> A colleague emails me last night and noted that most of the mosaics in Ravenna have undergone significant restoration and conservation work. Some of the earliest efforts to restore the mosaics and architecture date to the 18th century (and this discounts much earlier work that sought less to conserve older decoration and more to beautify the space of worship) and continues today. As a result, like historians reading a text or archaeologist reading data, we should always be skeptical of what we see in front of us. The churches of Ravenna, then, often serve to provide impressions of the architecture, decoration, and organization of the past. In the two better-preserved (and conserved!) basilica style churches are particularly valuable spaces for contemplating the processional character of the Early Christian liturgy. Marble colonnades separate narrow aisles from the main processional axes of these buildings. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApNuovo1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apnuovo1.jpg" border="0" alt="ApNuovo1" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApNuovo2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apnuovo2.jpg" border="0" alt="ApNuovo2" width="450" height="337" /> At St. Apollinare Nuovo (above), female and male saints depart from the port city of Classis and from the palace at Ravenna respectively. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApNuovo3.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apnuovo3.jpg" border="0" alt="ApNuovo3" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApNuovo4.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apnuovo4.jpg" border="0" alt="ApNuovo4" width="450" height="337" /> These processing saints follow the course of the liturgical processions toward the eastern apse and terminate at the virgin and Christ outside the sanctuary area of the church. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApNuovo5.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apnuovo5.jpg" border="0" alt="ApNuovo5" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApNuovo6.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apnuovo6.jpg" border="0" alt="ApNuovo6" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApNuovo7.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apnuovo7.jpg" border="0" alt="ApNuovo7" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApNuovo8.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apnuovo8.jpg" border="0" alt="ApNuovo8" width="450" height="337" /> The processional mosaics are best visible from the aisles as was the main processional movement of the early liturgy. In contrast, the colonnades obscured the eastern destination of these processional rituals emphasizing the movement toward the east (and toward salvation) perhaps even more than its ultimate goal. While we do not know exactly what adorned the eastern end of St. Apollinare Nuovo as the eastern end of that building has seen significant modification, we have a better idea of the eastern end of its sister church St. Apollinare in Ravenna's port city of Classis. The colonnade of the nave separates narrow aisles from the broad central bay and simultaneously directs the viewer's gaze to the east and

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obscures a clear view of the sanctuary. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApClasse1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apclasse1.jpg" border="0" alt="ApClasse1" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApClasse2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apclasse2.jpg" border="0" alt="ApClasse2" width="450" height="337" /> Here a massive cross floats above the head of the saint on the half dome of the eastern apse: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApClasse3.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apclasse3.jpg" border="0" alt="ApClasse3" width="450" height="337" /> Angles holding pennants inscribed with the sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy in Greek!) stand guard on either side of the main apse and ensure that key phrases in the liturgy echo always in the church. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApClasse4.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apclasse4.jpg" border="0" alt="ApClasse4" width="449" height="600" /> In the 7th century, the imperial family, arranged in processional order themselves, joined the vigil at the eastern end of the nave. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ApClasse5.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/apclasse5.jpg" border="0" alt="ApClasse5" width="450" height="337" />

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<title>Mountains Come First</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/mountains-comefirst/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:32:24 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=282</guid> As Fernando Braudel begins his history of the <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=yAMe0bu3Jt4C&amp;lpg=PA25&amp;ots=Cx58FhK9T&amp;dq=Braudel%20first%20there%20are%20the%20mountains&amp;pg=PA25#v=onepage&a mp;q&amp;f=false">Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II</a> : <blockquote> Mountains come first: The Mediterranean is by definition a landlocked sea. But beyond this we must distinguish between the kinds of land that surround and confine it. It is, above all, a sea ringed by mountains. This outstanding fact and its many consequences have received too little attention in the past from historians. </blockquote> The mountains crashing into the sea outside of Trieste: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NearTrieste.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/neartrieste.jpg" border="0" alt="NearTrieste" width="450" height="337" /> We spent our last days in Italy in the city of Genoa and on Saturday spent some time hiking in the rugged country to the south of the city. Here high mountains really do come down to the sea illustrating Braudel's famous observation that in Italy "mountains come first". The photos here are from the <a href="http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Polcevera">Val Polcevera</a>. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GenoaMount1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/genoamount1.jpg" border="0" alt="GenoaMount1" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GenoaMount2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/genoamount2.jpg" border="0" alt="GenoaMount2" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GenoaMount3.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/genoamount3.jpg" border="0" alt="GenoaMount3" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GenoaMount4.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/genoamount4.jpg" border="0" alt="GenoaMount4" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GenoaMount6.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/genoamount6.jpg" border="0" alt="GenoaMount6" width="450" height="337" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GenoaMount5.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/genoamount5.jpg" border="0" alt="GenoaMount5" width="450" height="337" />

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<title>The Future of the Computer Lab</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/the-future-of-thecomputer-lab/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:24:53 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=286</guid> This year, I've been serving on a committee that distributes technology funding for teaching within my college. One of things that these funds do is maintain computer labs in departments and programs across campus. Many of the computer labs that these funds will renovate are difficult to keep up to date (and currently rely upon computers purchased more than 5 years ago which is an eternity amidst today's fast moving technology cycle), relatively small with fewer than 40 computers, and serve relatively focused constituencies (typically limited to particular departments or programs). These three issues: the difficulty in keeping labs up to date, their small size, and their focused constituencies led me to think a bit about the future and function of the computer lab in the modern university. As a preemptive caveat, I'll admit that I do not teach in a computer lab and our department does not make use of one. On the other hand, I have been involved with building a lab and have observed student behavior and the tech scene over the past 10 years. So with that framework, I'll offer some observations here and invite everyone to critique, expand, explode, or reject my observation in the comments! 1. The desktop computer is on the verge of extinction. Computer labs are almost always associated with the desktop computer. At the same time, <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/Infographics/2011/Generations-and-gadgets.aspx">a Pew Study</a> (h/t to <a href="http://www.learningaloud.com/blurts/2011/03/03/generations-choose-yourdevice/">Mark Grabe</a>) released last month has shown that just over half (57%) college-aged students have desktop computers whereas 70% of them have laptops. The reasons for this are pretty clear. Laptops are now powerful enough to handle all but the most robust computing needs. To be sure, the limitations of laptop computers - particularly at the extreme high end of, say, complex graphics production, video editing, controlling scientific equipment, or other processes that require significant computing power - still require desktop work stations with massive, multicore processes, massive amounts of storage, and robust cooling capacities, and ability to be customized and expanded. These environments, however, are fairly rare outside of upper-level or even graduate research programs. Few students ever explore the fringes of their laptop's computational power (except perhaps when they are playing games). The growing preference for laptop computers among "millennials" makes clear that fewer users and ultimately software makers require the kind of performance limited to desktop hardware. 2. The cloud can do almost everything. My suspicion is that while personal computers will continue to become more powerful, the real growth in computer power will come through leveraging "cloud" based computing. In other words, powerful, remote computers with many, many times the power of even the most robust desktop will be available to handle the most demanding processes. Unlike a desktop or even a laptop which is designed for a single individual, cloud based computers can accommodate many users, sometimes simultaneous, and thereby reduce unnecessary duplication of processing power common to a computer lab where processing loads are often distributed unevenly across all users. For example, processor intensive functions - like graphics rendering - now typically reserved for the most powerful desktop computers, can be sent out to the cloud where clusters of powerful computer can more efficiently and quickly handle demanding tasks. Moreover, companies like <a href="http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/home.asp">CiTRIX</a> are working to bring even common software to the cloud (like the Adobe suite of image editing software) making it possible for students to use specialized software which is not running on their computer, but in the cloud. The student's computer become just an access point for the computer power of the cloud and the software running in that environment. This both eliminates the need for students to purchase expensive, specialized software for one or two classes and eliminates the need to limit software on a

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group of designated machines in a computer lab environment. So cloud computing is not only more powerful, but more efficient. If a student can leverage the power of cloud computing from their laptop, why do we need to provide a lab full of powerful desktop computers? 3. Decentralized learning. Cloud based computing will become more and more important as programs turn toward increasingly decentralized models of instruction. The physical computer lab is based on residential, spatially local models of instruction. While it is my hope that universities will always have classrooms, labs, and physical locations, I am also aware that the move toward online instruction will make some of these facilities less important for the definition of university education. Students taking a class from around the world will no long be able to use a computer lab located in a particular building with particular hours and particular physical hardware. Just as cloud based course management software like Blackboard or Moodle facilitate spatially decentralized learning models, more specialized software will also gradually become available in an online environment making the hardwire computer lab as marginal as the bricks-and-mortar classroom. 4. The line between a classroom and lab is increasingly blurred. <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/04/01/involve-me-and-i-learn-an-environment-for-activelearning-at-the-university-of-north-dakota/">As Anne Kelsch has discussed</a>, new models for classrooms - particularly those designed around the principles of active learning - have incorporated many of the features of the traditional computer lab directly into classroom space. While computer labs do have the benefit of physically concentrating students working on similar projects and problems, the classroom as computer lab brings that focus to even a finer point. Spaces like the SCALE-UP classroom take computers from the lab (where my mind's eye sees banks of computers facing the wall or arranged in ranks) and organizes them both in physical space and through software to encourage students to work together. While labs have always been teaching spaces, the line between the lab and the classroom will become increasingly blurred. 5. The new economic normal. Computer hardware is expensive to buy, to maintain, and to keep current. Public universities are under increased pressure to trim budgets and use resources more wisely. Traditional computer labs will not remain a cost-efficient way to provide students with access to computer power, software, or a sophisticated instructional environment. Specialized labs will continue to exist for particular kinds of highly-specialized computing needs or to support certain learning environments, departmental or program based computer labs designed to serve diverse constituencies will soon fall victim to the changing economic realities of American university life. While many of the more powerful and specialized cloud based solutions are not inexpensive, they offer structural advancement over desktop computing by leveraging economies of scale. Crossposted to<a href="http://teachingthursday.org/"> Teaching Thursday</a>

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/friday-varia-and-quickhits-5/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:56:47 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=289</guid> Some Friday quick hits amidst the flurries of an early spring snow. Some great stuff at both <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Corinthian Matters </a>and <a href="http://paperlessarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Paperless Archaeology</a>. I have blog envy! <a href="http://www.opera.com/browser/">Opera 11 is out</a>. <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/blogging-archaeology-thecarnival/">Colleen Morgan is getting the ball rolling on the Blogging Archaeology panel at the SAA meetings</a>. Shawn Graham has responded <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/blogging-archaeology-at-the-saa-whyblog/">with some good reflections on blogging and the group blog in particular over at Electric Archaeology</a>. Michael Smith chimes <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-can-blogging-do-forarchaeology.html">in at Publishing Archaeology</a>, and <a href="http://dirt.terrypbrock.com/?p=31416">Terry Brock adds more over at Dirt</a>. <a href="http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/2011/03/some-things-that-need-to-besaid.html">Amanda Hocking's publishing career is pretty remarkable</a>. The University of North Dakota's Graduate School's Scholarly Forum celebrates its 10 Anniversary next week. <a href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/10-years-of-presenting-graduateresearch-scholarship-at-und/">Check out an interview with Dean Joseph Benoit</a>. Oh Canada!!! <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/current/match/433574.html">S o close!</a> And to think that <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/current/match/433576.html">I thought this would be a good match</a>! What I am listening too: Radiohead, The King of Limbs and Cut Copy Zonoscope. What I'm reading: Fernand Braudel, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/structures-of-everydaylife-the-limits-of-the-possible/oclc/8620584">The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century</a> . New York 1981.

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<title>Blogging and Archaeology: A Few Contributions</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/blogging-andarchaeology-a-few-contributions/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:21:22 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=294</guid> Because I am a space cadet, I did not notice Colleen Morgan's call for <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/blogging-archaeology-the-carnival/">some preliminary thoughts related to her Blogging Archaeology panel at the SAAs</a>. I really wanted to attend the conference and the panel, but for various reasons could not so I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the discussion in some way. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/newimage.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="64" /> <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/blogging-archaeology-the-carnival/">Her first question</a> asked us to consider the place of short-from, blog writing in the archaeological discourse. <a href="http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/blogs/index.html">I've thought about this a good bit over the past few years as an academic, archaeological blogger</a>. First, we have to get beyond the idea that the blog is a genre of writing. The blog is a tool and like any tool we can use it in multiple ways, while at the same time realizing that its form and history condition how we use it. Blogs have already found a place within the academic and popular discourse. The <a href="http://www.bmcreview.org/">Bryn Mawr Classical Review</a> manifests in a very blog like format (and allows for comments in Blogger), blogs like <a href="http://snarkmarket.com/">Snarkmarket</a> , <a href="http://www.thevalve.org/">The Valve</a> , and <a href="http://warhistorian.org/wordpress/">Blog Them Out of the Stone Age</a> seek to bridge the gap between popular and academic writing, and blog software, particularly sophisticated takes on the standard blogging platforms like <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/">CommentPress</a> (which <a href="http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/shakespearequarterlyperformance/">Shakesp eare Quarterly</a> has used to great effect) and <a href="http://mu.wordpress.org/">"the platform formerly known as" Wordpress MU</a>, have formed the foundation for a range of academic projects. In short, the blog today as a form of expression is neither intrinsically academic or popular, neither specifically short-form or long-form, and is probably at the ragged edge of being anything at all except a piece of software running on a server and accessible via the web. Next, "the blog" and projects run on blogging software offer some serious advantages for archaeologists. First off, blogs are cheap to run compared to traditional academic publications. This is particularly significant for archaeological writing which tend to be expensive. Most blogging platforms can accommodate a nearly unlimited number of images, photographs, and text. For publishing archaeological reports - the most basic form of archaeological writing - the blogging platform represents an ideal tool. The tradition of short report-style publications (at least in my field of Mediterranean archaeology) has existed for decades (e.g. the <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=ARE">Journal of Hellenic Studies'</a> <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=ARE"> </a> <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=ARE">Archaeological Reports</a>, the annual reports in the <a href="http://cefael.efa.gr/result.php?site_id=1&amp;serie_id=BCH">Bulletin de Correspondance Hellnique</a>, the Report of the Director of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus , the Archaiologikon Deltion et c.) Blogging software would make this kind of publication not only orders of magnitude cheaper but also easier and probably better (more imagines, more photographs, more text!). Other forms of archaeological writing already position to take advantage of the kind of easy to use, dynamic interface that blogging provides. As many respondents to Colleen's question have already noted, there is a long standing tradition of popular archaeological writing in archaeology. <a

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href="http://www.archaeology.org/">Archaeology Magazine</a> , National Geographic , and <a href="http://www.bu.edu/asor/pubs/nea/index.html">Near Eastern Archaeology</a> <a href="http://www.bu.edu/asor/pubs/nea/index.html"> </a>all present archaeological reporting in an accessible and exciting way. The use of photographs, illustrations, maps, and graphics bring complex relationships to life, but also add significantly to the expense of these publications. Blogs provide a ready-made format for this genre of publication. In fact, I am currently working with a group of scholars looking to establish a more robust web presence of an academic organization. <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/academic-organizations-and-theweb-10-suggestions/">As we think about how we will appear on the web, I have suggested that</a> we look combine the best aspects of popular magazines like Archaeology and a blogging platform as an approach for creating a body of popularly accessible content for our members. Finally, when academics hear the word "publishing" we often default to a very conservative, limited, and, frankly, inaccurate view of the academic discourse. Publishing suddenly becomes "peer review". While I am not a critic of the peer review process and recognize its importance for our standing as professionals, I refuse to subscribe to a view that only peer-review can produce valid knowledge. In fact, we tend to forget that most academics present finding across a wide range of platforms, genres, formats, and editorial processes. There is a continuum that begins in the classroom and professional seminar and continues through the conference to the grey-paper site report, book chapter, peer-reviewed article, and into the monograph. At each step of this process there is a different degree of critical attention and peer scrutiny, editorial rigor, generic practices, and professional expectations. The blog as a manifestation of academic writing fits into this continuum of academic work. Most blog posts probably fit somewhere between a conference paper and an article or between an seminar presentation and a conference paper. The best can probably be classified as "academic correspondence" or notes (longdying forms of academic publication like this <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=4015376">short piece by Alan Cameron</a> or any number of short articles in <a href="http://ifa.phil-fak.unikoeln.de/8059.html">Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik</a> ). We can add to this list projects like John Wallrodt's <a href="http://paperlessarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Paperless Archaeology</a> which represents a valuable body of technical notes for the application of a range of digital tools in archaeological practice. All this is to say, that whatever the place the academic blog, it does not fall beyond the pale of academic work as it is recognized today or as it has been understood historically. The tool for publication has changed, but the impulse behind short-form writing has not. The key to recognizing the place of academic blogging within the academic discourse is separating the tools that we use to publish our ideas from the ideas themselves. There is nothing academically problematic about short-form arguments - in fact we present them all the time at conferences, postsessions, and in seminars). Nothing about the use of blogging software makes them unsuitable for peerreview, and, at the same time, peer-review is not a monolithic guarantee of academic excellence particularly in the field of archaeology where a robust popular press and a tradition of less-rigorously reviewed reports already exists. In fact, the wide range of academic practices in archaeology makes it an ideal field for the continued use of blogging platforms to communicate our professional work to our peers, our students, and the public. And, I'll get to Colleen's <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/bloggingarchaeology-week-2/">second question</a> (in a more timely manner) later in the week...

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<title>Blogging and the Public Face of Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/299/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:16:28 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=299</guid> Colleen Morgan <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/blogging-archaeology-week-2/">posted another question </a>to generate good conversation and buzz in the lead up to SAA conference panel on Blogging Archaeology (here's <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/bloggingarchaeology-the-carnival/">my response</a> to <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/blogging-and-archaeology-a-fewcontributions/">her first question</a>): <blockquote> <span style="font-family:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-weight:bold;outline-width:0;outlinestyle:initial;outline-color:initial;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 initial initial;margin:0;padding:0;">Blogging archaeology is often fraught with tensions that are sometimes not immediately apparent. Beyond the general problems that come with performing as a public intellectual, what risks do archaeologists take when they make themselves available to the public via blogging? What (if any) are the unexpected consequences of blogging? How do you choose what to share?</span> </blockquote> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;border:0 initial initial;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/newimage1.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="64" /><span style="font-weight:normal;">I can offer two answers to this question:</span> <span style="font-weight:normal;">1. At my project on Cyprus, the <a href="http://www.pkap.org/index.html">Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project</a>, we produced a short guide on how to write a for our various blogs. PKAP, like many projects, asked students and staff to blog about their experiences as part of a commitment to a reflexive method and as a component of the project's hybrid position between a pure research project and a undergraduate field school. Our guidelines were pretty straight forward and practical: be respectful and courteous, regard the blog as the extension of conversations and experience within the project, and when in doubt ask whether its appropriate to post a story, picture, or discovery. In general, students and staff had a good sense of censorship. In fact, as you can tell from our blogs - <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_undergra/">undergraduate</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_graduate/">graduate</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/pylakoutsopetria_season_s/">staff</a> - many of the posts are mundane or, frankly, silly.</span> [scribd id=50273885 key=key-1hs8rroczs3ejkzd78u4 mode=list] <span style="font-weight:normal;">The response to our blog has only been positive from university administrators, colleagues, and other stakeholders. In large part, this is because we use the blog as way to project the positive aspects of our project to a wider audience (experiential learning, the excitement of discovery, "exotic" locales, camaraderie, the challenges of research, et c.). Because these aspects of the project are explicitly foregrounded in the project discourse, there is little need (beyond the handout above) to promote these subjects as topics for the blog in a explicit way. In other words, the blog is a fairly (if a bit Pollyanna-ish) accurate representation of our project's (undoubtedly aspirational) view of itself. </span> <span style="font-weight:normal;">At the same time, we explicitly and implicitly limit how much of our archaeology appears in the project's blogs. This is, in part, because our site is very vulnerable to looting (and we know that people in the community read the blogs), the host countries (Cyprus and the UK) reserve some rights to be informed of our results before they are released to the general public, and the goal of the blog is to be a record of experiences rather than objects. As the project has moved into the interpretative and analytical stage, we have released more archaeological information, but as I

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discussed yesterday, the place of the blog in ecosystem of knowledge production makes these conclusions preliminary, provisional, and tentative. </span> <span style="font-weight:normal;">2. A professional blog is just another fragment of our digitized world. As Colleen points out, blogs have mostly functioned as a form of public outreach and archaeologists have been playing the public outreach game for decades (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmVlOqCKqCs">for example...</a>). As a result there are a set of fairly routine realizations that any archaeologist recognizes when communicating to the public about archaeology: recognize the risk of looting (and that many looters are local) and take steps to avoid tempting fate, respect the host country's procedures for publicizing discoveries (e.g. do not go to the NYTimes before you tell the local officials), recognize that the archaeologist's cynical joy of toppling traditional ideas is not shared by everyone, respect the attention span and interests of a public reader, embrace opportunities to give back to the community, et c.</span> <span style="font-weight:normal;">The difference today is that our digital world allows information to travel so much more quickly and to disperse so much more rapidly than before. An informal talk at a local military installation can appear almost instantly in the installation's newspaper which is published online. A mildly controversial talk in front of a public audience in a museum in Canada can reach the ears of an retired academic in the UK before the reception is over. This is hardly a revelation, of course. Archaeologists communicate instantly and electronically about conference papers, scholarly articles, new books, and even blogs all the time. Any expectation that a paper, publication, informal talk will somehow remain outside of the public eye is delusional (as so many of our politicians and members of our intelligence community have found out!).</span> <span style="font-weight:normal;">In this world, blogs have become ways to manage one's digital and public identity. If an archaeological project does not blog or maintain a presence in the digital world, that project is basically ceding a significant aspect of their public face to other people. While it is probably unreasonable to expect projects to have an influence over every person engaged in public conversation about their work, I think it is safe to say that it's irresponsible not to make any effort to influence how people understand their methods, results, and interpretation. A blog represents one part of a program to manage the dissemination of archaeological knowledge in general, and a particularly easy, inexpensive, and relevant tool for archaeology in the digital age. </span>

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<title>North Dakota History, Digital History</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/north-dakota-historydigital-history/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Mar 2011 12:39:44 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=309</guid> This is a big week for the students in my digital history practicum. As some readers of this blog know, two University of North Dakota graduate students have been working on preparing a digital archive of our collection of M.A. theses relevant both to the history the state of North Dakota, but also the study of the discipline at the university. So far this week, the first draft of the <a href="http://nodakhistory.omeka.net/">Omeka.net-powered web archive</a> has role out and the first public presentation of their work will occur this afternoon at the <a href="http://graduateschool.und.edu/learn-more/scholarly-forum.cfm">10th Annual University of North Dakota Graduate School Scholarly Forum</a>. Come by today (Wednesday March 9) and check out the poster and chat with the students from 2-4 pm in the Ballroom of the Memorial Union. <a href="http://nodakhistory.omeka.net/">The site is both an archive </a>and <a href="http://nodakhistory.omeka.net/exhibits/show/nodaktheses">an exhibit space</a>. Here's a screen shot from the Omeka page: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NDHistoryOmeka.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/ndhistoryomeka.jpg" border="0" alt="NDHistoryOmeka" width="450" height="419" /> They have also produced <a href="http://nodakhistory.omeka.net/sites/815/archive/files/a51a1e89b73af816727c21af5522db17.jpg"> a poster describing the current state of the project</a>: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="North Dakota History Goes Digital.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/north-dakota-history-goesdigital.jpg" border="0" alt="North Dakota History Goes Digital" width="450" height="300" /> They are also working on blogging, which as I have discovered does not come native to our aspiring cohort of public historians. Check out their blog: <a href="http://nodakhistory.wordpress.com/">North Dakota History Goes Digital</a>. Using social media is even more foreign to them, but they have a Twitter feed <a href="http://twitter.com/nodakhistory">@nodakhistory</a>, and they are trying! They've even experimented with QR codes on their poster. It's almost like the 21st Century.

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<title>Posters and the Scholarly Forum</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/posters-and-thescholarly-forum/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:56:37 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=314</guid> One of the great perks of <a href="http://graduateschool.und.edu/learnmore/scholarly-forum.cfm">the Graduate School's Scholarly Forum </a>here on campus is that you get to see so many academic posters. As some of you may know, the academic poster is the new conference paper. While commonplace in the social and applied sciences, the post has made significant inroads into the humanities with poster sessions appearing even at such august and tradition bound gatherings as the American Historical Association annual meeting. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/north-dakota-history-digitalhistory/">As I mentioned in yesterday's blog post</a>, two of my digital history students presented a poster at the scholarly forum. In general, their work was well-received, but I have to admit that their poster was not the flashiest or most attractive. After wandering the over 100 posters present at the Forum, I've come up with a simple list of things that made posters stand out to me: 1. Flashy colors. A few of the best and most noticeable posters used some kind of flashy color to attract my eye. While I know that poster sessions shouldn't necessarily be driven by visceral reactions to common advertising ploys, bright colors do draw the attention to content. 2. Visual Content. The best posters also relied heavily on pictures, charts, diagrams, and other illustrations. Posters are really ideal for communicating visual data. Our poster included too much text and it was tricky for people to find the time and space to stop and read a text heavy poster in the bustle of the poster session. Some of the best posters communicated their message through straight forward diagrams and visual images. 3. Non-linear. I'll admit that despite my training as a historian, I find linearity boring. Posters that depicted linear processes from one stage to the next did not attract me. I found myself drawn to posters that captured non-linear character of processes. Posters are a great place to experiment with non-linear explanations and descriptions because they allow the reader to engage the content of the poster from multiple starting points. Just as long blocks of text make engaging of the content of a poster difficult in the bustle of a crowded ballroom, a non-linear approach allows viewers to engage the content of the poster from different angles and directions. 4. So many icons. I really liked the posters that marked the project's affiliation, partners, and funding through icons. It made it easy to understand the institutional basis for the research without having to read some small thank-you text at the bottom of the poster board. It reminded me of the importance to developing a slick logo or icon for our organization! 5. QR Codes and more information. One thing that our history poster DID do right is to include QR codes to allow the viewer to quickly get additional information on the material present. QR codes worked so much better than a clumsy url directing the viewer to a website. In fact, the QR codes worked so well that they actually drew attention and comment to our poster! Check <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> next week for an expanded versions of these observations with some visual complements!

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/11/friday-quick-hits-andvaria/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:04:59 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=316</guid> It is over 25 this morning for the first time this year, but we're also under a blizzard warning for this afternoon. Of course a North Dakota blizzard is nothing compared to what we are witnessing in Japan. I am following events on Twitter and CNN. It's amazing how Twitter has become such an important part of our way of getting information on what's going on in the world in realtime. <a href="http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/tom/">UCL's Tweet-o-Meter</a> shows Tokyo pegged at 1200 Tweets per minute. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="TweetoMeter.jpg" src="http://teachingthursday.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/tweetometer.jpg" border="0" alt="TweetoMeter" width="450" height="537" /> Colleen Morgan at <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/">Middle Savagery</a> has facilitated some more good conversation on blogs and archaeology. I've contributed twice this week (<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/299/">here</a> and <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/blogging-and-archaeology-a-fewcontributions/">here</a>), but for the real good stuff<a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/blogging-archaeology-week-2/#comments"> check out the links in her comments</a>. For more on blogging, read some interesting stuff at <a href="http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3101/2836">First Monday this month</a> and a <a href="http://blog.ideasoneurope.eu/2011/03/08/why-use-blogs-in-universityteaching-a-socratic-dialogue/">strange Socratic dialogue about using blogs to teach from folks in The Europe</a>. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/current/match/433585.html">L et's go Bangladesh!</a> If they can pull off a win against England, I'll wear my Bangladesh Cricket jersey to the UND Hockey playoff game tonight. (<a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/current/match/433584.html">I was also pleased to see that the West Indies escape the dangerous (!) Irish side.</a>) Have you read <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday </a>this week? I'm wondering how hard it would be to transition Teaching Thursday to some thing more like <a href="http://teachingandlearningtogether.blogs.brynmawr.edu/">Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education</a> . What I'm reading: J. Moreland, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeology-theory-and-themiddle-ages-understanding-the-early-medieval-past/oclc/243821178">Archaeology, Theory, and the Middle Ages</a> . London 2010. What I'm listening to: Radiohead, Kid A

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<title>The Grammar of Excavation</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/the-grammar-ofexcavation/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:58:08 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=318</guid> Over the past few weeks <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/polis-notebooks/">I have been working to digitize a series of notebooks</a> from the <a href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/Archaeology/rp/polisexhibit/intro.html">Polis excavations on Cyprus</a>. The notebooks document the excavation of a Late Antique (to Medieval) basilica style church, surrounding burials, and a some earlier structures. The excavators basically dug in a stratigraphic way and recorded information for not only stratigraphic levels, but also individual passes. In many cases, the trench supervisor described the appearance of important finds - coins and fragments of architectural sculpture - as well as the excavation of burials. Top plans and profiles complemented the descriptions. In general, the notebooks provide a serviceable account of the excavation. So far, I have keyed excavation descriptions for almost 10 notebooks. One of the byproducts of this fairly boring work is that I've thought a good bit about what one could do with the keyed notebook descriptions beyond using them as a guide for reconstructing the stratigraphy of the particular trenches. It struck me that the notebook descriptions represent an interesting opportunity for textual analysis. (This train of thought was certainly influenced by Geoffrey Rockwell's recent visit.) I can offer some basic observations regarding the grammar of these notebook descriptions that I think contribute to an understanding of how the language of notebooks preserves some evidence for archaeological epistemology and attitudes toward the archaeological method. The most striking thing about the Polis notebooks that I have keyed is that the trench supervisors wrote almost exclusively in passive voice. Finds were discovered, cover slabs were removed, skeletons were uncovered, and levels were changed. In other cases, finds appeared in the various passes and emerged from the trenches. The trench supervisor rarely makes an appearance in the notebook to offer any interpretation of the appearing and emerging finds. The excavator is almost entirely absent; we do know that certain levels were handpicked, but we are never certain who did the handpicking. The reasons for this choice of grammar are two-fold (in my very preliminary analysis): 1. Method. It would appear that the trench supervisors did very little excavation. This is relatively common the Mediterranean world where workmen would actually move the earth. As the notebook account, things emerge from the trench separate from the direct agency of the trench supervisor who records the proceedings in his or her notebook. The absence of any record of the excavators is a bit troubling; it is common practice to record in excavation notebooks the individuals present in the trench that day. 2. Epistemology. The passive voice and the use of verbs like emerge and appear make clear that the archaeological material in the trench is there for the archaeologists discovery. The process of excavation is secondary to the material excavated and the language of the notebooks maintain a clear separation between the two. The trench supervisor - as researcher - and the excavators - as labor - did not position themselves as part of the objective business of science but stood to one side patiently recording the results. The passive voice and verbs of observing reinforced the objective nature of the archaeological data recorded in the notebooks. This analysis is pretty superficial, but the textual data that could support these arguments could be easily mined from the keyed notebook data. I keep thinking of <a href="http://paperlessarchaeology.wordpress.com/">John Walrodt's impressive body of text from Pompeii</a> as well as our keyed notebook data from <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Pyla-</a> <a href="http://www.pkap.org/">Koutsopetria</a> also in Cyprus. Moreover, the growing body of digitized, published, archaeological reports could form another body of text that could reveal whether the language of the notebooks carries through to the epistemology and interpretations presented in the published reports.

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<title>Blogging Archaeology and Comments</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/blogging-archaeologyand-comments/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:27:05 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=323</guid> The most recent question over at <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/">Colleen Morgan's curated blog "event" on Middle Savagery</a> asks about<a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/bloggingarchaeology-week-3/"> the audience and comments on blogs</a>. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/newimage2.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="64" /> I used to think a good bit about audience when I first started blogging. I had this idea that I would create a point of contact between my research interests and the local community, stakeholders in my various projects, and like minded colleagues. Over time, I realized that the local community was not tremendously interested in what was going, the stakeholders did enjoy my blog particularly when we were in the field, and my colleagues divided themselves fairly neatly into those who ignore blogs and those who write and read blogs. I was most liberated when I realized that there was an almost infinite variety of people on the internet and my blog could survive on a relatively tiny base of regular readers (70 - 100 a day). In other words, if the "I can haz cheezeburger?" cat can survive and find an audience, then I should not be too concerned about imagining a particular audience for what I write. As for comments, I used to get annoyed that so few of my readers comments. I've had close to 4000 views of my new blog and only 25 comments for the 57 posts. But then I realized comments aren't the only way that people interact with your content. For example, yesterday morning a super bright buddy of mine dropped me an instant message in gmail chat telling me that he thought my post was interesting. Sometime early this morning, <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/blogging-archaeology-week-3/">a colleague and blogger</a> bold faced a passage from a post that I wrote last week: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="MSBolding.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/msbolding.jpg" border="0" alt="MSBolding" width="450" height="237" /> <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/">Another blogger</a> cites a comment that I made about his blog on his main page: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="EABlogComment.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/eablogcomment.jpg" border="0" alt="EABlogComment" width="450" height="190" /> I get a few emails a month from people who have something to add or say about a post on my blog. I also get a few Tweets and Facebook mentions. My blog has been cited on various Wiki's (some of which I am a little sketched out about, but all publicity is good publicity, right?), referenced in press and media releases, linked to on university websites, and talked about at academic conferences. While comments on a blog are always gratifying, the influence of a blog and the way that it becomes part of the academic discourse represents are far more complex and (to use an over used term) networked phenomena. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/">Hyperlinks </a>show the connections between authors and provide pathways for readers to glide across the influences and conversations in far more complex ways than the simple post:comment relationship imagines. I assume this understanding of how the internet works is why such iconic blogs as<a href="http://kottke.org/"> kottke.org </a>or <a href="http://daringfireball.net/">daring fireball</a> do not even allow comments on the content that they post. Of course the model for understanding blogs that downplays the atomized post:comment relationship is not a product of the digital age and the internet. In fact, I think that the way most people read and write to the web has close parallels with traditions of modern academic writing and reading. Most

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academics do not pause to comment on specific articles or even individual conference paper (although books and reviews are an exception); instead they build references to these articles into their own work through the predecessor of hyperlinks: footnotes. The networks that have emerged among bloggers find have nice parallels with the intellectual networks manifest in academic citations. The biggest difference between the two practices is the speed with which the discourse can develop (and evaporate) through digital publication. Just as few academic publications cite articles from, say, the 1920s, it is rare to see a hyperlink in a blog to a post over a few months old. It may be premature to regard blogs as anything more than a simulacrum of the mainstream academic conversation, but I have seen blogs cited in academic publications, know archaeologists who read my blog regularly, and know at least one archaeologist whose blog helped him get his job at a good liberal arts college. The familiar form of academic blogs to academic writing in general may be the thing that allows blogging to be recognized as a facet of the mainstream academic discourse.

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<title>Blogging for Publication in Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/blogging-forpublication-in-archaeology/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:25:02 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=327</guid> One of the things that partly engaged in the recent gaggle of posts (<a href="https://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/blogging-archaeology-the-carnival/">part 1</a>, <a href="https://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/blogging-archaeology-week-2/">part 2</a>, and <a href="https://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/blogging-archaeology-week3/">part 3</a>) curated by <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/">Colleen Morgan at Middle Savagery</a> is the relationship between blogging and more traditional forms of archaeological publications. Many bloggers use writing a blog as part of larger digital workflow which make transparent the research process. It is easy to day to build bibliography, in public, using <a href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a>, draft ideas on a blog, "publish" a conference paper or prepublication drafts via <a href="http://academia.edu/">Academia.edu</a> or<a href="http://www.scribd.com/"> Scribd</a>, then present a digital offprint via the same service. In conjunction with basic online tools, blogging forms a step toward producing a proper peer reviewed publication. (In fact, <a href="http://anthologize.org/">Anthologize </a>is a tool created to facilitate this.) <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/newimage3.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="64" /> Authors with a more popular inclination have already used blogging after publication to promote their works. Barry Strauss, for example, a master of the hybrid field of popular, academic writing, has had <a href="http://www.barrystrauss.com/">a blog on his most recent book's webpage quite some time</a>. Adrian Murdoch is another very effective public scholar whose<a href="http://adrianmurdoch.typepad.com/my_weblog/"> blog Bread and Circuses </a>both reflects his substantial scholarly knowledge of the later Roman Empire, but has complements <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Romes-Greatest-Defeat-Massacre-Teutoburg/dp/0750940158">his more popular works on the Roman Empire</a>. <a href="http://www.victorhanson.com/">Victor Davis Hansen</a> is another phenomenon all together. <a href="http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/2011/03/some-things-that-need-to-besaid.html">Recent stories about Amanda Hocking's publishing career</a> which has developed from her blogging put the relationship between blogs and more traditional forms of writing in an even more interesting perspective. She has managed to make some significant money and reach a huge audience for her self-published works, in part, by using a blog to share her writing to potential fans. The flip side of this was something like the recent N+1 sponsored publication: <a href="http://nplusonemag.com/what-was-hipster">What Was the Hipster?</a> . While unrelated to blogging per se, this slim (and inexpensive!) volume derived from a two hour round table hosted by the magazine. About a third of the book is basically a transcript of that round table and discussion. It is informal, verges on being witty, and places the reader in the space of the roundtable discussion. It's not quite academic writing, but it is thought provoking, pace-y, and interesting. The rest of the little volume is dedicated to more formal writings by the participants in the roundtable. They form a nice counterpoint to the less formal first section of the book. From other hipster circles, <a href="http://snarkmarket.com/">Snarkmarke</a>t's (the blog!) small volume <a href="http://www.snarkmarket.com/nla/">The New Liberal Arts</a> <a href="http://www.snarkmarket.com/nla/"> </a>derived from blog posts and the like and makes a nice, informal, though provoking volume that circulated in both book form and as a pdf. We can debate whether the academy can learn anything from these more popular works and whether the weighty topics of the academic discourse are suitable for such informal, spontaneous, and flexible media or such a close tie between the world of the blog and the world of print publication. On the

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other hand, a conversation like the one we've had surrounding Blogging Archaeology could easily move from blog posts to a print publication. In fact, I think that our conversation, perhaps complemented by the papers at the upcoming SAA panel could even pass the peer-review muster provided the reviewers were aware of what this kind of publication is trying to do. I could also imagine our writings appearing in a self-published volume. I am working on a little volume for a faculty member who has recently left out university. The contributions come from his former students and range from creative fiction to small academic articles. The process of bringing these works together into a little volume has not been particularly challenging or difficult and some nice options exist for limited run publications. What I am proposing here is that we should make an effort to bring this sustained discussion of blogging archaeology together into a little volume. We can look for a publisher, if we want, and we can circulate it for peer review with the understanding that these posts are part of a spontaneous conversation rather the the product of months of library research. A more scholarly introduction or conclusions (perhaps even by someone not involved in the conversation) could bring the contributions together and frame them in a more academic way. The point is that these little contributions could come together into a single volume that marks out a moment in time for archaeologists' engagement with the new media. Even if we don't all agree that each contribution has enduring intellectual value, as archaeologists, I think that we'd all agree that these little contributions have value as historical artifacts and deserve to be curated in a deliberate way.

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<title>Theory and Medieval Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/theory-and-medievalarchaeology/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:20:16 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=331</guid> I spent some time over spring break reading John Moreland's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeology-theory-and-the-middle-ages-understanding-theearly-medieval-past/oclc/243821178">Archaeology, Theory, and the Middle Ages </a> (London 2010). My book and music guru <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis </a>tipped me off to it at the very moment when I was looking for a way to distract myself from more pressing research and grading concerns. The book is a collection of some of his important articles that situated Medieval archaeology amidst recent theoretical developments in the field of archaeology more broadly. Like many of these kinds of works, Moreland did not mean the book to be an encyclopedic treatment of all possible theoretical approaches, but instead a practical guide to some of the concerns that have influenced his own work. The book lacks a single unifying thread, but does return to one idea frequently enough to make it stand out as an important conceptual foundation for many of the author's arguments. Moreland contrasted perspective that conceptualized the Early Middle Ages as the same or as different (anOther in some places in his text) to our world today. While this might seem like a fairly simple conceptual problem to resolve (after all, all societies share elements with our society today and at the same time show marked differences), Moreland suggests that the struggle to deal with the sameness or difference in how we read the archaeological and textual evidence from the Early Medieval has both shaped the kinds of questions that we ask, but also the models that we have used to understand these societies. Rather than review the book, I'll offer some fragmentary observations on some of the major themes that Moreland addresses and return, when possible, to how these themes intersect with his idea of same/other 1. The Economy. Moreland's most interesting contributions appear in his discussion of the economy. Here he is able to isolate arguments rooted in idea that artifacts were once commodities and juxtapose them to scholars who have viewed Medieval artifacts as gifts and evidence for the gift economy. The view of artifacts as commodities assumes on some basic level that the ancient economy was the same as ours; views of the Medieval economy rooted in gift exchange practices (following the work of M. Mauss) tends to understand the Medieval economy as functioning with fundamentally different assumptions to our own. While it is clear that Moreland favors an approach that takes into account the potential for a kind of gift economy, he makes the important observation that the gift economy might account for practices of exchange, but does not necessary inform how we understand production in the Middle Ages. It is possible for us, of course, to imagine production practices that undermine the value of goods as commodities (for example, monastic production regimens that separate the value of work from product... or, for example, my blog), but scholars have not necessarily explored the place or even existence of this way of viewing and organizing production. I'll offer very small observation here from my recent trip to Italy. While in Aquileia and Grado on the Adriatic coast, I was able to check out first hand mosaic inscriptions on the floors of churches which noted the precise size of the mosaic panel given by an individual donor. These inscriptions depended on a clear understanding of the cost of production by the audience as well as the economic position of the donor as panels that commemorate large gifts (sometimes over 100 square Roman feet) sat next to more modest gifts. In the most simple way, these mosaic donations were gifts and represented parts of the Christian spiritual economy; on the other hand, they drew their meaning and significance, in part, from the audience's understanding of the realities of the household economy and production. 2. Religion. Much of Moreland's creative study of the Medieval economy - both in Northern Europe and in Italy - develops from his interest in religion in the archaeological record. Again, the notion of same and other emerge as central to how scholars have conceptualized the sacred landscapes. A

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tendency to isolate religious institutions from the mainstream of economic and social life belies the influence of modern ideas of the sacred. Moreland recommends that we not only attempt to understand religion as an important economic and social engine in the Early Middle Ages, but also as central to the biography of objects that constitute our evidentiary base. For example, Moreland suggests that churches and church land played a key role in the shift in settlement patterns in the Italian countryside of the 6th-8th century A.D. (p. 116-158). I really liked his efforts to understand the large scale economic impact of churches across the Italian countryside and it will almost certainly inform <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/more-ambivalent-landscapes-ofcorinth/">my own recent speculations</a> on the place of churches in the transformations of Greek landscape at around the same time. Elsewhere he shows how the history of objects like the numerous 8th century "Saxon" crosses set up across England can only be understood in the context of the English Reformation when so many of them were destroyed (p. 255-275). 3. Ethnicity. The emphasis on connections between religion, the settlement, and the economy is refreshing in a book on the Early Medieval West. Chapters on ethnicity are not. While I understand why any archaeologist of the Medieval West (or the Medieval East, for that matter) has to delve into the issues of ethnicity and identity, I find that this debate has become fairly stagnant in recent years. Most scholars, it would seem to me, understand ethnicity as something that was performed, not intrinsic in an individual's cultural DNA. Moreland makes these points well with good evidence. The real issue remains, of course, whether people in the ancient and Medieval worlds viewed their ethnicity in such an ironic way. (My jaundiced view of discussions of ethnicity is undoubtedly <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=6207439">the product of recent debates in my community</a>...). Its a useful first step to recognize identity and ethnicity as performed, but this does not render ethnicity as any less an authentic force in pre-modern social relations. Again, the notions of same and other are vital here. In our irony-filled modern world, performance can too easily become a watchword for displays of social power laid bare by the critical eye of the subversive scholar. The functioning of performative actions in pre-modern times, however, lack this etic count-point to frame their authenticity and legitimize their authority. So, how did it work? 4. Continuity or Change. The elephant in any room where scholars come to discuss the Early Medieval and Late Ancient world. Moreland points out that these issues develop from long-standing periodization practices that exert a massive and relentless influence on the types of questions that we ask of our material. As Moreland points out, the emergence of the discipline of Late Antiquity, despite its name, has helped to challenge our need to reflect on continuity and change in the past. At the same time, the need to identify the origins of our own society has pressed us to reflect on the historical limits of sameness and otherness. Moreland's book is a pretty nice point of departure for a consideration of theory and archaeology in the Early Middle Ages. While many of the articles are a bit dated, his massive updating of the notes on the articles allows them both to remain important historical artifacts and contribute to more recent iterations of the same debates.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/friday-varia-and-quickhits-6/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:32:53 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=336</guid> Here's a gaggle of quick hits and varia on a cool, spring day in North Dakota. I've started trying to use <a href="http://www.evernote.com/">Evernote</a> after seeing so many of my colleagues use it in various meetings. So the quick hits and varia for this blog are being brought to you via my Evernote account. As readers of this blog probably know I am a <a href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a> fanboy, but about 6 months ago I started browsing mostly with Chrome and abandoned Firefox where my Zotero plug-in lives. Since Zotero is not available as a Chrome plug in and I was never able to get the stand-alone version working very effectively, I began to get into bad habits in how I organized the little artifacts from my web wandering. Evernote and Chrome as going to help me fix that. The only downside to Evernote is that it doesn't work seamlessly with my iPad. The Safari browser on the iPad does not support an Evernote plug-in or bookmarklet. But it does support a<a href="http://readitlaterlist.com/"> Read It Later</a> bookmarklet and it is possible to export something from Read It Later to Evernote. This is not a convenient workaround. (And let me know if anyone knows a better way to make this happen!) iPads are making in roads across college campuses. Even my most PC centric buddy, <a href="http://ancienthistory.typepad.com/ancient_history_ramblings/2011/03/my-ipadexperience.html">Scott Moore, finally succumbed to the hype and got himself one of them-there iPads</a>. But some places have begun to realize that the iPad is not the best for everyone on every campus. <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/iPads-for-College-Classrooms/126681/?sid=at&amp;utm_source=at&amp;utm_medium=en">As this recent piece in the Chronicle concludes</a> (and <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/03/03/the-future-of-the-computerlab/">some of the good comments on a recent blog post on the future of computer labs</a>), the idea of one device that is suitable for every students and program seems increasingly far fetched. Some other quick hits: So, my newest favorite weather page is <a href="http://weatherspark.com/#graphs;a=USA/ND/Grand_Forks">WeatherSpark</a>. So much data! It's been a up and down week for Twitter, but <a href="http://blog.twitter.com/2011/03/numbers.html">these numbers released on the service's 5 anniversary</a> sure are impressive. And speaking of social media, it's cool that the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/artsspecial/"> New York Times will look at museums and social media in their special museums section</a>. For a first reaction, check out <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/artsspecial/">Nina Simon's Museum 2.0 blog</a>. (I've just discovered her book, <a href="http://www.participatorymuseum.org/">The Participatory Museum</a> <a href="http://www.participatorymuseum.org/">, and look forward to perusing it</a>.). I'm not sure whether it's ironic or not that the New York Times will focus on museums and social media in the same month that they'll put up their controversial pay wall. <a href="http://s3.scripting.com/stories/2011/03/17/commentsOnNytPaywallAnnoun.html">David Winer's take on these things is always great</a>. <a href="http://scores.espn.go.com/ncb/boxscore?gameId=310760238">How about them Spiders!?!?</a> What I'm reading: M. Foucault, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeology-ofknowledge/oclc/511209">The Archaeology of Knowledge</a> . (for class). What I'm listening to: Scritti Politti, Cupid and Psyche '85 . And here's my bracket: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NCAABracket2011.jpg"

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src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/ncaabracket20111.jpg" border="0" alt="NCAABracket2011" width="450" height="392" />

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<title>Producing Peasants from Pottery</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/producing-peasantsfrom-pottery/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:18:13 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=341</guid> This month David Pettegrew and I put together an abstract for a proposed panel at <a href="http://aia.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10096">the 2012 Archaeological Institute of America meeting</a> on peasants in antiquity. The motivation for submitting an abstract was our longstanding interest in the Corinthian countryside as well as our interest in the archaeology of rural habitation. Despite these interests, I'm fairly sure that we never conceived of our rural Corinthians specifically as peasants. After a brief conversation on the phone this week (we were both on spring break!), we found that we did not have a clear definition of what a peasant was in antiquity. My gut feeling was that peasants were renters, and this was likely influenced by Guy Sander's recent paper on share-cropping in the Corinthia (<a href="http://ascsa.academia.edu/GuySanders/Papers/379298/Corinthian_Landlords_and_Tenants_Share croppers_and_Subsistence_Farming_in_Greek_Historical_Context">here's a link to a pre-publication draft</a>). David was not so sure and thought that peasants could have a range of economic relationships to the land that they worked. We both did agree, however, that we should define a peasant before we moved forward writing a paper on them! We also agreed that peasants were likely to be poor and live at or near the variously defined subsistence level. As I have noted <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/47591826/Caraher-AmbivalentLandscapes-2011">in some of my recent work</a>, as individuals approach the barest levels of subsistence, their archaeological signature tends to diminish markedly. Not only do farmers living at the subsistence pursue economic strategies that are incredibly flexible and dynamic and less likely to produce patterns of use and discard that leave strong material signatures, but the poor tend to have few objects to contribute to the archaeological record in general. At the same time, peasants are barely visible in the textual records from the ancient world. The best preserved ancient authors have the wellknown tendency to emphasize elite and largely urban concerns and spare little ink for the vast majority of the ancient population. The absence of literary and traditional archaeological sources for the peasant accounts for both our problematic understanding of what exactly a peasant is, and makes it difficult to understand the foundational organization of the ancient economy. The growing interest in the archaeology of the ancient countryside has begun to problematize some of these issues in a more refined way and sketch out the limits to what we can say about ancient peasants in a more sophisticated way. David and I propose to look at three area of the Corinthian countryside: the Isthmus, <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/42994192/Caraher-Pettegrew-James-VayiaOffprint-2010">the recently published Late Classical or Hellenistic site of Ano Vayia</a>, and <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/28737818/Caraher-Pettegrew-Gregory-TzortzopoulouMSGA2009">the early modern site of Lakka Skoutara</a>. The goal with our paper is to link the ancient peasant to a set of archaeological practices. Here's the abstract: <blockquote> Producing the Peasant in the Corinthian Countryside<br />W. Caraher and D. Pettegrew The modern concept of the ancient peasant has been largely formed through the investigation of the places of rural habitation and work by archaeologists over the last forty years. In this paper, we present a series of case studies from the eastern Corinthia that place the ancient peasant experience at the intersection of our methods, both historical and archaeological, and the contingent processes of habitation and land use that created the human landscape in the short and long term. We juxtapose three case studies documented through the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey: 1) the diachronic and busy Isthmus, 2) a relatively isolated Late Classical to Hellenistic site near the harbor of Vayia, and 3) a small inland valley east of Sophiko. The first region, the Isthmus, represents the immediate suburbs

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of Corinth that always abounded in a range of settlements from farms to towns throughout antiquity and produced one of the densest artifact-rich zones of Greece and the Aegean. The coastal zones near Vayia represent more remote regions that experienced occasional and short-term bursts of investment in settlement, rural production, and fortification. Our third case study, the inland valley known as Lakka Skoutara, is a seemingly isolated upland basin with diachronic patterns of habitation that relate to broad processes of regional and global connectivity as well as quotidian cultural behaviors like habitation, discard, and abandonment. Through these case studies, we foreground the diverse experiences of Corinthian peasants within their connected and contingent worlds and underscore how our knowledge of their experiences follows the methods we employ. </blockquote>

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<title>Statements and Fragments of Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/statements-andfragments-of-archaeology/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:50:36 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=349</guid> One of the great things about teaching the graduate historiography course is that I get a chance every year to return to some seminal texts not only in history, but in the humanities more broadly. This semester, I am re-reading M. Foucault's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeology-of-knowledge/oclc/511209">Archaeology of Knowledge</a> . In this iconic text he defines various features in "the discourse" beginning with the concept of the statement. The statements are meaning to Foucault and represent the smallest part of meaning in the discursive formations. (There is, of course, much more to it than this!) Producing statements in discourse archaeological involves producing abstract representations from the experienced environment. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="AreaMapGoogleEarth.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/areamapgoogleearth.jpg" border="0" alt="AreaMapGoogleEarth" width="450" height="385" /> Map grids crisscross the topography at the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria as represented by a Google Earth aerial photograph. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_2_Vigla_Survey.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_2_vigla_survey.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 2 Vigla Survey" width="450" height="309" /> Human activity on the site of Vigla as represented by the distribution of artifacts in 6 survey units. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_4_Trenches1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_4_trenches1.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 4 Trenches1" width="450" height="309" /> Excavated areas appear as outlines set against lines representing elevation change. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_5_Trenches_Composite.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_5_trenches_composite1.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 5 Trenches Composite" width="450" height="307" /> The features in the trenches appear as line drawings and can be re-arranged in convenient ways for publication on the printed page (or this blog).

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<title>Three Observations about Publishing and the Blog</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/three-observationsabout-publishing-and-the-blog/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:46:21 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=352</guid> For the final week of <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/">Middle Savagery</a>'s curated Blogging Archaeology event <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/blogging-archaeology-week-4/">Colleen Morgan asks how or whether we might publish the conversations </a>that we have had in our blog carnival and will have at the SAA and TAG meetings. I understand that the word "publication" tends to evoke very strong feelings among academics and particularly those who blog. Traditionalists stand by the dictum that the only publication that really matters is peer reviewed, iconoclasts have emerged who see blogging and online publications are the only way forward, others have embraced the ephemeral and spontaneous quality of blogging, and others still lament the absence of systematic efforts at curating our digital dialogue. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/newimage4.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="64" /> In my post today, I'd like to offer some highly fragmentary observations on publishing things like the Blogging Archaeology event in a traditional way: 1. Transmedia Publication, transmedia dialogue. Most recent conversations about transmedia performances and texts focus on the interaction between various forms of web-based media (audio, video, linked pages, et c.). There is a long-standing conversation about <a href="http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~murray/hoh/hoh.html">the relationship between paper media and web based media like blogs</a>. Archaeology as a discipline is well-positioned to contribute to the ongoing interest in transmedia dialogue. Archaeologists regularly take ideas and move them, sometimes seamlessly and sometime abruptly, between objects, performances (excavating, mapping, illustrating), and texts as we endeavor to construct transmedia arguments that resonate as strongly at the edge of the trowel as on a library shelf. Our experience as archaeologists has made us attuned the structuring influences of various media, enabled us to problematize these conditions of knowledge, and created the distinct discursive space where we both celebrate and violate very objects that we study. In short, archaeologists are experts at articulating the kind of transmedia space that would allow us to translate the act of blogging, the object of a blog post, and the arguments in a blog from one media to the next. An approach that understand the blog to be a medium with certain rules, limitations, messages, et c. rather than, say, a genre of writing. Dan Cohen has recently posted on this very issue. So while archaeologists are typically more comfortable translating the physicalness of pots or architecture into the more elusive realm of practice, social structure, economic organization, and political life, the strategy of moving from one type of object to the next and problematizing this move should not be outside of our experiences. The question become, what is the significance of blogging as a medium and how are we to move the blog (or blogs) across media (from, say, the space of the web to the space of the printed page) without undermining its fundamental "blogness" and at the same time create space for engaging the content of the blog. Transmedia artifacts are useful because they compels us to attempt to communicate "fundamental" characteristics of one media into another. Any transmedia movement will reveal certain features that cannot be transferred - hyperlinks, are the classic example - and by doing so they force us to problematize the similarities between various media forms. In fact, most transmedia dialogues emphasize these kinds of tensions which bring to fore the ways in which various media are used and received. 2. Curation: Catalogue, Museum, and Archive. Archaeologists have certain idiosyncratic ways of dealing with objects. We are archive and collection builders, we produce catalogues and create displays

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that press objects into new relationships with one another and transform, translate, and transfer meaning from one realm to the next. So we should build a catalogue of blogs and blog posts related to this "carnival". Each blog or post should have an entry (a blog might be a type and a post an example, but this kind of typology building, while controversial, could be fairly easily hashed out). The catalogue would include the various formal characteristics of the blog including page lay out, language, style, length, et c. And this text - a formal catalogue - would form the foundation for our analysis of the meaning of individual blogs posts in context. Moreover, it would preserve an archive of a moment in the engagement of archaeology with the web and new media. Just as catalogues do not serve to replace the actual objects that they organize, a catalogue of the blogs that will underpin a discussion of blogging in archaeology while at the same time releasing the concept of the blog from its immediate physical context of the computer monitor, laptop, web server, et c. Recontextualizing the blog as text in a codex form will enable us to both reify the "thingness" of the blog and deploy it for new, creative and intellectually meaningful undertaking. 3. Publishing Perceptions. As much as my approach to publishing - in paper - our current blog-based discussion is rooted in a light-hearted engagement with more foundational issues regarding archaeological publishing, I do think that preparing a thoughtful transmedia publication of our efforts to articulate the role of blogging (or any new media approach) in archaeology fits within larger conversations about academic publishing. The limits of any media - even the seemingly "limitless" digital media - habits of practice, aspects of performance, and even the ability (interests, competence, et c.) of those using the media serve to condition perceptions of the media to an audience. Blogging suffers from a public perception issue. Most academic do not taking the medium serious and do not engage with the content presented in the medium. This has limited the kinds of discussions that scholars can have about the future of academic publishing because one part of the conversation (I've never heard a blogger claim that they do not have time for paper books) refuses to engage the other. Bringing some aspect of the Blogging Archaeology conversation from the screen to the page offers an opportunity to bring the water to the horse (forcing the horse to drink it is a different matter). While our contributions will hardly be singular in this regard - <a href="http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=44">archaeology and the media</a> is a hot topic right now - our posts do capture the diverse arrays of doing and talking about (if these things are separable) the use of a particular tool in archaeology. They have a particular ground in both practice and a specific time and place that makes them significant both as a series of object suitable for a catalogue and a the foundation for arguments about the role of the new media in archaeology. To be clear, I recognize these observations as fragmentary and ill-formed. I understand the irony of taking born digital objects and translating them into printed form and have consciously avoided some of the real practical considerations about publishing a conversation like the one we've been having about blogging archaeology. Do we imagine the book as a peer-viewed collect? How do we accommodate the conversations at the SAAs and TAG? How do we include contributing bloggers in the editorial process? Who's in charge? I do offer some observations on these issues in <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/blogging-for-publication-inarchaeology/">a post from last week</a>, however, and will undoubtedly add more as the weeks go on.

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<title>A Catalogue of Cypriot Churches</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/a-catalogue-of-cypriotchurches/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:38:24 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=355</guid> It's pretty hard to blog this morning with <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/engine/current/match/433601.html">A ustralia v. India</a> going on in the quarter-finals of the World Cup (and this moment Australia is 165/4 and not looking quite as sharp as they did a few overs ago). I did, however, come across my efforts to produce a comprehensive catalogue of Cypriot churches. It's cleverly titled: A Provisional Catalogue of Cypriot Churches with Study Notes and Bibliography. In its current state, it is a decidedly start and stop affair, and it has circulated in only very limited ways as both a database and as a text to few colleagues. A few years ago, this kind of thing would have lived on my hard drive and floated about the fringes of my academic awareness until either updated or discarded. Now, I can provide it to anyone who is interested. For some basic version notes: this is provisional (as the title suggests), it gets updated from time to time (in fact, I have a folder of references that need to be included in the database), and there are mostly likely problems in it. But, it is a start. [scribd id=51453082 key=key-14t224w1905vbrd861wz mode=list] Now, back to the cricket!

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/friday-varia-and-quickhits-7/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:53:12 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=359</guid> It's cold and clear here on the Northern Plains this morning, but that's good news for the river and our annual flood drama. (Speaking of floods, <a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/197911/">the Grand Forks Herald ran a nice little story</a> on aptly Greg Gust, our National Weather Service meteorologist and the father of one of our graduate students and PKAP alumnus). Since I've adopted<a href="http://www.evernote.com/"> Evernote</a>, I found it even easier to grab links and pages off the web. No, this isn't paid product placement, but it is clever software. So here are the varia and quick hits. I just discovered <a href="http://scimaps.org/">Places and Spaces: Mapping Science</a> this week. It's a web gallery of maps dedicated to "track and communicate human activity and scientific progress on a global scale." The maps are pretty amazing, but not so different from the <a href="http://www.handmaps.org/">Hand Drawn Map Association</a>. The <a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/innovations-in-education/">Harvard Business Review </a> <a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/innovations-in-education/">is running a three-week long series on technological innovations in education</a>. In a more practical vein there is <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/blogs_in_higher_education_some_ide as_about_their_benefits_and_downsides">a nice short post on one of </a> <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/blogs_in_higher_education_some_ide as_about_their_benefits_and_downsides">Inside Higher Ed's</a> <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/blogs_in_higher_education_some_ide as_about_their_benefits_and_downsides"> blog on using blogs in for teaching in higher eduction</a>. <a href="http://graffitiongrounds.org/">A class project to record graffiti on the University Virginia's campus</a> used Omeka to great effect. To get more serious one could check out the American Council of Educations white paper entitled <a href="http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=HENA&amp;TEMPLATE=/CM/HTMLDi splay.cfm&amp;CONTENTID=40401">the Innovative University</a>. To see some great digital innovation in action, check out the <a href="http://digitalis.nwp.org/">National Writing Project's Digital Is page</a>. The New York Times pay wall has continued dominated the blogosphere. The best response that I've read so far has been from <a href="http://www.themonkeycage.org/2011/03/monkey_cage_to_begin_charging_.html">the political science blog The Monkey Cage</a>. To do my part to fight the power, I'll link to<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Cultural.html"> this clever </a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Cultural.html">New York Times</a> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Cultural.html"> article on our growing annoyance with phone calls</a>. Deciding not to have a phone in my office was one of the best decisions I've made. Do check out the <a href="http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2011/03/teaserawdl.html">preview teaser offered by Chuck Jones</a> of the <a href="http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/">Ancient World Digital Library</a> put together by the fine people at <a href="http://www.nyu.edu/isaw/">NYU's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World</a>. The <a href="http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/?tfp_show_sort=yes">Newseum's Front Page page </a>is pretty cool (ht/ Mark Grabbe). The Ghosts of North Dakota have posted<a href="http://ghostsofnorthdakota.com/2011/03/11/hutmacher-farm/"> some nice photographs of the Hutmacher Farm in Dunn County</a>, North Dakota. It looks like another great example of

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archaeological formation processes. Two really important things this weekend. The start of the Formula 1 season and the Richmond's chance to advance to the Elite 8 in the NCAA basketball tournament. Let's go Spiders! What I'm reading: For class: Bruno Latour, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/aramis-or-thelove-of-technology/oclc/476342651">Aramis or the Love of Technology</a> . (Cambridge, MA 1996) and S. Turkle, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/alone-together-why-we-expect-more-fromtechnology-and-less-from-each-other/oclc/535492220">Alone Together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other</a> . (New York 2011). What I'm listening to: The Cure, Pornography ; The Cure, Boy's Don't Cry . (for reason's why check out <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2011/03/lovecrafts-byzantium.html">Kostis Kourelis</a> blog)

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<title>The Site of Pyla-Vigla on Cyprus</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/the-site-of-pyla-viglaon-cyprus/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:19:57 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=373</guid> A bit of frantic work over spring break has produced a solid pre-publication draft of an article describing our work on the site of Pyla-Vigla on Cyprus. Following our tradition of open publication, we offer our dedicated readers (and PKAP stakeholders!) a sneak peak of a pre-publication draft. [scribd id=51704693 key=key-2mxc51z36qydqwxqpmxw mode=list] Here are the figures: <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_1_Cropped.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_1_cropped.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 1 Cropped" width="450" height="309" />Figure 1: Map of Study Area <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_2_Cropped.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_2_cropped.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 2 Cropped" width="450" height="309" />Figure 2: Artifact Densities from Pyla-Vigla <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_3_Cropped.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_3_cropped.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 3 Cropped" width="450" height="309" />Figure 3: Resistivity Results from Pyla-Vigla <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_4_Cropped.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_4_cropped.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 4 Cropped" width="450" height="309" />Figure 4: Excavated Areas on Pyla-Vigla <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_5_Cropped.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_5_cropped.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 5 Cropped" width="450" height="309" />Figure 5: Final Trench Plans from Pyla-Vigla <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_6.JPG" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_6.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 6" width="450" height="300" />Figure 6: EU 2 and EU 5 from East <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_7.JPG" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_7.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 7" width="400" height="600" />Figure 7: EU2 from West <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure 8.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure-8.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 8" width="450" height="337" />Figure 8: Vessel on Floor of EU8 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Figure_9_Cropped.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/figure_9_cropped.jpg" border="0" alt="Figure 9 Cropped" width="450" height="309" />Figure 9: Fortifications on Vigla <p style="text-align:left;">More Cyprus planned for the rest of the week, so stay tuned (oh and do take notice of todays rare double blogpost!).

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<title>The 2011 Thaw</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/the-2011-thaw/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:31:50 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=376</guid> The 2011 thaw has been a pretty start and stop affair with temperatures staying chilly at night and only getting about freezing in the afternoons. You may recall (or not) that I usually blog on the thaw (<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/thaw/">2009</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/spring-thaw-andflood/">2010</a>). That being said, we'll take what we can get here. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Thaw.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/thaw.jpg" border="0" alt="Thaw" width="358" height="600" />

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<title>The Bullarium Cyprium and the History of Medieval Cyprus</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/the-bullariumcyprium-and-the-history-of-medieval-cyprus/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:23:34 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=378</guid> Over the last 15 years Christopher Schabel's name has become synonymous with the history of Medieval Cyprus. (How's that for the first line of a book review?) Last year, was a banner year for Schabel, in particular, in that it saw the publication of the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/bullarium-cyprium/oclc/703104657">Bullarium Cyprium</a> , a massive two volume edition of Papal letters dealing with Cyprus from 1196-1314, and a volume in Variorum Collected Studies Series, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/greeks-latins-and-thechurch-in-early-frankish-cyprus/oclc/502032782">Greeks, Latins, and the Church in Early Frankish Cyprus</a> , that brought together his most important article-length contributions to the history of Cyprus (some in relatively obscure periodicals) in one place. I've been asked to review the Bullarium Cyprium which is a pretty intimidating task considering that the author claimed to have spent eight months of 100 hour weeks (p. X), and the work spans over 1000 pages. So, I am going to try to start getting my review ideas together in a blog, first, and then wrangle them into a formal review at some point later. 1. The Trilogy. The Bullarium Cyprium represents the third work in a trilogy of important edited texts for the history of Cyprus produced by C. Schabel over his remarkable career. The first to appear was the Schabel and Coureas edited edition of the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/cartulary-ofthe-cathedral-of-holy-wisdom-of-nicosia/oclc/40552003">Cartulary of the</a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/cartulary-of-the-cathedral-of-holy-wisdom-ofnicosia/oclc/40552003"> </a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/cartulary-of-the-cathedral-ofholy-wisdom-of-nicosia/oclc/40552003">Cathedral of Holy Wisdom of Nicosia</a> which were a series of documents (as the title suggests) concerning ecclesiastical power of the archbishop of Cyprus with a particular emphasis on economic and spiritual matters. The second volume is the is the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/synodicum-nicosiense-and-other-documents-of-the-latin-churchof-cyprus-1196-1373/oclc/49510223">Synodicum Nicosiense</a> which he published with some other documents that, like the Cartulary , documented the legal affairs of the Latin Church on Cyprus. The Bullarium Cyprium is the third part to this trilogy. It collects and edits the Papal letters concerning the church and politics of Cyprus. In some cases these overlap with texts in the Synodicum and have clear parallels with positions outlined in the Cartulary . While Schabel is clear that these texts do not make up a comprehensive collection, there were undoubtedly Papal letters that do not appear in the Papal register and the collection of documents from the island is famously incomplete, it seems probable that he has now produced a representative collection of documents relevant for the study of the Latin church on the island. Considering the incredibly fragmentary state of the archive of surviving documents from Medieval Cyprus, these three collections provides a most nourishing variety of stone soup. 2. Latins, Greeks, and Foreigners (then and now). Schabel's introduction to the Synodicum Nicosiense could serve as an introduction to the entire trilogy of edited texts. He points out here that history of "foreign" rule (itself a problematic concept) as well as the very recent legacy of colonialism on the island, has deeply influenced the way in which scholars have read the history of Latin and Greek relations on the island. For example, despite its persistence in scholarly literature, the Greek church was never deemed heretical or schismatic by the Papacy or the Latin church (p. 38-41). Efforts to oversimplify the relationship between the two churches (and the communities whom these churches served) in opposition to each other and to represent the Latin church as an intolerant colonial power, occludes

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more sensitive and subtle readings of these documents. By introducing new editions and translations of the texts of the Latin church in Cyprus, Schabel has invited scholars to re-engage with the primary source texts and re-consider both the historical context for the interaction between the Latin Church and the Greek and non-Greek/non-Latin community on the island, and the utility of the dominant theoretical models used to understand these relationships. If we can historicize the work of many earlier scholars who sought to condemn or to defend one or the other party in the relationship between the various communities on the island, we can certainly see how Cyprus today presents itself with a new model for understanding the historical relations between the groups. Schabel wrote his introduction to the Synodicum Nicosiense against the backdrop of a cancelled Papal visit to the island in 2001. Just this past summer, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/nicosia/">the Pope visited the island of Cyprus</a> both as a spiritual leader and as a political partner in the European Union. These new political realities do not change the troubled past of the island, but certainly suggest some new interpretative frameworks for understanding the kind of complex politics that can emerge from moments of cross-cultural interaction. While new editions of these important texts will not necessary force scholars to revisit long held positions, they do provide a timely invitation to return to the documents and reconsider the complexities of the past. 3. Text. Two volumes of almost 600 letters and 1000 pages is a difficult document to grasp. Even with good indexes and a disciplined format, the Bullarium Cyprium confronts the reader (and reviewer) with a monumental body of text, and when combined with the cross-references to the Synodicum and the Cartulary the complexity of the body of primary sources for the church in Medieval Cyprus becomes even more significant. These are the kinds of works that push the limits of the codex as a tool to interface primary sources. A digital version of all of these works would introduce a new level of functionality to our reading of these sources and allow for their expansion and modification when new material becomes available. This is to take nothing away from Christopher Schabel's massive contribution to the foundation of Medieval Cypriot history, but to consider how these texts can be more valuable and accessible in the continued effort to understand this important period in the history of the Medieval World.

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<title>Bruno Latour, Aramis, and Excavation</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/bruno-latour-aramisand-excavation/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 30 Mar 2011 12:26:32 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=380</guid> This week in my graduate historiography seminar, we're reading Bruno Latour's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/aramis-or-the-love-of-technology/oclc/476342651">Aramis or the Love of Technology</a> . The book is set like a mystery (albeit a very peculiar one) centered on the death an innovative automated train system called Aramis. Latour investigates the network of human and non-human actors who took Aramis from an idea to a working prototype before an equally complex combination of factors brought to program to an end. Latour combines imagined dialogue between a professor and his skeptical assistant who receive funding to investigate the death of Aramais, alongside short theoretical interludes and snippets of interviews, documents, and other primary sources. The individual parts of the book rarely run more than a page or two and are set in different fonts. Aramis is not a particular recent book and Latour's work has become fairly well-known among academics. His work sought to understand the history and sociology of science and technology in the dense network of human and non-human actors which emerges around the development of a project, concept, technology, or idea. Its applicability to archaeological work is apparent as archaeology relies upon a similar network of human and non-human actors to produce knowledge about the past. As I have spent time <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/polisnotebooks/">digitizing notebooks from excavations at Polis-Chrysochous on Cyprus</a> in the lead up to fieldwork this summer, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/thegrammar-of-excavation/">I have noted that the language used in the notebook</a> can tell us a good bit about how our archaeologist positions himself or herself in relation to the other members of the project, the method, and the material being uncovered in their trench. <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/27328060/Digital-Archaeology-Technology-in-the-Trenches">I've noted elsewhere that the personal character of the notebook</a> as a device for recording details from the trenches evokes models of heroic science or the heroic innovator. Latour notes that the heroic narrative represents "a narrative of light and shadow in which the original object is complete and can only be degraded or maintained intact - allowing of course for a few minor adjustments." (p. 119). The narrative preserved in these highly individualized source, represents the the excavator as creating archaeological knowledge almost by individual force of will. The personal nature of excavation notebooks integrates with the larger project because the individual excavator is aware that their narrative must be understandable and have a relationship to other narratives being produced in parallel by other excavators. While these other narratives continue in the heroic style (to greater or lesser degrees), some aspects of the vocabulary show intentional overlap in a gesture toward making individual discoveries mutually understandable. The excavators themselves produce knowledge heroically but also create the basis for a network where that knowledge has meaning. For example, trench plans while highly individualized also include common features. Excavation terms are common to multiple notebooks, but their deployment remains idiosyncratic. Keying the data into the even more common format of the computer database presents a more concerted effort to bring the notebooks into conversation with one another by striping more of the heroic, individualized content from the notebook's form. Individual scripts are gone, replaced by standardized digital fonts; the database encoder breaks the narrative of the notebook writer into modular fragments that can be recombined across multiple trenches and intermingled with the text from other notebooks. Latour has more to tell us about the emergence of networks because of his willingness to recognize the place of non-human actors in the creation of networks. The site of Polis-Chrysochous itself, for example, the material remains present under the ground is a powerful actor in the formation of the network. The proximity of the individual trenches and the similarity of the material uncovered also pressures our heroic excavators to resort to a common language to communicate their discoveries.

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Moreover, the relationship between our excavators is ultimately a material and spatial one (and the space of excavation persists through time!). A Latour notes: "The actors create both their society and their sociology, their language and their metalanguage." (p. 167) While at the same time the material reality of the excavation space, the objects, and the proximity of actors to one makes clear that "To the multiplicity of actors a new multiplicity is now added: that of the efforts made to unify, to simplify, to make coherent the multiplicity of viewpoints, goals, desires, so as to impose a single theory of action. In the strange arithmetic of projects, everything is added; nothing is take away, not even the rules of the metalanguage, not even the arithmetic's variable rules by which addition and subtraction are defined!" (p. 167-168). How cool is that?

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<title>Even More Teaching with Twitter</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/even-more-teachingwith-twitter/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:33:06 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=384</guid> Over the past couple of years, I have been experimenting with ways to integrate Twitter more fully into how I teach particularly my online classes (more on that <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/teaching-tuesday-more-teachingwith-twitter/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/teaching-thursdaycommunicating-with-students-online/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/teaching-with-twitter-an-interimreport/">here</a>, and <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/teaching-with-twittertuesday/">here</a>). To that end, I post updates to the syllabus, reminders of assignments, and other odds and ends to a Twitter feed dedicated to my intro-level Western Civilization class. I've not been overwhelmed by the willingness of students to engage the medium, but it is very little energy for me to maintain the Twitter feed and I've found ways to embed it in Blackboard, so there is also almost no reason not to use it for the class. Since I run two other Twitter feeds (one for our <a href="http://twitter.com/oidatund">Office of Instructional Development</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/BillCaraher">my own</a>), I'm usually tempted to cross-post Tweets (using something like Hootsuite). Often I stop short of cross-posting between my personal feed and my more professional feeds, however. It's not that I post inappropriate things to my personal feed - my life is pretty mundane even by academic standards (as this blog attests!); it's that I was consistently worried that anything personal would run the risk of undermining my professional teaching persona in front of my online students. Classroom students, of course, are another matter. Here I am regularly banter with the class about music, sports, university affairs, or whatever else comes to mind in the five or ten minutes before class starts. Once class starts, I am generally able switch back into professor mode and conduct re-engage a more typical classroom environment. My colleague Cindy Prescott has <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/03/31/am-i-yourmother/">a great blog post over at </a> <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/03/31/am-i-yourmother/">Teaching Thursday</a> <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/03/31/am-i-yourmother/"> </a>that points out some of the potential issues that could come from breaking down the professional barriers that separate faculty from students. While she is careful to contextualize her experiences, it is nevertheless interesting to consider how different her experiences with our students are from my own, how unpredictable teaching can be, and the difference in our teaching persona between online and classroom based courses. That being said, this past week Kirsten Johnson published <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a935339874~frm=titlelink">an article in </a> <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a935339874~frm=titlelink">Lear ning, Media, and Technology</a> <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a935339874~frm=titlelink"> arguing that </a>the disclosure of some "social" information on one's Twitter account can bolster a faculty member's credibility with students. Credibility is a blanket term for the characteristics that make it easier for a faculty member to relate to students and build the bonds of trust and respect that are central for learning. Johnson's article at least suggests that personal disclosure can positively influence faculty credibility (in fact, the article suggest that a blend of scholarly and social posts to Twitter do little to influence credibility; the positive correlation only occurred in the group of students only viewing social Tweets). While I am not sure that Johnson's study is sufficiently robust to allow us to generalize, I

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do feel it suggests that extending some longstanding classroom practices into the online world could produce positive results and that some of the worst-case scenarios associated with faculty use of social media are probably overstated (the most common examples are students friending a faculty member on Facebook and the mutual horror that comes from discovering that the other person has a life). Moreover, Johnson's experiment opens to door to considering some of the observations that Cindy makes in her piece on Teaching Thursday; in particular, it would be interesting to consider whether or to what extent gender influences expectations of faculty behavior online.

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-2/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:46:01 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=390</guid> It's a partly cloudy day here in tropic Grand Forks where we supposed to get well above 45 F today. Since we watched opening day of baseball last night during snow showers, we're both looking forward to something that can pass as spring in these here parts. While we wait, here are some quick hits and varia for your Friday: <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110330-oldest-writing-europe-tabletgreece-science-mycenae-greek/">Finding a Linear B table is a pretty exciting thing</a>, and finding it in a "provincial town" is (apparently) even more exciting. So, it made it into National Geographic. We heard about this the day it happened through our friends in the World Wide Linear B Notification Network. The call went out the Linear B was found and the director sent all the graduate students home saying that it was his birthday and went to investigate only with his most trusted colleagues ... (ok, I made that up) Some fun stuff on teaching this week. First, <a href="http://www.dancohen.org/2011/03/30/a-millionsyllabi/">Dan Cohen released his Million Syllabi into the world</a>. He released it as a .sql file (for obvious and good reasons), but it would be more useful to me as an Access database. I need to figure out the conversion. Then, <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/n73580g743446w70/">an interesting article on the limits of setting learning goals for classes</a>. And <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a935339874~frm=titlelink">an interesting article on some advantages </a>to not having firm limits on the disclosure of personal information via social media (<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/evenmore-teaching-with-twitter/">which I then blogged on here</a>). Finally, a thought provoking <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/03/31/am-i-your-mother/">Teaching Thursday post which actually got more page views</a> than this blog! <a href="http://www.360cities.net/gigapixel/strahov-library.html">This is pretty cool giga-panesque photo of the interior of the Strahov Library</a>. <a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/gennadius/">They should do this for the Gennadieon in Athens</a> or the <a href="http://library.und.edu/">Mighty Chester Fritz here at UND</a>! If you haven't followed the conversation that Colleen Morgan has curated over at <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/">Middle Savagery</a> on Blogging Archaeology, then you really should. Here's <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/blogging-archaeologythe-carnival/">Week 1</a>, <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/bloggingarchaeology-week-2/">Week 2</a>, <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/blogging-archaeology-week-3/">Week 3</a>, <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/blogging-archaeology-week-4/">Week 4</a> and <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/blogging-archaeology-week-5finished/">Week 5</a>. There are all sorts of very good reasons that you might want a block of text re-aligned to form the shape of a centaur. And <a href="http://textaligncentaur.com/">now there is a web-based application for that</a>. The <a href="http://tapor.ualberta.ca/taporwiki/index.php/Day_in_the_Life_of_the_Digital_Humanities_2011" >Day in the Life of Digital Humanities 2011 </a>is now up. Check out what our Digital Humanists do all day. <a href="http://www.magcloud.com/browse/Issue/176565">The fantastic blog Paleofuture has produced a magazine just like that</a>. <a href="http://nyctrust.com/news#151">Japanese Hip-hop for free from NYCTrust</a>.

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From the guy who brought you the Exotica Project, we now have more 45 rpm tunes from the <a href="http://www.exoticaproject.com/2/">Lonely Beat: 100 Themes from the Naked City</a>. What I'm reading: C. Schabel, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/bullariumcyprium/oclc/703104657">Bullarium Cyprium</a> (Nicosia 2010) (<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/the-bullarium-cyprium-and-the-historyof-medieval-cyprus/">for more on that see here</a>). What I'm listening to: Kurt Vile, Smoke Ring for My Halo (via <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>); Thurston Moore, Psychic Heart. </ul>

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<title>Postcolonialism and Cricket on ESPN</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/postcolonialism-andcricket-on-espn/</link> <pubDate>Sat, 02 Apr 2011 13:01:37 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=396</guid> A rare Saturday post. I woke this morning to see an image from the Cricket World Cup on the main page of ESPN's website. In other words, cricket graced the webpage on opening weekend of baseball and on the day of the Final Four showdown in College Basketball. In case you don't believe me: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="CricketonESPN.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/cricketonespn.jpg" border="0" alt="CricketonESPN" width="450" height="338" /> Cricket is the quintessential postcolonial sport. The World Cup Final is Sri Lanka versus India, and just over a billion people really, really, really care who wins. You can read Homi Bhabha, scrutinize Said, ponder Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/critique-of-postcolonial-reason-toward-a-history-of-thevanishing-present/oclc/470220354">Postcolonial Reason</a> , or spend a week or so watching cricket

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<title>More on Academic Publishing and Blogs</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/more-on-academicpublishing-and-blogs/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:03:23 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=400</guid> Academic publishing and blogging has a strange relationship as many readers of this blog know. Over the last couple weeks, I've been participating in a dynamic blog carnival which culminated in a roundtable at the Society of American Archaeology meeting this past weekend. (For more on this see the conversation that Colleen Morgan has curated over at<a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com"> Middle Savagery</a> on Blogging Archaeology, then you really should. Heres <a style="outline-style:none;outline-width:initial;outline-color:initial;textdecoration:none;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-size:12px;border-bottom-width:1px;borderbottom-style:solid;border-bottom-color:#eeeeee;" href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/blogging-archaeology-the-carnival/">Week 1</a>, <a style="outline-style:none;outline-width:initial;outline-color:initial;textdecoration:none;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-size:12px;border-bottom-width:1px;borderbottom-style:solid;border-bottom-color:#eeeeee;" href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/blogging-archaeology-week-2/">Week 2</a>, <a style="outline-style:none;outline-width:initial;outline-color:initial;textdecoration:none;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-size:12px;border-bottom-width:1px;borderbottom-style:solid;border-bottom-color:#eeeeee;" href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/blogging-archaeology-week-3/">Week 3</a>, <a style="outline-style:none;outline-width:initial;outline-color:initial;textdecoration:none;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-size:12px;border-bottom-width:1px;borderbottom-style:solid;border-bottom-color:#eeeeee;" href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/blogging-archaeology-week-4/">Week 4</a> and <a style="outline-style:none;outline-width:initial;outline-color:initial;textdecoration:none;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-size:12px;border-bottom-width:1px;borderbottom-style:solid;border-bottom-color:#eeeeee;" href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/blogging-archaeology-week-5finished/">Week 5</a>). Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the SAA meetings (but I look forward to reading the papers that came from them and I hope that they were recorded so those of us viewing from afar could participate passively!), but I've kept thinking about the relationship between blogging and traditional academic publishing. I know that I've made most of my points here in the past; long-time readers know my position on these things, but now that I have the possibility of participating in a project that takes a series of blog posts and moves them to a different medium, I am thinking about how to put my ideas into action. 1. Peer Review and Blogging. Blogs are not peer reviewed, and they really should never be. It amazes me that archaeologists continue to get hung up on peer review as some kind of ultimate test of academic validity. While I am not opposed to peer review and recognize its importance to our profession, I also know that archaeologists produce more un-peer-reviewed literature than almost any other field. Between the piles of grey literature (esp. field reports), field notebooks, conference papers and proceedings, and popular literature, few disciplines have embraced professionally unreviewed scholarly literature to the degree of archaeology. In fact, any archaeologist working from field notebooks, unreviewed field reports, un-reviewed artifact catalogues, auction catalogues, or museum publications has developed the skill set necessary to analyze knowledge produced without the luxury of peer review. Moreover, most self-aware scholars will recognize that the standard of peer review varies across publications and across academic traditions. Publishing a series of blog posts with commentary is not some kind of radical step into an intellectual abyss. In fact, by acknowledging the absence of traditional peer review, we're being more explicit about

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our editorial standards than many publications. The reader will have to read our work more critically (perhaps) and the tenure committee has to look at this work more warily, and, perhaps more importantly, any contributors will have to be more intellectually honest and personally rigorous in producing their text. Of course, we could offer any volume for peer review as part of the translation from the medium of personal digital production to paper medium or we could offer the summary essays or synthetic aspects of the volume for peer review and preserve the integrity of the original blog posts (and, again, archaeology has suitable models for this in archaeological publication where the description of material enjoys less rigorous scrutiny than the analysis of the same material). The tension, however, will exist and as academic publishing undergoes significant changes, we would be remiss not to take this as an opportunity to reflect critically (and honestly) about the role of formal peer review in the profession of academic archaeology. 2. Goals. <a href="http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2011/03/print-publication-of-oralpresentations.html">Michael Smith asks about</a> the goals of a publication that captures the content of the recent series of posts on Blogging Archaeology. I've already suggested that the act of moving blogs from a digital media (which many see as ephemeral) to the more traditional medium of paper is a valuable kind of intellectual exercise. Of course, the intellectual value of the processes of publication is rarely sufficient justification for publication alone. As much as the medium is the message, mediating between the digital world and the world of traditional paper publications is likely to expand the audience for the ideas present in blogging as well as blogging per se Moreover, this kind of work can demonstrate that blogging as a medium and the questions that bloggers are asking about the field of archaeology (and archaeological publishing) offer new perspectives on what constitutes academic texts in an era where traditional forms of textuality (and production) are under economic, ideological, and professional challenge. The fact that blogs are not necessarily well regarded as professional publications and yet continue to be produced by professionally responsible academic archaeologists offers an easy problematique for a broader discussion of archaeological publishing, professional responsibilities, and the changing nature of the academic text. 3. Opting in or opting out. One of the more intriguing issues confronting anyone writing on academic blogging is how to bound the conversation. Once blogs exist in on the web, they are part of the discourse and while there would be obvious issues to including the full text of a blog post in an academic publications (even one on blogging), it would seem that the initial move to participate in the debate would make one's blog fair game for inclusion in the conversation. In short, once someone has blogged, it will be very difficult for someone to opt out of the conversation, for their blogs to be critiqued, and for their voice to be embedded and memorialized within an academic conversation for which it may not have been intended. This is an issue both of scholarly authority (how much authority does a blog post have?) and our ability as mediators to move from one medium (with its own rules, standards, and values) to another.

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<title>Bronze Age Redistribution</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/bronze-ageredistribution/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 05 Apr 2011 12:14:40 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=405</guid> The most recent volume of the<a href="http://www.ajaonline.org/forum/905"> </a> <a href="http://www.ajaonline.org/forum/905">American Journal of Archaeology</a> <a href="http://www.ajaonline.org/forum/905"> has a really excellent Forum</a> entitled "Redistribution in Aegean Palatial Societies" co-edited by Michael Galaty, Dimitri Nakassis, and William Parkinson. To be clear, I'm not a Bronze Age-ologist, so I have to admit that many of the technical aspects of the various arguments escaped me. The main emphasis of the was a re-evaluation of the idea that Bronze Age Aegean "palaces" served as centers for elite redistribution of goods. The argument that Bronze Age Aegean authorities occupied the central nodes in a redistributive economic system relied on parallels with temple economies in the Near East. More recent archaeological work and a closer scrutiny of the texts available from the Bronze Age Aegean has called this interpretation into question. The most interesting thing for archaeologist who do not specialize in the Aegean Bronze Age is that argument advanced in the introduction (and throughout the short, focused papers) that Bronze Age economies were, in fact, far more complex than the redistributive model would allow. In fact, Galaty, Nakassis, and Parkinson make the identify the core issue with applying models of redistribution to the Bronze Age Aegean not so much in the model itself, but in the problems associated with applying any economic model which is abstract by definition to "real" historical circumstances. Their cautious approach continues a larger trend in reconsidering ancient economies with an eye toward revealing more complex kinds of economic, political, and social relations than unitary models would allow. In Late Antiquity, for example, traditional arguments for the central position of urban centers (or for the rural estates of elite landowners) have given way to more nuanced readings of the Late Roman economy that have recognized activities that range from large-scale state sponsored economic activity to small-scale, highly-local exchange. The relationship between economic behaviors on these different "levels" (for lack of a better term) will increasingly require scholars to recognize different economies with different goals, patterns of behavior, and social rules. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="DonorInscriptGrado2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/donorinscriptgrado2.jpg" border="0" alt="DonorInscriptGrado2" width="450" height="541" /> <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="DonorInscriptGrado.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/donorinscriptgrado.jpg" border="0" alt="DonorInscriptGrado" width="450" height="440" /> Two donor inscriptions from Grado The donation of money to the church, for example, may well represent a different social activity for a poor farmer or a middling town dweller than for a powerful and wealthy member of the local elite. The former donated money with the hope of earthly or heavenly salvation; the latter may have functioned in the traditional of elite euergetism. The ritual context of economic activity as well as its social function within a particular community represent only one way in which unitary models of the ancient economy have come into question. The practices that produced the archaeological and textual evidence for economic activities also has come under scrutiny. The economic behavior recorded in a text, for example, need not represent the same kind of activity (with the same kind of social or political function) as the practice that produced the text which commemorated it. Archaeologists often study the evidence that is both evidence for other economic activity as well as evidence of that activity and these two social practices can differ.

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<title>More on the Bullarium Cyprium</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/more-on-thebullarium-cyprium/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 06 Apr 2011 12:56:32 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=409</guid> I hope to get a complete draft of my review of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/bullarium-cyprium/oclc/703104657">Bullarium Cyprium</a> up by the beginning of next week so that I can move on to other projects. I blogged some of my<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/the-bullarium-cyprium-and-the-historyof-medieval-cyprus/"> initial perspectives on this two volume collection of Papal letters concerning Cyprus last week</a>. Today, I'll offer a handful of additional observations on this impressive collection of papal letters referring to Cyprus. Most of my comments here have little to do with C. Schabel's editorial work and more to do with the nature of the letters themselves. 1. Because the Papacy recognized the church of Cyprus as autocephalous (an ancient privilege accorded the church at the Council of Chalcedon), the church in Cyprus was, in effect, a directly dependent on the Pope. As a result, the Pope was involved in almost all aspects of the ecclesiastical politics on the island. The letters, then, reveal the complexities of "day to day" ecclesiastical politics on the island. Many of the letters involve disputes between members of the ecclesiastical administration and bishops that would have presumably been resolved at levels below the papacy under ordinary circumstances. 2. The main bishops mentioned in the letters sat at Paphos, Limassol, Nicosia, and Famagusta. There are almost no references (or only two: a-2, b-16) to the bishop at Kition (Le Quit) indicating that during the Medieval period the Bishop of this significant ancient city was fairly minor despite the ancient links of the See to the person of Lazarus. There are a few references to the monastery at Stavrovouni (which became a Benedictine priory dedicated the the Cross): e-95, f-4, f-28, n-29. Interestingly the conversion of the church of St. Lazarus in Kition/Larnaka to Latin rite use must have been exclusively a local affair and not required external involvement whereas the conversion of the monastery of Stavrovouni to Benedictine order did appear in Papal correspondence. 3. There are few indicators of the geography in the letters. While this is unsurprising on some level as the Pope never travelled to the island - it is striking that the places in the letters seem largely to float without any clear landmarks or spatial relations to one another. The only possible exception to this was the occasional reference to churches being too far from the place of residence of the clergy, the requirement to travel to services being too great, or the occasional reference to some village or another. Otherwise, ubiquity of the universal church subsumed the island's particular landscape. Monasteries could as easily be dependencies on Peter and Paul (i.e. Rome) as the church of the Holy Sepulcher (Jersusalem) or the Bishop of Sinai. So as I began to write in my review about the absence of maps from these volumes, I also began to realize that maps would reveal little about the relationships in these texts. (At times I felt that the lack of particular concern for the islands landscape felt a bit archaeological... our methods document the very particular well, but tend to blur the supra-local on account of the perceived universality of the discourse.)

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<title>Practicing Prepared Procrastination</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/practicing-preparedprocrastination/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:01:52 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=412</guid> Students and Faculty both procrastinate. The biggest difference between the two groups is that faculty can procrastinate and still get things done at a high level because they research more efficiently. Over the past few semesters, I've been trying to figure out ways to impart efficiency in the research habits of my procrastinating students. My most recent solution is to make it very difficult for students to procrastinate while at the same time letting them do all the work on a complex research project at the last minutes. I've been experimenting with this approach to teaching student research in my undergraduate historical methods course. This is required for all history majors and is taught at the 200 level. Most of the students are sophomores or juniors who are taking both other mid-level classes (e.g. 2 year language classes and some courses for their "essential studies" requirements) and some upper level courses. As they encounter the larger and more complex projects associated with upper level classes, the tendency to procrastinate will have more problematic consequences. Many students can put off writing a 3 page paper until the last minute and be successful, but the success rate declines significantly with a 10-15 page paper. To create the experience of procrastination (and rush of adrenaline that so many students claim to need to work), I have created a series of short assignments due on short deadlines which together combine to form the core of the larger project. The pace is fast and the consequences of missing a step are brutal and immediate. (Some of my explanation for this approach comes from the University of Oregon's coach Chip Kelly's approach to coaching. He has all of his players practice at a pace faster than they are likely to experience in a game. The pace not only creates a high energy atmosphere at practice (which is good for conditioning), but also gets the players comfortable executing at fast pace during the game.). The first 9 weeks of the course is a historiographic introduction to historical writing. The project section of the course begins at week 10, which is about as early as one can hope for a student to begin a research project of any substance. The final project is a 2000 word prospectus due at the end of the semester. Students tend to view the end of the semester as a hard deadline without any need for me to emphasize or reinforce it. Here are the assignments: Week 10: Topic Week 11: Starter Bibliography Week 12: Annotated Bibliography Week 13: Outline for Book Review Week 14: Book Review (1500 words) Week 15: Outline for Research Prospectus and Thesis Week 16: Draft of Prospectus End of Semester: Prospectus for Research Project (2000 words) In seven weeks, we go from a vague topic to final project writing close 5000 words in an annotated bibliography, book review, and final prospectus for a research paper. The book review and the prospectus are worth 50% of the courses grade and the short assignments are worth another 10%. The consequences of falling behind on a short assignment are fairly immediate because most of the short assignments build toward the more major assignments. So, the value of the shorter assignments (e.g. the starter bibliography or outline) is directly tied to performance on the longer assignments (book review and final prospectus), but there is very little latency in encountering the consequences of

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ignoring this cumulative approach. If you skip the starter bibliography, you'll need to develop it and the annotated bibliography the next week. If you skip both of them, then you will need to find a book to review, review it and develop a broader historiographic perspective on the topic in three weeks. The pace is quick. Skip a step and the problems compound quickly. The goal of this high pace experience for the students is to embrace their tendency to put off work on major assignments to the final third of the semester and show them how to do it efficiently. Moreover, the capstone project for the history major is a major research paper that will require many of the steps introduced in my mid-level historical methods class. Unlike the assignments outlined above, the capstone paper can not just be a prospectus, but must be a well-executed final paper. To get to that stage, however, we encourage students early in the process to develop a formal bibliography, use a system of note taking (like an annotated bibliography), write a prospectus and prepare an welldeveloped outline. To get them to do that before working on the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of a 20 page paper is difficult, but perhaps showing them how to do it efficiently in a lower level, adrenaline fueled, high intensity environment will show them that you can still get the rush of doing things are the last minute without the pain of failing to do them well.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/friday-varia-and-quickhits-8/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:42:17 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=418</guid> It's a beautiful and balmy (over 50 degrees) Friday morning for some quick hits. <a href="http://mybyzantine.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/byzantium-and-chanel/">A cool blog post on the Byzantine influence on the new Chanel line</a>. For those of you who might not usually read ESPN.com, check out <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/509803.html">this recent piece by an American sports reporter who went to watch the Cricket World Cup</a>. I wonder how we can get <a href="http://www.prairiechurches.org/index.cfm">Prairie Places to make their newsletter available online</a>. Then everyone could read Aaron Barth's great little article on his grandfather's stone barn.<img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="PrairiePlaces.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/prairieplaces.jpg" border="0" alt="PrairiePlaces" width="450" height="392" /> I need <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/the_branded_professor">to start developing my personal brand</a>. This is a great way to think about <a href="http://www.playthepast.org/?p=938">digital games and public archaeology</a>. I thought a bit about<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/archaeology-space-and-oldschool-computer-adventure/"> the olde skool computer game Zork in this context</a> a few years ago. Check out <a href="http://nodakhistory.omeka.net/items/show/17">Luella Hall's thesis</a> and <a href="http://nodakhistory.wordpress.com/">some comments on it here on this blog</a>. <a href="http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/completing-a-looming-assignment/">This a great complement to my blog post yesterday</a>. <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=6306597">Congratulations to the Michigan hockey team and a tough loss for UND</a>. I'm really happy with<a href="http://www.miniwatt.com.hk/amplifiers/miniwatt-n3.html"> my miniwatt N3</a>. What I'm reading: Not much! What I'm listening to: The Strokes, Room on Fire; The Strokes, Is This It. </ul>

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<title>Duck against the World</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/duck-against-theworld/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:45:11 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=421</guid> Some days are just like this:<img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;marginright:auto;" title="Duck on a Roof.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/duck-on-a-roof.jpg" border="0" alt="Duck on a Roof" width="100" height="1149" />

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<title>Five Things About Online Teaching</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/five-things-aboutonline-teaching/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:01:59 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=423</guid> I've been asked to speak to our graduate level teaching history seminar today on teaching history online. Most of the students in this class are going to go off and teach at smaller state schools, junior colleges, schools with religious affiliations (e.g. Bible Colleges), or community colleges, and most of the students already have a keen eye toward preparing material for students. So I don't have to cover most of the basics. In any event, I thought I would gather my thoughts here on a blog post. My online class consists of 15 weekly folders each with a two to three podcasts (1 being the main lecture), primary source readings, links to online content (secondary sources), links to places on Google Earth, discussion board posts, and a weekly quiz. Some folders also contain a short paper assignments. I'm a big fan of lists. So here are five things about teaching online: 1. Start from the classroom. I found that creating my online class from what I do in the classroom has allowed me to test out my basic methods of content delivery before I have to rely on these to communicate with students in an online environment. I used my live classroom as a laboratory to experiment with podcasts, to create pages with useful links for students, and to get discussion board questions that stimulated useful responses online. The advantage of rolling things out in a live classroom (as opposed to online) is that I could receive continuous feedback from students on the utility and effectiveness of various online tools. While this is theoretically possible online, a classroom setting ensured that I did not have to implement simultaneously new methods for delivering content and new methods of getting feedback on this contents effectiveness. 2. Embrace the difference. While most of us can readily understand the difference between a large lecture style classroom and a small seminar, I think that some of our models for online teaching continue to draw upon models rooted in the face-to-face classroom experience. Online teaching is different. Student expectations (and needs) in an online environment are different and the tools that we have to communicate with students in an online environment are different. We need to embrace this. For example, I teach my class in <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/asynchronousteaching/">a radically asynchronous manner</a> to take full advantage of the ability to deploy all of my content (lectures, readings, quizzes, paper assignments, et c.) simultaneously. In fact, my class has only one firm deadline - the last day of classes in the semester. Since many of my students take an online course because it's more convenient or because their schedule would make it impossible for them to take a traditional course, an almost fully asynchronous approach to online teaching gives students the most flexibility in how they approach the material and the assignments. This approach would simply not be possible in a classroom environment. 3. Experiment. Once you have developed a solid core of content and assignments, take advantage of the flexible and dynamic nature of online courses to experiment. Blackboard (or any course management software) makes it easy to introduce experimental sections to your course, to add content on the fly, or even withdraw failed experiments from the course. This software also encourages us to develop our courses in a more modular way which makes it easy to add new content, methods for engaging students, or evaluation material to a class even as they are going on. For example, I've experimented with ways to embed Twitter in my online course so that students could move more freely between the walled-garden of Blackboard and the wilderness of the uncurated internet. I've also begun to experiment with using Google Earth for geography, transcribing my lectures to make them available as either text or audio, and using<a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/08/04/teaching-with-interviews/"> interviews and other methods derived from mainstream media to generate interesting content</a>. 4. Meet the students (at least) half way. Many of our students do not have much experience taking classes in an online environment so they are likely to become confused and do truly bizarre things.

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While it is tempting to expect students to be computer literate at a basic level and to be able to navigate the course management system and read and comprehend a syllabus without guidance, in reality most of these expectations are at least partially unfounded. Part of teaching online is to anticipate how students will, frankly, become confused and act in strange ways. For example, having a quiz that tests students' comprehension of the syllabus means that I can expect students to understand some of the basic expectations for the class. On the other hand, I've found it useful to become familiar with <a href="http://www.zamzar.com/">services like Zamzar</a> to convert student assignments into .doc or .docx formats rather than insisting that everything be submitted in the same format. It takes me little time to convert documents and it eliminates another technical (and potentially confusing) detail for the students' to understand while also attempting to understand the content in the class. 5. Be Responsive. I have a four hour rule with student emails from my online class. I try to respond to student questions within four hours of getting the email. (I know this is a luxury of teaching a single online class of fewer than 100 students). I have this rule as an effort to combat the feeling of detachment from from the human side of the educational process in an online class. I realize that part of this feeling of detachment comes from the asynchronous nature of my class and the limited opportunities for teacher-student contact in the way that I have designed my assignment. So, I take extra effort to respond to issues from students quickly and to show that there is someone, a real human "content provider" behind the curtain.

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<title>Convergence in a House Burial in Early Byzantine Sicily</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/convergence-in-ahouse-burial-in-early-byzantine-sicily/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:28:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=425</guid> I was really excited to see a paper on the Early Byzantine site of Kaukana in Sicily in the most recent volume of the American Journal of Archaeology : R. J. A. Wilson, "<a href="http://www.ajaonline.org/field-report/876">Funerary Feasting in Early Byzantine Sicility: New Evidence from Kaukana</a>," AJA 115 (2011), 263-302. The article describes a bizarre (and creepy) house burial of a pregnant woman and, later, a child. The burials took place in annex to the house seemingly built to accommodate the tomb and funerary feasting associated with the burial. The authors have argued that that the annex is later than the simple three or four-room house and presumably the burial and associated feasting occurred after the house fell out of use. The entire structure seems to date to the 7th century after which it was buried in creeping sand. (When I saw a burial in the house, I couldn't help but think of <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2008/08/byzantine-children-burials.html">Kostis Kourelis' observations regarding the Middle Byzantine practice</a> of burying fetuses and infants in the home. The parallel is all the more poignant because the not only was the woman at Kaukana pregnant but a small child buried in the tomb some years later. DNA testing has shown the child to be related to the pregnant woman). The house itself has several curious points of convergence with my own research interests. First, the site of so-called Kaukana is a coastal town not unlike our site of Pyla-Koutsopetria. Among the assemblage from the house is a Late Roman 1 Amphora is what Hayes thinks might be a Cypriot fabric (Catalogue No. 40). While I am suggesting that the site of Kaukana has any formal connection with Cyprus, but the presence of this amphora demonstrates the continued interconnections between Cyprus and the west in the 7th century. The presence of African Red Slip pottery from North Africa at our site in Cyprus reflects contact with the west in the opposite direction. In fact, the assemblage of fineware at this odd house at Kaukana featured many of the same western forms as were common in our assemblage at Pyla-Koutsopetria. The Mediterranean continued to be a busy and interconnected place well after the so-called fall of the Roman Empire. The cover slab of the tomb preserved evidence for a hole, presumably for libations, and the author parallels this feature with similar libation holes in tombs from across the Mediterranean. Of particular interest to me is this rarely discussed feature at the so-called Stikas or Kodratos basilica just outside of the city of Corinth in Greece. The libation holes are associated with the tomb of the Bishop Eustathios and the tomb of a child in the central nave of the church. The identification of this church as a funerary basilica is almost without a doubt, but it is also likely that Bishop Eustathios died long before the existing church stood on the site making it possible that his tomb has special significance to the community and the church served as a local cult in his honor. The long-standing, but unverified association of the church with the martyr Saint Kodratos also suggests the function of the church as the site of a local cult. Again, there is little reason to formally associate the activities at the site of Kaukana with the activities at Corinth except to observe that rituals associated with commemorating and perhaps venerating the dead in Late Antiquity are still rather poorly understood and practices like offering the "special dead: libations seem to represent rituals that are equally at home in the liturgical space of the church and the less formally structured space of the house burial at Kaukana. One of the grave slabs of the tomb at Kaukana featured an back word inscription of the words: Agios, Agios, Agios in Greek. These words come from the sanctus in the liturgy (during the anaphora), appear quite regularly in liturgical space, and are also not uncommon in magical contexts. Their appearance in a funerary context, inscribed backwards, and surrounded by strange swirling designs could, as the author of the AJA article suggest, represent some kind of magical and perhaps even apotropaic function. On the other hand, these words would have also invoked the liturgy and perhaps even the funerary liturgy. The blurring of the line between "magic" and the liturgy, like the appearance

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of the libation hole in a liturgical context outside of Corinth and in the house church, shows how murky the boundaries are between official liturgical practices and things that likely operated at the fringes of ecclesiastical sanction. The ritual power of practices of like libation to the dead cross the boundaries between the intimate and idiosyncratic space of seemingly private cults to the dead to the the far more formally bounded space of the ecclesiastical liturgy. At the same time the formal liturgy finds its way into less communal (and presumably official) private cult and even magical practices. One of the most curious thing that I discovered while reading <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/polis-notebooks/">the Polis notebooks</a> this winter and spring is the inevitable association of chunks of plaster with burials. I assumed that this plaster came from the remains of built tombs or even roughly lined graves. The excavators of the built tomb at Kaukana have pointed me in the direction of plaster burials where the body was encased in plaster before interment. Perhaps a similar practice occurred among contemporary burials at Polis in Cyprus providing another connection between the two Mediterranean islands. The author of the article concludes with the observation that the skull of the pregnant woman showed signs of being meningocele - meaning that a small part of the brain's protective membrane protruded outside the the skull. This may have caused her mental or physical problems during her lifetime (which were perhaps exacerbated by her pregnancy). Perhaps mental instability, seizures, or early dementia led to her being venerated as a holy figure in the community (and perhaps these even led her to fall outside the purview of the official church). The house burial and later signs of cult activity may have marked out her house and burial as sacred space.

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<title>Grand Forks Architecture for Graduate Students</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/grand-forksarchitecture-for-graduate-students/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:40:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=427</guid> Yesterday, an intrepid bunch of University of North Dakota graduate students made their way into the wilds outside the seminar room to look at some notable Grand Forks architecture. The students are taking Prof. Prescott's graduate history seminar on material culture which includes sections on both public and domestic architecture. The tour stopped at the nice collection of church architecture in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Forks_Near_Southside_Historic_District">Near Southside</a> neighborhood including United Lutheran Church (1931-32), St. Mary's Catholic Church (1915-1929), and Christian Science Church (1904). <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="UnitedLutheranGF2011.jpg" src="http://teachingthursday.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/unitedlutherangf2011.jpg" border="0" alt="UnitedLutheranGF2011" width="401" height="600" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="StMarysGF2011.jpg" src="http://teachingthursday.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/stmarysgf2011.jpg" border="0" alt="StMarysGF2011" width="401" height="600" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GF2011.jpg" src="http://teachingthursday.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/gf2011.jpg" border="0" alt="GF2011" width="401" height="600" /> We made a brief stop at the Grand Army of the Republic statue on our tour through the neighborhood and considered the efforts to create a monumental core for Grand Forks in the early 20th century. We also observed the intermingling of religious, commercial and domestic architecture in the neighborhoods closest to the old downtown. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GFGAR2011.jpg" src="http://teachingthursday.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/gfgar2011.jpg" border="0" alt="GFGAR2011" width="401" height="600" /> The group also explored Prof. Bret Weber's territorial era house (1887) and debated whether it qualified as a craftsman style structure. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="WebberGF2011.jpg" src="http://teachingthursday.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/webbergf2011.jpg" border="0" alt="WebberGF2011" width="450" height="301" /> The trip continued with stops at my 1900 American Foursquare and Prof. Prescott's 1948 ranch (or, in the local parlance rambler) style home in the historic Northside neighborhood. Our conversations focused how social, economic, and cultural expectations changed the organization of interior space through time.

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<title>Pompeii in the 21st Century Talk May 4</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/pompeii-in-the-21stcentury-talk-may-4/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:29:24 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=430</guid> I am pretty excited to announce that <a href="http://www.umass.edu/classics/poehler.html">Prof. Eric Poehler</a> will visit campus on May 4th and give a talk entitled: "Pompeii in the 21st Century". The talk will be in the East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz Library at 6 pm in the evening. Here's an abstract for his talk: <blockquote> How does one ask a novel question about a site that has been studied, nearly continuously for over 250 years? How does one come to new realizations when almost all new excavation is not permitted? This is the challenge for Pompeian scholars in the 21st century, finding what the great minds of the past overlooked without being able to add large sets of new evidence. Paradoxically, a solution has been propelled by the moratorium on excavation into the areas still buried by ash of Vesuvius. Unable to discover new parts of the city, archaeologists turned to examine those parts already uncovered in both greater detail and in a wider context. They have found a goldmine of information about Roman urbanism and municipal administration generally as well as the particular (and peculiar) history of Pompeiis development from the earliest, scant traces in the Bronze Age to its destruction in AD 79 and even beyond to the citys rediscovery in the 18th and 19th centuries. The resurgence in Pompeian studies in the last 20 years has not merely benefited from the birth of the information age, it has embraced it often at a deep methodological level. Pioneering works of the 1990s set the stage for a statistical approach to the vast and untapped urban dataset, driving a new paradigm in historical argument about the site. Since 2000, the explosion of personal computing power especially in commercial statistical, database, and spatial tools has expanded the ways we approach these questions from counting and cataloging aspects of the urban fabric to using the space of the city itself to derive new visualizations, new queries and new syntheses. The 2011 season of the Pompeii Quadriporticus Project will wholy replace the trowel, drawing board and tape measure with the iPad, photogrammetry, and Geographical Information Systems software. Within 10 years these tools will also put entire libraries of reference material at our fingertips while inside the ancient city, dissolving the the distinction between fieldwork and library work. </blockquote> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="nuvola5.jpeg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/nuvola5.jpeg" border="0" alt="Nuvola5" width="450" height="251" /> Professor Poehler teaches at the University of Massachusetts but has local roots. He did his undergraduate work at Bemidji State University before heading to the University of Chicago and then University of Virginia for his Ph.D. I've had the pleasure of working with Eric at the site of Isthmia in Greece where he and a team from the University of Cincinnati are working to reconstruct the mysterious and confusing East Field. He's one of the up and coming stars in the field of Mediterranean Archaeology. His visit to campus is sponsored by Department of History, the Cyprus Research Fund, and the Working Group in Digital and New Media.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/friday-varia-and-quickhits-9/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:45:07 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=435</guid> On a grey, overcast day, it looks like we'll again miss a snow storm wandering its way across the state (but it is snowing here). So, there's plenty of time for some Friday varia and quick hits. It's flood season in the Red River Valley, so here's a little gaggle of flood links: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbDlS1oM2iY">a dramatic YouTube video </a>of the flooded Red River, <a href="http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/04/12/photos-redriver-flood-aerial/">some amazing photos from Minnesota Public Radio</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVkR-IowawY&amp;feature=player_embedded">a timelapse video of the flood</a>, and the <a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/pages/floodcam2011">Grand Forks Herald's flood cam</a>. <a href="http://www.grindtv.com/surf/blog/25888/jamie+sterlings+epic+surf+trip+tominnesota/">For my Australian friends and family: Surf Minnesota</a>. <a href="http://www.androidfreeware.net/download-phillyhistory-ar.html">Augmented Reality </a>for historical Philadelphia. I'll have to get someone in Philly (<a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2011/04/slam.html">with a smart phone</a>) to check this out. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/UOfNorthDakota#p/u/9/05_dGDzRgjI">A cool video feature from the Working Group in Digital and New Media</a>. These students developed a video game from scratch, producing all aspects - music, graphics, code, et c. - in house. <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/art_of_science_learning/2011/04/the_art_of_scientific_and_tech_1.php"> This is a pretty interesting post</a> on the relationship between art and innovation in science and technology. Anyone who has ever tried drape a photograph in GIS knows the results, but <a href="http://clementvalla.com/index.php?/work/bridges/">these images from Google Earth are pretty dramatic</a>. Burn out among university faculty: <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/04/14/research_analyzes_burnout_of_faculty_memb ers_all_over_the_world">a summary here</a> and <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a933214169">the article here</a>. Two interesting posts on <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>. <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/04/14/advising-prospective-students-on-the-grad-schoolapplication-process/">Evan Nelson's provides a nice guide </a>for advising students who want to apply to graduate school. My flight to Cyprus this summer cost over 40% more than it did last year. Lee and Halliday can pitch. What I'm reading: D. Hayden, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/power-of-place-urbanlandscapes-as-public-history/oclc/31077172">The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History</a> . Cambridge 1995. What I'm listening to: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Belong . </ul>

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<title>Blogging and Peer Review</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/blogging-and-peerreview/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:36:12 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=441</guid> I know that I've gotten in the bad habit of metablogging a good bit lately, but I am honestly fascinated by the on going discussions among archaeological bloggers concerning the role of blogging in our academic and professional discourse (the links are too numerous to list here, so I'll refer you to <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/blogging-archaeology-week-5finished/">the epicenter of recent conversations</a>). Recently there has been talk about a kind of peerreviewed blogging in the context of a group blog on archaeology. (<a href="http://alunsalt.com/2011/03/30/blogging-archaeology-week-4-part-two-what-could-a-grouparchaeology-blog-looklike/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed:+Alun+(AlunSalt)" >Alun Salt's ideas for a group blog are worth pointing to here</a>). This blog would both bring (to some extent) parts of the archaeological blogosphere but also have conventions for marking out certain posts with the imprimatur of peer review. While it would be a privilege to contribute to a group blog - especially since my fellow archaeologists are often thought-provoking and articulate bloggers, I am somewhat skeptical of the value of a generalist archaeology blog. Then again, if most of the posts are crossposted from existing blogs, I don't see any particular downside to a group blog. Blogs are free, after all, and it is easy enough to monitor the reader stats, track comments, links and ping-backs (do people still call them that?), to determine whether people actually find a group blog useful. I find the decentralized environment of personal archaeological blogs more appealing and the move toward more "official" forms of blogging vaguely unsettling, but this has more to do with my personal fantasy as an "outlaw blogger" than any rational view of blogging as subversive activity. At the same time, I find the issue of peer review pretty difficult to support. As I have said, numerous times, peer review is good. It is a vital component to disciplinary critique and an important part of the discourse of professionalization in the discipline. Historically and practically, the ritual of peer review manifests many of the core values that academics in the humanities hold dear for their profession. The anonymity of the peer-review process represents the undifferentiated and impartial body of professional practice, the value of peer review in the promotion and tenure process links the economic, social, and professional rewards with approved contributions to a clearly defined body of knowledge (and vice versa), and opacity of certain key aspects of peer review reinforces the boundaries of approved knowledge creating in-groups and out-groups. In short, peer review functions to protect our discipline as a profession and to tie scholarly production to professional standing. At the same time, peer review is not the only mark of professional distinction. As scholars we teach, discuss, and even practice our "crafts" (in the broadest meaning of the word) consistently without peer review. To my mind, blogging exists in that world. It seems like at some point there has been slippage from viewing peer review as a way to recognize professional contributions to the field to seeing peer review as the process where knowledge becomes "real". In its most exaggerated form, works lacking peer review appear too difficult to judge, inauthentic, and misleading to include in the scholarly discourse. Somehow the absence of peer review short circuits our ability to read text critically; and these skills seem to have become all the more attenuated in the context of the boundless content of the internet. As a result, some people have pushed back against the undifferentiated expanse of text on the web and insisted emphatically that authentic knowledge requires the imprimatur of peer review. As a result, there has emerge a view that scholarship that is peer reviewed is somehow better than scholarship that is not peer reviewed. Of course, producing better scholarship is certainly one goal of peer review, but we all know that our field would be tragically impoverished, if scholars applied this attitude in practice. The reasons for this fetishization of peer review in the context of the internet are, to my mind, pretty

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obvious. For professional knowledge producers, the threat of something like Wikipedia is terrifying. This vast body of information was produced without any professional sanction and without (much) compensation. It flies in the face of a century of rhetoric that insists on seeing professional academic scholars (with their various rituals) as the group in society responsible for the orderly production of knowledge. This privilege has allowed professional scholars like myself to get compensated for our contribution to knowledge. No one makes money (legitimately) for contributing to Wikipedia. Its ephemeral and shifting nature undermines the idea that scholarly work is an enduring contribution to society and its use of "<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/somethought-on-clay-shirks-cognitive-surplus/">cognitive surplus</a>" seems to undermine the idea that society needs scholars to produce knowledge. In this context, peer review becomes an important rearguard action against the growing, radical, democratization of knowledge production and the perceived (real?) risks associated with these practices. Do we really think that extending the umbrella of peer review to blogs can provide a useful filter for the tsunami of information that crashes across our desks daily? Can peer reviewed scholarly production on the internet compete in the same space as media like Wikipedia, popular blogs, journalism, and amateurism clamor for attention? To borrow some of <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/signal-versus-noise-why-academicblogging-matters-a-structural-argument-saa-2011/">Shawn Graham's terms</a>: I have my doubts that anyone will hear our faint signals of a kind of out-dated professional protectionism amidst the excitement and noise of the internet. Moreover, it would risk encouraging a view of scholarly production that would run counter to what so many of us work daily to instill in our students: do not trust authority and read critically to appreciate the noise, filter it, and organize it to understand the world. While peer review would attempt to create places where the signal is particular strong, I think professional rituals carry less weight than our training, academic modes of expression, and membership in profession in competition for authority on the web. And these aspects of professional, scholarly, and academic blogging exist outside of the context of peer review. The advantage of an approach that resists ritualized authority of peer review (while still recognizing that bloggers will employ some ritualized aspect of professional knowledge production) is that in the absence of peer review scholars can make the most of a less structured, less professionalized, more experimental, and more conversational medium that the looming threat of institutional sanction would almost certainly extinguish. The existence of blogs at the fringe of the professional academic world - as liminal space - allows them playful space to critique the nature of academic professionalism, blur the distinction between professional and personal identities, and reach out to audiences that regard with suspicion the wall-garden of the academy. Imposing peer review in the blogosphere would partitioned off as professional space another corner of the world and, as a result, appropriate it for the crude economy of knowledge production.

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<title>The Architecture of Learning</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/the-architecture-oflearning/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 19 Apr 2011 12:18:13 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=443</guid> This past week, a local architecture firm, JLG Architects, revealed the winners in their first annual "Think Outside the Desk" video contest. This competition asked local university students to answer the question: "Where do you learn best?". My wife dragged me to see the award presentation and it proved to be a pretty enlightening perspective on how students learn. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/JLGArchitects">Here are all the videos submitted and the videos at the top are the top 10</a>. This blog has touched on the topic of learning environments in the past when I discussed our department's move from Merrifield Hall to O'Kelly Hall. In series of posts, I asked <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/making-the-professionaloffice/">what makes the professional office in this day in age</a> (and mourned <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/okelly-graffiti-under-erasure/">the painting over of graffiti</a> while at the same time <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/from-merrifield-tookelly/">celebrating the existence of an obstructed view seat</a>). Recently, a generous donor offered the department some money to remake our graduate student offices. The dean suggested that the graduate students might like some nice new carrells or even cubicles in their office. I can only assume that she made this suggestion in jest. The graduate students actually requested the opposite: open spaces, better lighting, different spaces with different types of seating. In other words, they wanted a more flexible space suitable to different kinds of activities and to shed or disguise features in their offices that evoke the dull monotony of institutional architecture (e.g. florescent lights, cubicles). It is perhaps unsurprising a group of adults who have decided to pursue graduate education would not want a space that mimics the worst kind of corporate environments. The students whose videos featured most prominently in the JLG show on Thursday echoed these sentiments. The students' recommendation went in three directions: Many students wanted study spaces that evoked spaces of consumption outside of the university. The most commonly evoked image was the coffee shop or cozy college town bar which featured comfortable furniture, well-modulated lighting, warm smells, and the gentle buzz of background noise. Some students clearly wanted to study at a slightly upscale Starbucks. Others, perhaps with a more practical bent, wanted the kind of space that was equally suitable for collaborative work and solo studying. Producing spaces that encourage collaborative work would echo sentiments from all corners of the academic world. In fact, the <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/some-thoughts-on-academicallyadrift/">Arum and Roska's</a> <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/somethoughts-on-academically-adrift/"> Academically Adrift</a> has suggested that students who study together in groups tend to perform better in general, but the reasons for this are more complex that simply available spaces. The next group of videos critiqued classroom space as boring and uninspiring. This is undoubtedly true. The need for institutional flexibility has made the traditional seminar room (<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/teaching-thursday-teachinghistory-in-the-19th-century/">at least as envisioned by 19th century historians</a>) an endangered species. The most adventurous meditation on learning outside the desk came from <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/teaching-thursday-teachinghistory-in-the-19th-century/">a graduate student at the University of North Dakota, Ted Bibby, who said that he learned best in Antarctica</a>. While this is perhaps extreme, the idea that our classrooms do more the capture the spirit of what we study is valuable. Many of the contributions came from the School of Architecture at North Dakota State University and many of these students celebrated their

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studios as spaces of real learning (an opinion echoed in some way by <a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-studio.html">Ryan Stander's reflection on his studio in our fine arts building here on campus</a>). The final group of proposals emphasized the need to have distraction free space to work. They tended to celebrate their rooms or apartments or the quiet corners on campus. When I was a student, I found the quietest corners of the library to do my work so I can sympathize with these students sentiments. I can also see the tensions that administrators face when trying to imagine an ideal campus that combined consumer culture (e.g. a Starbucks), with the creative spaces of the studio (or, say, Antarctica) and the secluded corners for distraction free studying.

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<title>Some Events and an Awards</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/some-events-and-anawards/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:49:54 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=447</guid> The end of the semester is always exciting as projects come to fruition, classes arc toward closure, and friends and colleagues prepare end of the semester festivities. So, the department of history has two events in the next few weeks. First some events: Next Thursday, April 28th, the Department of History will host the 2011 Robert Wilkins lecture. This year it will be Prof. Stephen Aron from UCLA and the Institute for the Study of the American West. His talk is titled: "The Lessons of Lewis and Clark" and here's the flyer with the where and when info: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="AronTalk2011.jpeg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/arontalk2011.jpeg" border="0" alt="AronTalk2011" width="459" height="600" /> The following Wednesday, May 4, the Department will host Prof. Eric Poehler from the University of Massachusetts. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Pompeii in the 21st Century_Flier_FINAL.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/pompeii-inthe-21st-century_flier_final.jpg" border="0" alt="Pompeii in the 21st Century Flier FINAL" width="463" height="600" /> Now some news: It is exciting to report that University of North Dakota MA Student Danielle Skjelver has been awarded the Daughters of Colonial Wars Historic Research and Preservation Award for her book: Massacre: Daughters of War (Goodwyfe Press 2004). In fact, this is sufficiently exciting, that I'll abandon my traditional practice and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Massacre-Daughter-DanielleMead-Skjelver/dp/0974862800/">put up an Amazon link</a>. (<a href="http://mygradspace.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/history-grad-student-wins-national-award-forher-novel/">I got my nice scanned image from the notice here</a>). <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Massacre_Cover.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/massacre_cover.jpg" border="0" alt="Massacre Cover" width="384" height="600" />

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<title>The Great Strawman Massacre</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/the-great-strawmanmassacre/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:59:18 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=454</guid> This past week, Robert Darnton published <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/5Myths-About-the-Information/127105/">a curious opinion piece in the </a> <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/5-Myths-About-the-Information/127105/">Chronicle of Higher Education</a> . I am sure that by now, more qualified bloggers have already puzzled over this column where Darnton positively obliterates several strawmen (strawpersons?) about our digital future. Darnton begins his brief reflections by identifying and refuting five myths of the information age: 1. The Book is Dead. Here he argues that since more books are produced each year than ever before the book is alive and well as a medium for communication. I am not sure that I've ever read anywhere that the book is going away. In fact, most people say that recent changes in way books are produced, published, distributed, and read is a cause for some celebration! The real questions have surrounded our definition of the book and its place within our increasingly convergent media universe. So if the book is dead, long live the book. 2. We have entered the information age. Darnton points out cleverly that "every age is an age of information" as if this somehow undermines the idea that our age has celebrated and problematized information in new ways. While the changing pace of our ability to discover, manipulate, and communicate information is perhaps not "unprecedented", our fixation on this abstract notion of information perhaps is. In any event, his argument is pretty facile. Every age seeks to define itself and almost every age identifies itself somehow and in most cases, these identifications tell us more about how that generation imagines itself than a perspective on some kind of absolute historical character. 3. All information is now available online. First, I've never heard anyone say that. I suppose someone might have only because people say the darndest things. It's such a crazy notion that I am not going to comment any more on it here. 4. Libraries are obsolete. Aside from people who are library haters (and <a href="http://www.wdaz.com/event/article/id/7880/">our local politics have reminded me that some version of these people do exist</a>), few serious people have argued that libraries are really obsolete. They are changing, of course, to keep pace with new ideas of what constitutes a book and our fixation (fetishizing?) of information, but they are coming to occupy an important place in our expanding information infrastructure. 5. The future is digital. While it might seem impossible to argue with this, it all depends, of course, on what we mean by digital. Darnton points out that the information environment will be "overwhelmingly digital", but also reminds us that printed material will continue to be important as well. Again, it seems hardly valuable to note that "old technologies" like print will continue to be value just as long-playing records, typewriters, radio, and old houses continue to be cherish as opportunities to reflect on media and through media on our own past. To be more charitable to Darnton's offers these strawmen as myths and his few concluding paragraphs offer more compelling observations on the changing landscape of information. He's particular insightful when he challenges the idea that digital reading habits are undermining long-standing practices of reflective, sustained reading by arguing that there is growing evidence that people read in snippets and gleaned from texts in the past. So, perhaps in the final analysis his article does have something to contribute, even we might even see his effort to push back against such seeming facile and polarizing perspectives as perhaps warranted. I would like to think, however, that massacring such strawmen is an activity better left for a popular outlets than a publication like the Chronicle .

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/friday-varia-and-quickhits-10/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:47:21 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=456</guid> First, a complaint (but not about you, dear reader). About a month ago, I made the decision to divide my web clipping world between two pieces of software. For the past three or four years, I had been a <a href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a> man; it is free, open source, reliable, and ran on Firefox which had been my go to browser for years. Recently, however, I had begun to run Chrome far more regularly. It seemed faster, less crashy, and prettier. Zotero does not yet work (outside of an alpha standalone version) with Chrome, so I switched to <a href="http://www.evernote.com/">Evernote</a> for my day to day web clipping and continued to use Zotero for research purposes. In fact, I liked Evernote enough to begin to build it into my daily work ecosystem and rely on it to save important clips from the web; I even paid for a year of premium service. Then the Evernote plug-in for Chrome stopped working and left me stranded. And now I am super annoyed. (And this doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Amazon Cloud Crash yesterday, see below). So a massive crash of Amazon's Cloud (AWS) caused a moment of anarchy on the web as it supports so many popular web services. I felt it when Hootsuite was down for most of the day. Here are a couple of <a href="http://mashable.com/2011/04/22/amazon-cloud-collapse/">interesting</a><a href="http://justinsb.posterous.com/aws-down-why-the-sky-is-falling"> links</a> explaining what happened and making clear how interconnected our world really is. The other big and interesting tech news this week was the iPhone controversy. It seems that some folks discovered the file in your iPhone that stores locational information (not GPS data, it would seem, but locational data based on the nearest cellphone towers. So we're not dealing with pinpoint accuracy here, but a only general location). They figured out how to hack into it and extract that data and create maps of their own recent activities. This raises privacy concerns, of course, and the more creepy issue of Apple's plans for collecting this data. <a href="http://ihnatko.com/2011/04/20/hey-wonderful-theres-alocation-tracking-file-on-my-iphone/">Here's a nice consideration of it</a>. I had a fun graduate historiography seminar yesterday which focused on public history and the history of place and landscapes. Unfortunately, I probably talked too much, but that's an unfortunate side effect of my excitement over the topic. One of the things that we talked a bit about was abandonment porn. I mentioned this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPILhiTJv7E">recent SBS feature on the abandoned cities in China</a>. I mentioned a few other instances of abandonment in my class. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/modern-abandonment-squatters-andlate-antiquity/">Here's the blog post</a> with links to both <a href="http://interactive.nfb.ca/#/pinepoint">the striking Canadian National Film board interactive video about the vanished town of Pine Point</a> and <a href="http://www.grandehotelthemovie.com/">the beautiful trailer for the film about the Grand Hotel Biera in Mozambique</a>. I know that the genre of the prank phone call is more or less played out, but <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5xTdB4">this is pretty funny</a>. Omeka.net which hosts our <a href="http://nodakhistory.omeka.net/">North Dakota History Goes Digital</a> collection <a href="http://omeka.org/blog/2011/04/19/omeka-net-1-year-1000websites/">celebrated its 1st birthday</a>. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/indian-premier-league2011/engine/current/match/501222.html">Chris Gayle century in the IPL</a>. Whatever, Windies. What I'm reading: A. M. Theocharaki, "The Ancient Circuit Wall of Athens: Its Changing Course and the Phases of Construction," Hesperia 80 (2011), 71-156. What I'm listening to: Bass Drum of Death, GB City .

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<title>The Fortifications of Athens</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/the-fortifications-ofathens/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:51:21 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=460</guid> This past month, Hesperia published a massive article by Anna Maria Theocharaki, <a href="http://www.atypon-link.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.80.1.71">"The Ancient Circuit Wall of Athens: Its Changing Course and Phases of Construction," </a> <a href="http://www.atyponlink.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.80.1.71">Hesperia</a> <a href="http://www.atyponlink.com/ASCS/doi/abs/10.2972/hesp.80.1.71"> 80 (2011), 71-156</a> (yep, it's 80+ pages!). The article is the culmination of years (if not decades) of painstaking work reconstructing the courses of the various fortification walls of the city. She begins with a discussion of possible Archaic walls and then goes on the identify at least 15 phases of construction and reconstruction. She locates the walls, towers, gates, moats, curtain walls, and proteichisma in the built up Athenian urban landscape on the basis of excavation reports and personal autopsy. She then re-imposed these fragments of fortification onto the map of Athens allowing which then allowed for adjustments and reinterpretation on the basis of the urban topography and relative position of preserve sections of the wall. She complemented her observations and arguments on the course of the fortification wall with tables, appendices, photographs, and plans. Her article is a monument to synthetic archaeological description. The extensive scope and potentially overwhelming amount of detail in article provided a foundation for some ruminations on the state of Greek archaeology, archaeological publication, and the dreaded master narrative. Most of my comments below are not directed toward this particular article, but rather reflections that this article stimulated. 1. Digital Publication. The amount of detail in this article is truly staggering. It stretches for over 80 pages and must have required a massive amount of energy to lay-out, edit, and arrange. It's rather remarkable in this day-in-age that such an article could appear in a first-quality journal like Hesperia known as much for its exacting editing as its high-quality physical appearance. What makes this more amazing is that the author is quite clear that the information in this article derives from a georeferencedGIS dataset (77). In other words, the Hesperia version of this article in a re-analogization of a digital dataset. The level of detail in the article and tabular arrangement of much of the information almost begs for some ambitious graduate student to redigitize the Theocharaki's findings and essentially reproduce significant parts of her GIS plans and tables. The point of mentioning this is simply to observe that the publication of this article on paper actually made the data contained in it less useful to the end user than the material in its original, presumably digital, form. And this would seem to run counter to some of the basic goals of publication. While I understand the decision to publish an article in particular format is tied to institutional politics, careful understandings of readership and audience, and basic logistic concerns (expertise, manpower, infrastructure), it is worth noting that Theocharaki's article represents 2-4 "typical" Hesperia articles in length and perhaps much more in terms of details to be edited and printing costs. In short, this article alone - well-edited, elegantly laid-out, and colorfully-illustrated though it is represents the single best argument for why top-tier archaeological journals like Hesperia must embrace a digital future. 2. Context and Athenian Archaeology. One of the great things about the archaeology of Athens is it is the center of its own universe. After all, <a href="http://www.metacafe.com/watch/804504/this_is_sparta_techno_remix/">to paraphrase an recent movie</a> "This is ATHENS". Taking nothing away from the quality of the article, it is remarkable that there is almost no comparative evidence for the fortifications of the city. In fact, (and this frankly <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US0AsCuvfF8">blew my mind</a>), neither the article cites neither <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/fortress-attica-defense-of-the-athenian-land-frontier404-322-bc/oclc/12033923">Josiah Ober's</a> or <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/defense-ofattica-the-dema-wall-and-the-boiotian-war-of-378-375-bc/oclc/43476884">Mark Munn's work</a>

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on the fortifications of Attica, nor any of Garth Fowden's critical discussions of the Late Roman fortifications of Athens or Attica. It goes without saying that there is almost no discussion or comparisons with fortifications outside of Attica or goals and techniques of Greek fortifications elsewhere in the Mediterranean world (although to be fair <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/greek-aims-in-fortification/oclc/6815836">Lawrence</a>, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/greek-fortifications/oclc/164461">Winter</a>, and <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/defence-of-byzantine-africa-from-justinian-to-the-arab-conquestan-account-of-the-military-history-and-archaeology-of-the-african-provinces-in-the-sixth-andseventh-centuries/oclc/7560361">Pringle</a> were cited). I suspect that Athens is the only city where it is possible to publish such a sweeping, highly-detailed, and lengthy article on the fortification of any other city in the Eastern Mediterranean without some consideration of at least local comparanda and discussion of larger strategic implications. Athens has a special place in the history of the discipline that allows for a kind of scholarship whose relevance and significance is autochthonous. 3. The End of Antiquity. When I got my copy of this article, I dutifully read the introduction and then flipped to the later phases of the fortifications to see if her work shed additional light on the city in Late Antiquity. I am not sure whether her careful enumeration of wall finds has added much to our knowledge of the city in Late Antiquity, and I share Fowden's skepticism of sweeping assumptions about Justinian's role in refortifying the city and find, with the author (p. 136), that dating based on construction style alone problematic (albeit sometimes necessary). Finally, I appreciated the olde skool concluding sentiments in a kind of hyperreal, post-ironic way: <blockquote> Following the period of Justinian, as Athens became increasingly detached from its glorious past, written testimonia and archaeological data concerning the city become even more scarce, and the observation holds true especially in respect to the poorly documented Byzantine period of Athens. Our next evidence related to the Athenian wall is provided six centuries later, in Byzantine texts of the 12th century.218 The Metropolitan of Athens Michael Choniates vividly depicted the deplorable condition to which the unwalled city had been reduced at his time, and he was forced to surrender the city to the Franks without mounting any resistance. </blockquote> All criticism aside, this article represents an important synthetic landmark in our understanding of the topography of Athens. It will form the basis for an almost unimaginable number of <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/site-reports/">site</a>-<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2008/03/07/site-reports-re/">reports</a> for<a href="http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/programs/academic"> Regular Members at the American School of Classical Studies</a> for years to come.

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<title>More on Polis Notebooks</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/more-on-polisnotebooks/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:13:07 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/more-on-polisnotebooks/</guid> This week I completed the first phase of the Polis notebook project.&nbsp; The goal of this project is to create a robust database that will aid in the analysis of a basilica-type church (called EF2) at the site of Polis-Chrysochous on Cyprus.&nbsp; The church at the site underwent some important modifications during its 500 year of use.&nbsp; Most important among these was its transformation from a wood-roofed basilica to a vaulted basilica. This substantial modification to the church architecture was not uncommon on Cyprus, but so far, no one has been able to assign this pattern of rebuilding to a particular period or historical event. Our goal with the church at EF2 (at least this season) is to attempt to establish a chronology of the architectural phases of the building. Beyond allowing us to assign a date to an island-wide trend in church architecture, we hope that this will help us to understand the changing function of churches through time, changes in the technology of decoration and maintenance, and the place of this particular building in the urban fabric of the city of Polis. The first step to this was process was to key in descriptions of the basic stratigraphic units from the original excavation notebooks produced in the field during 1984, 1985, and 1986.&nbsp; There were 11 notebooks, but only 7 or 8 contained records of stratigraphic excavations (some contained architectural notes or data concerning the numerous burials found around the church).&nbsp; The descriptions themselves amounted to over 40,000 words of text in 5 to 6 different hands. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/0008.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:block;float:none;margin-left:auto;border-top:0;margin-right:auto;borderright:0;padding-top:0;" title="0008" border="0" alt="0008" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/0008_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="298"></a> This text described a type of stratigraphic excavation at the site and each notebook recorded information from a trench or an area.&nbsp; From what I could gather from the notebooks, there were 8 distinct areas of excavation. The most basic unit for excavation was the level which seemed to coincide more or less with a stratigraphic unit, although they might also represent a part of a trench or phenomenon that is not necessarily a single strata in an archaeological sense.&nbsp; For example, burials, wall falls, and sometimes cleaning processes got their own levels (at times), but these levels did not represent singular depositional processes.&nbsp; There were 204 levels from the notebooks. In some cases, the excavator also recorded information regarding individual passes. The passes were subunits in a level.&nbsp; Not every excavator recorded a description of every pass; in fact, one excavator typically did not record information related to individual passes at all.&nbsp; In contrast, another excavator carefully recorded all level descriptions according to the individual pass. Judging by the different soil color, content, and features present in individual passes, it is pretty clear that, at times, the pass represented a change in depositional process more accurately than the level did. In other words, in some cases levels and on other cases pass described better the stratigraphy of the unit.&nbsp; There were 345 passes recorded for 121 levels 64% of the levels included information recorded at the level of the pass.&nbsp; <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/00031.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:block;float:none;margin-left:auto;border-top:0;margin-right:auto;borderright:0;padding-top:0;" title="0003" border="0" alt="0003" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/0003_thumb1.jpg" width="454" height="357"></a> In some cases, specific inventoried finds were recorded in the description of individual passes.&nbsp; Although it is clear that many more finds were inventoried from the trench and recorded in the notebook than appeared in the level or pass descriptions, for phase 1 of data entry I

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only recorded objects that appeared in the descriptions of passes and levels. There were 235 of these objects and many (26%) of them were coins. Before I get to Cyprus next month (!!), Id like to be well along in phase 2 of the data organizing project. This will involve indexing the illustrations from the notebooks, so that we can quickly find trench plans and elevations that correlated with the descriptions in the database. Each drawing could contain multiple levels, features, and passes so this will be a relatively involved (although not overwhelming) project. All this digital archaeology work, of course, puts me in the digital archaeology state of mind. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/pompeii-in-the-21st-century-talk-may4/">This is great since Prof. Eric Poehler will be visit campus next week. Remember to come and hear him talk about his work at Pompeii at 6 pm on May 4th in the East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz Library.</a>

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<title>In the Classical Tradition</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/in-the-classicaltradition/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:37:51 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=470</guid> Over the past 6 months, I've been working with <a href="http://sciensmulier.blogspot.com/">Sarah Walker</a>, a University of North Dakota Classics alumna, to edit a volume of short papers, In the Classical Traditions: Essays in Honor of Daniel Erickson . Prof. Erickson taught Classics at UND for over a decade until a series tragic health and legal problems brought his time at the university to an end. With this volume we celebrate the ways that Prof. Erickson touched the lives of many undergraduate and graduate students, imparted in them a life long passion for the Classical world, and helped them along their careers. We decided that the best way to honor his contribution is to prepare a collection of creative and scholarly works in his honor, circulate the books as widely as we can, and make sure that copies found their way into the archive of the University so that his contributions will not be forgotten. A paper volume of this book will be available next week. [scribd id=54046399 key=key-1bv3aydgmt7xvd8gg12u mode=list]

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<title>The Archival Turn</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/the-archivalturn/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:21:55 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=475</guid> If you're in Grand Forks and like to think about The Archive, the be sure to check out <a href="http://axisofaccess.blogspot.com/">Ryan Stander's</a> M.F.A. Exhibition which runs from April 26 to May 2. The info is below. Ryan Stander was the artist in residence at the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project in 2009. <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/ryan-standers-toposchora-onlineedition/">Here's a link to his exhibit</a>. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/newimage.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="695" />

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<title>A Review of C. Schabel's Bullarium Cyprium</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/a-review-of-c-schabelsbullarium-cyprium/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:05:58 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=477</guid> I have finally finished by relatively uninspired review of C. Schabel's brilliant new edition of the <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/bullarium-cyprium/oclc/703104657">Bullarium Cyprium</a> . Regular readers of this blog have already read <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/the-bullarium-cyprium-and-the-historyof-medieval-cyprus/">this post</a> and<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/more-on-the-bullarium-cyprium/"> this post</a> on this book. I'll continue my practice of posting the final(ish) version of my review here so that you can see how my ideas were ultimately compressed into around 2000 words suitable for publication. The only editorializing that I'll add to the review (which is, frankly, no great shakes and probably needs another proofread before it's submitted), is that this review derived primary from my blog posts. In other words, the blog was the brainstorm that began the process of reviewing the book. Blogging isn't separate from publications (whether peer reviewed or more modest like this book review), but a stage in a more transparent scholarly process. [scribd id=54126860 key=key-22reqs5sj2ydj0lauy2t mode=list]

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/friday-varia-and-quickhits-11/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:59:54 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=481</guid> It's a beautiful and sunny Friday morning, so a perfect time for some varia and quick hits. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/some-events-and-an-awards/">Stephen Aron's talk last night</a> was one of the best Wilkins Lectures in recent memory! Be sure to check out Eric Poehler's talk next Wednesday. <a href="http://und.edu/features/pompeii.cfm">Here is the local report on it</a>. Be sure to check out the 2011 Editions of the <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">First Year Reflections on Teaching Thursday</a>. I've been watching <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7363712n&amp;tag=mg;mostpopvideo">60 Minutes' segment on Mt. Athos some this week</a>. <a href="http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/a_trove_of_historic_jazz_recordings_has_found_a_h ome_in_harlem_but_you_cant/">This is a depressing thing to think about if you like jazz</a>. But <a href="http://www.birkajazz.com/archive/blueNote1500.htm">this collection of classic jazz album </a>covers can maybe cheer you up. Or you can listen to<a href="http://hotsaucecommittee.com/"> a stream of the Beastie Boys new album</a> while reading <a href="http://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/beastie-boys-2011-5/">this "oral history" of the Beastie Boys</a>. <a href="http://finds.org.uk/news/stories/article/id/213">This Day of Archaeology</a> thing sounds pretty cool. This is <a href="http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/25-years-after-chernobyl-a-villagepersists/">a super depressing way to reflect on the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster</a>. A really depressing form of abandonment porn. I was bummed to hear that <a href="http://theofficeof.feltron.com/">Nicholas Feltron</a> was hired by Facebook, but <a href="http://daytum.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/moving-west/">then happy to hear </a>that my beloved <a href="http://daytum.com/billcaraher">Daytum</a>, which he developed with Ryan Case, will continue. "The report of my death was an exaggeration": <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/last-typewriter-factory-in-the-worldshuts-its-doors/237838/">The last typewriter factory in India did close</a>, but it's not the last in the world. <a href="http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/4659371294/the-death-of-the-book">The death of the book </a>is also an exaggeration. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/newimage.png?w=450&amp;h=695">If you haven't checked out Ryan Stander's M.F.A. exhibit here on campus</a>, you really should. What I'm reading: K. Davis, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/periodization-andsovereignty/oclc/690417422">Periodization and Sovereignty</a> . Philadelphia 2008. What I'm listening to: MellowHype, <a href="http://oddfuture.tumblr.com/post/1448597254/mellowhype-left-brain-and-hodgy-beatsfinally">Blackenedwhite</a>. </ul>

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<title>Out like a lamb...</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/out-like-a-lamb/</link> <pubDate>Sun, 01 May 2011 12:02:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=486</guid> I think it is March that goes out like lamb, but here in North Dakota, April is usually the new March. This year, it may by May. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Out_Like_a_Lamb.jpeg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/out_like_a_lamb.jpeg" border="0" alt="Out Like a Lamb" width="450" height="752" />

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<title>Punk Rock, Materiality, and Time</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/punk-rock-materialityand-time/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 02 May 2011 12:31:53 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=488</guid> Crossposted to <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/">Punk Archaeology</a> I spent part of the weekend doing three things: learning how to make pasta with my new pasta maker, listening to low-fi punk, and reading Kathleen Davis's Periodization and Sovereignty (Penn 2008). I am not sure that I learned much applicable to this blog from making pasta (although it was delicious last night at dinner), but low-fi punk, a short Twitter exchange, and Davis's book did bring together some ideas that I had been meaning for some time to post to our semi-dormant Punk Archaeology blog. The low-fi sound that has become popular thanks in large part to bands like the White Stripes, the Black Keys, and other purveyors of so-called Punk Blues positions itself as an antidote to the austere, "over-produced" stylings of contemporary pop music. (Recently, I've been hanging out with the album "GB City" by Bass Drum of Death, but I also listened to Soledad Brothers self titles solo album and their more polished 2006 offering The Hardest Rock. My original idea for a post was to compare the low-fi, thoroughly average sound of "GB City" to the produced sound of Arcade Fire's "Suburbs", but that seemed too easy). The sound harkens back to garage rock and rough live albums produced in make shift recording studies on 4 and 8 track recording machines. Low-fi recordings replaced the spaceless character of the recording study with the gritty and flawed presence of the garage, the basement, or the warehouse. Echoing and distorted vocal tracks compete for space against raw guitars and abusive drums. The best low-fi captures something of a hastily-arranged live recording without actually being anywhere in particular. Low-fi comes from anyone's basement, garage, or abandoned strip mall. It embodies marginal (maybe even abandoned) spaces (it's not surprising that Detroit has become a Mecca of low-fi sound) and pushes out music that speaks to haste, temporary accommodations, and immediacy without specificity. With the advent of digital music, low-fi has projected the materiality of its sound by producing vinyl LPs or even cassette tapes. The sonic texture of the 8-track recorder in the basement or garage comes packaged in neatly anachronistic forms that insists upon a material presence even more physical than the music itself. A friend of mine (on Twitter ironically enough!) suggested a track from an Oblivian's album recently. When I asked whether she could share the track with me, she told me that she only had it on vinyl! So the grounding of low-fi music in a time and place moves from the practice of recording and to its materiality as a recorded product. Digital music, which can exist simultaneously in an infinite number of places resists any effort to impose physicality (and with music moving to "the cloud" in the very near future the location of music recordings will become all the more ambiguous). The link between the physical sound of the low-fi recording and its circulation in physical media positions low-fi (and punk) to resist (in an ironic way, to be sure) the ephemeral character of so much "cultural" production today. From blogs and ebooks to musings in the indistinct space of social media, the viral distribution of music and video, and claims of a reimagined-ascetic minimalism, the space or even material nature of cultural production is collapsing in on itself. In the future (bee-boop-boopboop-beep), the diagnostic rims of Late Roman fine ware vessels will be stray bits of sound, text, or video clinging to the deteriorating disks of disused servers or discarded along with iPods and Kindles in modern middens. Unlike the vinyl LP or even the (comparatively) primitive cassette tape, there is little on the iPod or Kindle that links it physically to the music or text stored on the device. Moreover, the use of these devices do not cause the music or text to deteriorate. So, I sat around this weekend, grading papers, making pasta, reading Kathleen Davis' book, and listening to the space of low-fi sound spooling off a hard drive and running through my stereo. I could listen to it as much as I wanted and wherever I wanted.

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<title>Digital Pompeii and the Future of Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/digital-pompeii-andthe-future-of-archaeology/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 03 May 2011 11:43:09 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=490</guid> If you're interested in archaeology and the digital future then <a href="http://und.edu/features/pompeii.cfm">this is the lecture for you. Prof. Eric Poehler will be speaking tomorrow</a> at 6 pm in the East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz Library on the beautiful campus of the University of North Dakota. If you're not in North Dakota, FEAR NOT, the digital future has you covered! <a href="https://conted.breeze.und.nodak.edu/cilt">We are going to stream the lecture LIVE from this site here</a>. Please join us online if you can't make it in person. This talk is going to be so spectacular that we made the <a href="http://und.edu/">UND home page</a> (everyone should click through to the UND link to show the power of my blog!!): <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="PompeiiScreenGrab.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/6a00d83451908369e2014e8837f0c3970d .jpg?w=300" border="0" alt="PompeiiScreenGrab" width="450" height="292" /> For you regular Archaeology of the Mediterranean World readers, this is probably a bit of a disappointing post. So, just to show you that I'm looking out for your leisure time reading, <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">hop over to Teaching Thursday and check out a brilliant bonus post</a>. My colleague Caroline Campbell has posted a particularly thoughtful series of reflections on her second year of teaching at the University. This is a follow-up to her first year reflections which she offered in the spring of 2010. Be sure to check out Teaching Thursday over the next few weeks as

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<title>Periods and Peasants</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/periods-andpeasants/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 04 May 2011 12:09:43 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=494</guid> <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">David Pettegrew</a> and I are working on a paper (very slowly, I might add) <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/producing-peasants-from-pottery/">about peasants for a conference next winter</a>. Our current plans are to look at three contexts for peasants: the Isthmia corridor outside of the ancient city of Corinth, a fortified area around a small harbor southeastern coastal of the Corinthia, and a rather more isolated inland valley called Lakka Skoutara in the far southeastern Corinthia. We plan to approach these three areas through the lens of methodology. In each area, we conducted intensive pedestrian survey and produced different assemblages. The rural nature of these assemblages qualified the inhabitants of these areas as "peasants" (using an incredible broad definition of this term). My recent reading of Kathleen Davis' <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/periodization-andsovereignty-how-ideas-of-feudalism-and-secularization-govern-the-politics-oftime/oclc/277196687">Periodization and Sovereignty</a> has made me reconsider my ease with such seemingly transhistorical categories like "peasants". While I am neither qualified to speak with any authority on ancient, medieval, or even modern peasants, I do recognize that the identification of an individual or group of individuals as peasants is not unproblematic. This is a category rooted, at least in part, in assumptions of pre-modern modes of production, like subsistence agriculture, and various kinds of economic and political relationships associated with these practices. Peasants play a key role in our definition of the pre-modern and consequently undeveloped world. The transhistorical category of the peasant, in fact, made it easy for early ethnographers and archaeologists to find parallels between modern Greek "peasant" farmers and their ancient predecessors. This not only provided the foundations for at least some of our understanding how ancient Greeks worked the land, but also (in a circular way) provided a justification for the persistence of ancient Greek culture and practices in the attitudes, practices, and beliefs of 19th and 20th century rural denizens. In short, the peasant became one of the crucial points of contact between ancient and modern and represented both the stability of the Greek culture and its backwardness. The question is, of course, what do we as archaeologists do when studying such transhistorical figures as peasants in the ancient landscape? Archaeological approaches traditionally embrace the kind of generalizations that create typologies (and ultimate feeds into periodization schemes both informed by the material culture and also informing our interpretation of objects). While Davis' book does not reject the need for periodization schemes, she does insist that we locate these themes historically and understand how they serve to structure power relations in the present. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/producing-peasants-from-pottery/">Our paper leans toward a diachronic reading of peasant landscapes </a>rooted in a particular set of methods which insist on the similarities in material culture among groups living in (demonstrably?) different historical circumstances. An additional challenge comes from the spatial and material definitions of peasants in the landscape and asks that we mingle the spatial with the chronological in ways that reveal another layer of how we understand the the relationship between the pre-modern and modern worlds. By writing the rural/urban dichotomy into ancient landscapes and locating the peasant in the rural sphere, we run the risk of isolating rural areas as spaces of historical stability (or even spaces "<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/europe-and-the-people-without-history/oclc/8115264">without history</a>") and set them against the dynamic culture of the urban. Thus the rural/urban dichotomy reinforces the division between the developed and the undeveloped while locating the impetus for historical change within the confines of a dynamic urban space capable of modernization.

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<title>Pompeii in the 21st Century Replay</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/pompeii-in-the-21stcentury-replay/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 05 May 2011 12:13:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=497</guid> Just a quick blog post today as I am still host Prof. Eric Poehler. His talk last night was standing room only and the conversation about Pompeii, technology, and archaeology went late into the night. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Poehler_Talk.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/poehler_talk.jpg" border="0" alt="Poehler Talk" width="450" height="269" /> If you missed the talk, here is <a href="https://conted.breeze.und.nodak.edu/p15804345/">a link to to a recorded version</a>. Special thanks goes to the folks at <a href="http://und.edu/cio/cilt/">CILT</a> who recorded the talk, the <a href="http://library.und.edu/Collections/mission.php">Elwyn Robinson Department of Special Collections</a> who hosted the talk, and the<a href="http://arts-sciences.und.edu/history/"> Department of History</a>, the Cyprus Research Fund, and the Working Group in Digital and New Media who sponsored the speaker.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/friday-varia-and-quickhits-12/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 06 May 2011 15:34:15 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=500</guid> Just a tiny gaggle of quick hits on a grey reading-and-review day at the end of a long semester: <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/">This seems pretty cool</a>. <a href="http://maris.areavoices.com/">So does this</a>. <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/cch/events/conferences/peter-brown-conference/">The retirement of a legend in the field</a>. <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Keep checking out the first year faculty reflections at Teaching Thursday</a>. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/pompeii-in-the-21st-centuryreplay/">A big thanks to Eric Poehler</a>. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/indian-premier-league2011/engine/current/match/501244.html">Psyck: Gayle c Harris b Chawla 107 (49b 10x4 9x6) SR: 218.36</a> <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472261a.html">More clever ideas on the future of graduate education</a>. <a href="http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=15">Nominees for the Webby Awards</a>. <a href="http://hilobrow.com/2011/03/31/rebootiana/">Rebooting</a>. <a href="http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/#eid=19&amp;context=lsj&amp;action=hw-list-click">The LSJ Online</a>. <a href="http://fantes.com/imperia.html">The instructions for using an Imperia Pasta Maker</a>. The results </ul> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Pasta.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/pasta.jpg" border="0" alt="Pasta" width="450" height="269" /> What I'm reading: Eric Wolf, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/peasants/oclc/231579">Peasants</a> .(1966) What I'm listening to: DJ Quik, The Book of David.

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<title>A Metadata Monday</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/a-metadatamonday/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 09 May 2011 13:06:06 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=507</guid> It has been about four months since I have moved to the New Archaeology of the Mediterranean World and over that time I've made about 100 posts. So I thought it might be a good time to present some metadata. Since my first post on December 19, 2010, the blog has seen 7,055 page views for an average of 50 per day. That total is gradually increasing as I post more content. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="BlogStatsWeeklyMay92011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/blogstatsweeklymay92011.jpg" border="0" alt="BlogStatsWeeklyMay92011" width="450" height="134" /> The vast majority of these page views are of the front page. Some posts, however, had direct links or appear in search engines. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/pompeii-in-the-21st-centuryreplay/">Pompey in the 21st Century Replay</a>: 20.6 per day<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/the-fortifications-of-athens/">The Fortifications of Athens</a>: 4.1 per day<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/the-future-of-the-computer-lab/">The Future of the Computer Lab</a>: 2.48 per day<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/blogging-and-peer-review/">Blogging and Peer Review</a>: 2.15<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/friday-varia-and-quick-hits-10/">Friday Varia and Quick Hits (April 22 edition)</a>: 1.81<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/archaeology-and-man-camps-in-westernnorth-dakota/">Archaeology and Man Camps in Western North Dakota</a>: 1.4<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/some-events-and-an-awards/">Some Events and Awards (April 20)</a>: 1.22<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/three-observations-about-publishingand-the-blog/">Three Observations about Publishing and the Blog</a>: 1.17<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/teaching-graduate-historiography-a-finalsyllabus/">Teaching Graduate Historiography: A Final Syllabus</a>: 1.09<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/more-than-four-reasons-to-teach-morethan-four-classes-sometimes/">More than Four Reasons to Teach More than Four Classes</a>: 0.8<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/simplicity-minimalism-and-theancient-ascetic/">Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic</a>: 0.78<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/five-things-about-online-teaching/">Five Things about Online Teaching</a>: 0.78<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/practicing-preparedprocrastination/">Practicing Prepared Procrastination</a>: 0.71<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/teaching-thursday-trifecta/">A Teaching Thursday Trifecta</a>: 0.70 <br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/more-on-academic-publishing-andblogs/">More on Academic Publishing and Blogs</a>: 0.68<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/pots-to-people-in-late-romancyprus/">Pots to People in Late Roman Cyprus</a>: 0.62<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/299/">Blogging and the Public Face of Archaeology</a>: 0.59<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/christianization-and-churches-in-thepeloponnese/">Christianization and Churches in the Peloponnesus</a>: 0.59<br /><a

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href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/some-thoughts-on-unlocking-thegates/">Some thoughts on </a> <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/somethoughts-on-unlocking-the-gates/">Unlocking the Gates</a> : 0.54<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/modern-abandonment-squatters-andlate-antiquity/">Modern Abandonment, Squatters, and Late Antiquity</a>: 0.53 The main referring sites are: <a href="mediterraneanworld.typepad.com">The [Original] Archaeology of the Mediterranean World</a><br /><a href="surprisedbytime.blogspot.com">Surprised by Time</a> (Diana Gilliland Wright)<br /><a href="kourelis.blogspot.com">Objects-Buildings-Situations </a>(Kostis Kourelis)<br /><a href="http://researchnewsinla.blogspot.com/">Research News in Late Antiquity<br /></a>Google<br /><a href="paperlessarchaeology.wordpress.com">Paperless Archaeology</a> (John Wallrodt)<br />Twitter <br /><a href="middlesavagery.wordpress.com">Middle Savagery</a> (Colleen Morgan)<br /><a href="bloggingpompeii.blogspot.com">Blogging Pompeii</a> <br />Facebook <br /><a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Corinthian Matters</a> (David Pettegrew) Unfortunately wordpress.com who hosts this little blog does not offer integration with Google Analytics or any other comprehensive analytics software, so it is not possible to retrieve other metadata nuggets, like browsers, operating system, or even location! Since most bloggers are a bit obsessive about their statistics, it is surprising that a more developed analytics package has not appeared.

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<title>Reflections on Teaching More than Four Classes</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/reflections-onteaching-more-than-four-classes/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 10 May 2011 13:15:54 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=509</guid> One of my most popular posts over the last 6 months or so was my <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/more-than-four-reasons-to-teach-morethan-four-classes-sometimes/">reflection on teaching a particularly heavy (for me) teaching load this spring</a>. As the semester staggers toward a conclusion, I thought I would reflect a bit on what I have learned from adding two classes to my busy schedule this semester. In a general way, my experience was a good one. I definitely reconnected with my love of teaching in some unexpected ways. Not only did teaching more make more obvious some strange habits encouraged by rather lighter teaching loads, but teaching more also gave me (perhaps paradoxically) a new opportunity to engage the craft of teaching in a thoughtful way. 1. Strategic delegating. I was very fortunate to have two graduate teaching assists this semester. In the past, I have been a bit reluctant to avail myself to their services in a strategic way. They would help with some grading and course preparation, but usually on a bit of an ad hoc basis. As a rule, I didn't mind grading too much so I tried to avoid asking them to shoulder too much of the grading load. This semester all that changed. I delegated some significant responsibilities particular in my survey course to my graduate teaching assistant and was amazed. She not only showed remarkable initiative in getting work done on-time and in an efficient way, but also was aware of the potential of grading as a pedagogical tool. While I missed some of the regular interaction with students as I reviewed their weekly writing, I now feel much more confident in the benefits of delegating some of the grading load to my graduate assistants. Not only does this increase student contact, but it improves the character of this contact as well. 2. Giving students room to succeed (or not). Under normal conditions, I can be a "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent">helicopter faculty member</a>". Perhaps this tendency comes from my deep commitment to process in my own research and writing. In method classes in particular, I would scrutinize students' processes, micromanage as much as possible, and attribute success to student work that followed processes that I recognized as being similar to my own. Of course, since I teach an undergraduate historical methods course some emphasis on methods and processes is not a bad thing. On the other hand, my tendency to approach processes in such a rigorous way limited the ways in which I could measure success. Teaching more made it more difficult for me to micromanage and forced me to step back and let students struggle more and to find their own path. As a result, I have been rewarded with some genuinely innovative work by students and some examples of approaches to research problems that I would not have anticipated. A student writing a capstone paper for me has produced his best work by far, graduate students have proven more able to revise their own writing (without my endless comments!), and even method students have shown remarkable ingenuity in finding sources and structuring research. While I am reluctant to image my helicopter advising to have been inconsequential in my students' development, it will give me pause to consider how my own commitment to process relates to student success. 3. Giving me room to experiment. I never expected more teaching to give me more room to experiment and be creative in my approach to course content and classroom management. When I taught less, I'll admit to being a bit fussy with my schedule, course design, and how I introduced content and methods. With a hectic semester of service, research, and teaching, something had to give. And, for me, it was my fussiness. I had to allow myself to be more reactive to classroom situations and to make more spur-of-the-moment decisions in response to changes in student reception of material and approaches. This was particular apparent in my 2nd year language class when I ended up discarding a major text from the course, the introduction of a new text (from the public domain!), and managing the class's

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progress through the semester on a week-to-week basis. By doing this, I put more of the onus on the students to communicate with me actively about their own learning and de-emphasized (at times arbitrary) goals that I set at the beginning of the semester. This process not only created a spirit of camaraderie in the class, but also made the learning (and teaching) process transparently collaborative. This is not to say that I didn't occasionally get frustrated at our lack of progress through sections of the text that I regarded to be easy, but, in some areas, it was clear that students remained committed to pushing themselves, constructing rigorous assignments, and setting ambitious goals. 4. Pondering deadlines. I have never been a fan of deadlines. As a student, I rarely struggled to meet them, but I also loathed them as artificial constraints on my (ahem...) creative process. As I fight through a seemingly-unending stack of student papers at the end of the semester, I have suddenly come to realize the purpose of deadlines. They are to help faculty to manage their workload. What a surprise. So next year (where I am going to teach something like 3-4 or two courses above my normal load), I am definitely going to be more insistent and conscious of deadlines. Who knew?

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<title>More on Peasants</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/more-onpeasants/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 11 May 2011 12:25:19 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=511</guid> This week, between grading final papers and planning for my research trip to Cyprus, I indulged myself and read (slowly and superficially to be sure) <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/peasants/oclc/231579">Eric Wolf's </a> <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/peasants/oclc/231579">Peasants</a> (1966). This is one of those short books (just over 100 pages) that represents moment in time and captures many of the essential features of a particular topic. Wolf's analysis of peasant societies recognizes the deeply interconnected character of peasant modes of production, social order, and ideological predilections. (This is part of a larger project on peasants that I have discussed <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/category/peasants/">elsewhere in my blog</a>.) Wolf identified the peasant first and foremost as an economic creature set within a larger and more complex system. Importantly, the peasant is characterized by: "an asymmetrical structural relationship between the producers of surplus and the controllers." In other words, peasants pay rent of some kind and this distinguishes the peasant from the group that Wolf calls a primitive cultivator. Peasants live in a more complex society with a greater degree of social stratification that requires the "transfer of wealth from one section of the population to another." (10) In general, settlement patterns reflect this transfer of wealth with peasants living in the countryside and powerholders residing in more densely built up areas. This economic relationship to other segments of a complex society and the way in which powerholders in society extract the peasants' surplus for their own gain play key roles in the social, economic, and ideological organization of peasant society. The role of phenomenon like social insurance, the economic analysis of kinship and residential organization, and the existence of ceremonial funds intersect with the specific power relationships that characterize the extraction of wealth from peasant groups. The influence of this kind of structural analysis persists in some form in many modern considerations of peasants. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/meaning-andidentity-in-a-greek-landscape-an-archaeological-ethnography/oclc/488779361">H. Forbes recent consideration of peasants on the Methana peninsula</a> depended, in part, on a similar constellation of structural relationships (<a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/moredream-arch/">see my comments on this book here</a>). Such broad reaching conclusions are framed by the assumption that peasants are both transhistorical figures appearing in different times and places and historical figures in the development of human society: <blockquote> "This book is concerned with those large sections of the mankind which stand midway between the primitive tribe and industrial society. These populations, many million strong, neither primitive or modern, form the majority of mankind. They are important historically, because industrial society is built upon the ruins of peasant society. They are important contemporaneously, because they inhabit that "underdeveloped" part of the world whose continued presence constitutes both a threat and a responsibility for those countries which have thrown off the shackles of backwardness. While the industrial revolution has advanced with giant strides across the globe, the events of every day suggest that its ultimate success is not yet secure." (p. vii) </blockquote> Thus peasants become a kind of looking glass through which scholars can recognize earlier forms of human development in general, and the precursor to local phenomenon. The challenge for archaeologists, particularly those studying the ancient world, is how to identify the material analogs to the kind of relationships that characterize peasant life. While we know that peasant life did exist in antiquity and in ancient Greece in particular, it much more difficult to recognize the

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manifestations of peasant life in the countryside. It would be problematic to identify all rural producers as peasants, for example, because the Greeks used slaves for some forms of agricultural production and we also know that landowners could reside in the countryside for stretches of time. It is ironic for the archaeologist, that peasants who through cultivation made such a tremendous impact on the lived environment of rural space would have left such complex and problematic traces in the material record.

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<title>Lists and Ranking of Archaeology Journals</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/lists-and-ranking-ofarchaeology-journals/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 12 May 2011 12:24:59 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/lists-and-ranking-ofarchaeology-journals/</guid> I am sure that Im behind the curve on this, but Ive become fascinated with the <a href="http://www.arc.gov.au/era/era_journal_list.htm">Australian Governments effort to list and rank journals in each discipline</a>.&nbsp; (The list was the topic of <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Controversial-Journal-Rankings/127417/">an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education this past week</a>). I understand the evils that this kind of system can create and the problems and issues associated with any effort to standardize the creation of knowledge. At the same time I also appreciate these kinds of lists as historical artifacts that can tell us something about how our fields are understood. So, as I attempted to avoid grading that angry stack of student papers staring at me from across the office, I began to mess with the list of journals.&nbsp; The Australian Research Council evaluation system seems very complex, but it distills its finding down into a four tiered ranking (<a href="http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/ERA2010_eval_guide.pdf">here is the guide in .pdf</a>): <blockquote> A*<br>Typically an A* journal would be one of the best in its field or subfield in which to publish and would typically cover the entire field/subfield. Virtually all papers they publish will be of a very high quality. These are journals where most of the work is important (it will really shape the field) and where researchers boast about getting accepted. Acceptance rates would typically be low and the editorial board would be dominated by field leaders, including many from top institutions.<br>A<br>The majority of papers in a Tier A journal will be of very high quality. Publishing in an A journal would enhance the authors standing, showing they have real engagement with the global research community and that they have something to say about problems of some significance. Typical signs of an A journal are lowish acceptance rates and an editorial board which includes a reasonable fraction of well known researchers from top institutions.<br>B<br>Tier B covers journals with a solid, though not outstanding, reputation. Generally, in a Tier B journal, one would expect only a few papers of very high quality. They are often important outlets for the work of PhD students and early career researchers. Typical examples would be regional journals with high acceptance rates, and editorial boards that have few leading researchers from top international institutions.<br>C<br>Tier C includes quality, peer reviewed, journals that do not meet the criteria of the higher tiers. </blockquote> <p align="left">In other words, there is are a bunch of things going on here and some of it involves the extent to which a researcher boasts about getting accepted and lowish acceptance rates.&nbsp; Journal rankings not only reflect the quality of the journal, but also its scope (and indirectly the extent to which the field is fragmented or specialized).&nbsp; <p align="left">Just for fun, I decided to look at my field of archaeology. I imported the journal ranking list to Access and started to crunch the numbers.&nbsp; First thing that I noticed is that there are a tremendous number of archaeology journals. In fact, with 297 journals, the discipline ranks in the top 25 of the 700+ investigated 135 disciplinary groupings produced by the ARC. (I did not really consider journals with archaeology listed as a second field I have to eventually get grading done!) Those journals listed with archaeology as their primary field represent a combination of world, Classical, and regional archaeological publications.&nbsp; Among these journals 5 earned the rank of A*: Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, American Antiquity, American Journal of Archaeology, Journal of Archaeological Science , and Britannia: A journal of Romano-British and kindred studies .&nbsp; With a mere 1.68% of its journals earning a A* ranking, Archaeology ranked 6th lowest among the disciplines listed. When you control for disciplines with fewer than 100 journals, it ranks 4th behind only Social Work, Zoology, and Geology.&nbsp; To make up for this, just under 20% of archaeology journals received an A ranking and this places the field in the top 10 of fields with more than 100 journals between Historical Studies and Political Science. 42% of archaeology journals received a B

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ranking placing the field in the top 5 of disciplines. Relatively few archaeology journals received a C ranking. It ranked in the bottom 5 of disciplines with C ranked journals at 36%. Studies in Creative Arts and Writing found a stunning 86% of this fields journals received a C ranking and 77% of Zoology journals. <p align="left">First, whether one buys into the logic of these rankings or not, I think the distribution of journals in the field reflects more or less my impression of the quality and character of journals in the field. The disciplinary divisions in archaeology ensure that we produce very few A* journals that are universally recognized as high quality outlets for publications by every scholar identifying oneself as an archaeology. The significant quantity of A and B ranked journals most likely represents the fragmentation of the field into thriving and competitive subfields which, in turn, produce good quality journals for their constituencies. Hesperia and the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology received A rankings, the International Journal of Historical Archaeology received a B. An important journal (to me) as the Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus earned a C ranking which considering its regional scope and sometimes uneven quality of submission seemed fair, although in my field the RDAC is still an important journal of record for archaeologists working on the island. <p align="left">Of course, the disturbing thing for someone in the field of archaeology is that, if the day would come when we pitted against our colleagues in other fields and judged by the number of publications in A* journals, archaeologists might well come up short. Of course, access to A* would be mitigated by the number of publishing scholars in a profession, the rater of publication, and the number of articles published by each journal annually.&nbsp; At the same time, it is curious that some fields like Biological Sciences (16), Microbiology (10), and Cultural Studies (13) could find 10% of their journals ranked A* whereas archaeology would find only 1.68% (5).&nbsp; (My poor colleagues in Social Work have only 1 journal of 112 ranked A*!).

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-3/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 13 May 2011 12:40:35 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=514</guid> Grading final papers and exams has severely cut back on my browsing and reading time, but I can offer a few quick hits and varia: If you don't check out Teaching Thursday regularly, you really should. The recent reflections offered by <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/category/first-year-reflections/">first year</a> and s<a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/second-year-reflection/">econd year faculty</a> are really interesting little case studies into the start of an academic career. <a href="http://www2.und.edu/our/uletter/?p=14092">This is kind of a big deal</a> for me... Aside from the fact that my blog does not do any of these things, <a href="http://kottke.org/11/05/three-step-dance">this is a great model for how to write a blog</a>. <a href="http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/now-share-google-docs-and-googlecalendars/">Being able to integrate Google Docs into Wordpress.com blogs might open up some interesting possibilities</a>. Apparently, <a href="http://us.lifehacker.com/5798202/the-cognitive-cost-of-doing-things">doing stuff, is hard work</a>. <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/last-typewriter-factory-in-theworld-shuts-its-doors/237838/">Hearing that the Godrej and Boyce typewriter factory in India was to close</a>, rekindled my interest in typewriters. In fact, I dusted off my <a href="http://machinesoflovinggrace.com/large/SCSterling59grn.jpg">Smith Corona Sterling</a> and ordered new ribbons for it. I also wrote an email to Godrej and Boyce asking if I could buy one. I received a response yesterday saying more information will come soon! <a href="http://dribbble.com/">Dribble is pretty cool</a>. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/lists-and-ranking-of-archaeologyjournals/">My post yesterday was the among the most popular posts </a>I have ever posted on this blog (after only 24 hours).UPDATE: Now I know why. <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/JenHoward/status/68726892768923648">The author of the </a> <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/JenHoward/status/68726892768923648">Chronicle </a> <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/JenHoward/status/68726892768923648">article Tweeted my blog post</a> and offered some comments. HT to <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2011/05/argentine-portuguese-and-greeks1923.html">Kostis Kourelis</a> for linking to the <a href="http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/">National Jukebox</a>. This documentary on <a href="http://www.fireinbabylon.com/synopsis.html">the West Indian Cricket Teams of the late 1970s and 1980s looks pretty cool</a>. <a href="http://www.fireinbabylon.com/trailer.html">Here's the trailer</a>. (<a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/west-indies-v-pakistan2011/engine/current/match/489218.html">or at least looks much cooler than thi</a>s). What I am reading (other than a stack of final papers): <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g934406910">World Archaeology</a> <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g934406910"> Special Volume on Postcolonialism </a>43.1 (2011). (HT Dimitri Nakassis) What I am listening to: Burning Spear, Marcus Garvey and Hail H.I.M. ; Dub Colossus, A Town Called Addis.

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<title>Postcolonial Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/postcolonialarchaeology/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 16 May 2011 13:30:34 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=518</guid> Last week, <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g934406910">World Archaeology</a> published a volume dedicated to exploring recent trends in the intersection of postcolonialism (and postcolonial studies) and archaeology. Peter van Dommelen edited the volume. Dimitri Nakassis brought the volume to my attention. I have recently been contemplating a short article on postcolonialism and Byzantine Archaeology. The volume was a significant help in assessing some recent trends in the field. 1. Reassessing Hybridity. The volume featured a number of articles that sought to re-position the concept of hybridity within the discourse of archaeology. Homi Bhabha's use of the term brought it into vogue in the mid-1990s, but few within the archaeological (or even historical) community have been able to use the term successfully to understand the process of cultural interaction. In fact, the worst uses of the term have merely reified long-standing notions of cultural (bolstered by typological) essentialism. In this simplistic appraisal, two distinct cultures come into contact a hybrid Alicia Jimenez study of Iron Age sculpture in southern Iberia introduces Bakhtin's ideas of heteroglossia and Bhabha's idea of "third space" to take the notion of the hybrid from the realm of cultural product to the time and process of cultural production. This process of communication that relies upon multiple discursive positions within a single object presents a profoundly destabilizing event that (in the end) establishes the act of viewing as a subversive to essentialized culture or types. By moving the hybrid from the object itself to the process of cultural production in which the object is a part, archaeologists are again called to question the fetishization of the object and recognize the archaeological context as a vital for understanding the past in a meaningful way. 2. Time and Periodization. Periodization schemes are among the most sacred and more disturbing aspects of archaeology as a discipline. Replete with strange bias and remarkable utility, the ability to group objects and events to particular periods has deep roots in a range of historical structures developed in the West. The intersection of periodization schemes and teleological understandings of the past has continued to influence the way that we understand broad cultural, social, economic, and political trends playing out in history and archaeology. (As someone who studies Late Antiquity, I am particularly sensitive to the institutional problems associated with our current view of periodization that continues to regard later forms as decaying forms once pure cultures.) Like the critique of hybridity, Darryl Wilkinson's article "The Apartheid of Antiquity" places the intellectual and institutional division between pre-historic times and classical antiquity proper within a historical context and deeply embedded in the realization of archaeology (and anthropology) as scientific disciplines. Classical antiquity included the cultural products of our common ancestors, whereas prehistorical times reveals the "other" susceptible to scientific methods and inquiry. Byzantine Archaeology has the advantages of falling outside of the traditional periodization schemes both as "other" and as analogous to "Medieval" archaeology in the west. This dual position - at least among most practitioners of Byzantine archaeology in a Western European or American academic setting - allows Byzantine Archaeology to call into question the teleological assumptions which form the basis of the Middle Ages in the west (although the shadow of Gibbon's Decline and Fall continues to loom large) and to offer the study of Byzantium a critique of the Orientalist Other. The hybridized position of Byzantium at the fringes of "our" Middle Ages and the ahistorical space of the Orient suggests at its potential to destabilize ossified understanding of the West. 3. Maps and Practice. There continues to be a clear interest in the way in which mapping and planning creates colonial space. Jeff Oliver's description of mapping colonial space in the Pacific Northwest, "On mapping and its afterlife: unfolding landscapes in northwestern North America" showed how even the scientific process of mapping engaged fully with the hybridized practices of colonial

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engagement. Marcia Bianchi Villelli article on the archaeology of the short-lived, planned settlement of Floridablanca in Patagonia likewise showed how even the most administratively and institutionally regimented spaces could reveal the irregular signs of practice that subvert and challenge the idea of a singular colonial experience. As archaeology is both based on mapping and consistently interested in spatial structure, these two articles provide useful challenges to the notion that even the most scientifically conceived map represents real space (or even a singular concept of space) and that it is possible to read the function space without considering the tension presented by practice. 4. Violence. The most chilling article in the volume was Gonzalez-Ruibal, Sahel, and Vila's "A Social Archaeology of Colonial War in Ethiopia" which explored the cave of Zeret where Italian troops massacred a large guerrilla group during the efforts to pacify Ethiopia in 1939. The report on the work to document the cave shelter when the guerrilla group holed up revealed the efforts of the members of this group to maintain some form of social normalcy despite their somewhat desperate conditions. From a postcolonial perspective, it reminds us of the role archaeology can play in revealing the violence of the colonial encounter.

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<title>Three More Observations on the Spring Semester</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/three-moreobservations-on-the-spring-semester/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 17 May 2011 14:10:52 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=521</guid> Our grades are due at noon today, and my gaze is rapidly turning toward summer travel and research. Before I leave this semester behind, I thought I might reflect a bit more on the past semester. I tried some new things this year, articulated my approach to some teaching techniques a bit more clearly, and ran another class for the second time using identical material and formats. 1. By the numbers. In my online History 101: Western Civilization class, I assign 3 short papers (10001500 words). One paper is paper that explores a particular primary source, one deals with a primary source in the context of assessing diversity within pre-industrial society, and there is one cumulative paper due either at the midpoint of the semester or at the end of the semester. With the exception of the first cumulative paper, there are no deadlines prior to the end of the semester. The papers as associated with other course material divided according to week across the entire semester. With no firm deadlines, however, the student is free to review the material from each week the best way that they see fit over the course of the semester. Comparing the papers that student select over the course of the semester shows an interesting trend. In the AU2010 course students tended to write papers from material that appeared at the end of course. The penultimate primary source paper and diversity paper were the most popular papers for students the write. For the spring semester the trend was inverted. The second primary source paper and second diversity paper were the most popular by roughly the same margins. In fact, in the Spring semester, the first primary source paper and diversity paper were almost exactly as popular as the final primary source paper and diversity paper in the fall. The most popular paper by far is always the final cumulative paper which 70% of the students select over the other three diversity papers. Here's a chart to prove it: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Papers101.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/papers101.jpg" border="0" alt="Papers101" width="450" height="293" /> What can explain this chart? The late autumn semester and early spring semester are cold and maybe the students feel more motivated to stay inside and work through some of the assignments for their online History 101 course. 2. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/practicing-preparedprocrastination/">Practicing Prepared Procrastination</a>. I blogged on my novel "live fire" technique for teaching my midlevel introduction to historical methods course, History 240: The Historians' Craft. This involves, compressing the development and writing of a research prospectus into the final 6 weeks of the semester. It is designed to be intense and to complement the students tendency to procrastinate on major assignments while teaching them how to approach research in a more systematic and efficient way. While this method was particularly semester the previous three semesters, this spring it was a near disaster. The quality of papers was lower than ever before, attendance was poor during the intensive final 6 weeks of the course. Even basic mechanics of the course - like properly formatted footnotes seemed to elude my students and a number of students failed to turn in a satisfactory final assignment entirely. This led me to reflect on whether such an intensive program was worth the potential collateral damage. On a long walk with my wife, I began to back track and consider ways to stretch out the 6-week paper writing bootcamp. I imagined pushing the starting date for the research and paper writing section of the class earlier, I considered adding some mandatory quizzes of basic skills at the end semester, and I even considered scrapping the entire enterprise and going to a more deliberate and measured approach to teaching research and paper writing. I was not comfortable seeing students struggle and even fail to manage the assignment. After all, the weather in the spring was getting warmer, graduation, Spring Fest, and other exciting activities vied for attention with coursework, and the cumulative stress of a

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long year was taking its toll on attention and energies. As I considered revising the course, I also began to wonder whether a student's failure to complete an assignment was necessarily a negative outcome for the class. While I would never consider it an optimal outcome, I began to wonder whether failing to complete an assignment successfully is the kind of outcome that sometimes motivates a student to engage material more systematically in the future. I have long felt that teaching research methods in some way depends on a student believing that not only is the project possible, but that the skills you provide in the class will make it possible to complete the project in the best possible way. A negative outcome could erode this trust, or reinforce the need for a student to follow a set of guidelines. 3. Historians and the Archive. In <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/teaching-graduate-historiography-a-finalsyllabus/">my graduate historiography class</a>, I introduced a new assignment this semester. Since the course is meant to be reflective as much as it is designed to communicate a set body of content, I decided to introduce a more reflective type of assignment for the course. Instead of the standard series of book reviews or a synthetic paper, I asked the students to maintain a reading journal all semester. This journal then became the basis for the final paper. In this paper, I asked the students to consider their reading journal to be an archive and for them to write a paper analyzing this archive in some way. Like any archival research, I made it clear that they could bring in additional texts to help them understand their archive and they could, of course, introduce other complementary primary source materials. The results of this assignment were fairly uneven. The most striking thing was that students struggled to see their own work as an archive. There was an overwhelming desire to correct the archive (which had to be submitted prior to our in-class discussions of the texts). I let them do this, of course, provided that they marked out clearly what was original and what was added later. Their desire to "fix" the Archive represented either an amazingly sophisticated notion of what the archive is - a fluid body of texts that can only ever exists in a corrected present, or a fairly simplistic desire the present the past in purified state cleansed of any inaccuracies or outliers. The students did not quite have the distance from their own work to subject it to the kind of rigorous historical analysis that they would apply to texts in a more traditional historical archive. Like reflecting on teaching, there is always difficult (impossible?) to see our own past in outside of pressures of the present.

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<title>Building a Small Digital Archive</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/building-a-smalldigital-archive/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 18 May 2011 14:21:12 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=524</guid> Over this past semester, I worked with a couple public history graduate students <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/digital-history-practicum-north-dakotahistory-goes-digital/">to build a small digital archive of M.A. theses produced by students at the University of North Dakota during the first half of the 20th century</a>. Their work concentrated primarily on theses focusing on aspects of North Dakota history. Over the course of the semester the students scanned around 25 theses and uploaded them to an <a href="http://nodakhistory.omeka.net/">Omeka.net site</a>. This group of theses represent the first wave of graduate students in the departments of History and the School of Education. Their reflected the efforts of <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/DHChapter_2.html">Orin G. Libby</a> to develop a solid graduate program in the Department of History at UND and many of these works contributed to Elwyn Robinson's seminal <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_North_Dakota_(book)">History of North Dakota</a> . As a final part of the project, we worked to create an online exhibit of these theses. <a href="http://nodakhistory.omeka.net/exhibits/show/nodaktheses">Check it out here</a>. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ThesisExhibit.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/thesisexhibit.jpg" border="0" alt="ThesisExhibit" width="450" height="387" />

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<title>Old and New Technologies</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/old-and-newtechnologies/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 19 May 2011 09:00:57 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=527</guid> Smith-Corona Sterling Portable Typewriter. Ca. 1955. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="SmithCoronaSterling.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/smithcoronasterling.jpg" alt="SmithCoronaSterling" width="450" height="269" border="0" />

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/friday-varia-and-quickhits-13/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 20 May 2011 12:00:18 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=531</guid> A grey Friday ushers in a rainy weekend after a beautiful week. Here are some predictably random quick hits and varia: It's great to know that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has <a href="http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp">a plan for a (or the?) zombie apocalypse</a>. <a href="http://und.edu/features/2011/05/teaching-thursday.cfm">Teaching Thursday made another appearance on the University of North Dakota's home page</a>. It's no where near as cool as <a href="http://library.und.edu/digital/writers-conference/1974/">the recently released footage of the Beat Writers at the UND Writers Conference in 1974</a>. (<a href="http://und.edu/features/2011/05/beat-generation-footage.cfm">Here's the story</a>). <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/19/how-to-look-punk-a-m.html">Here's a great guide</a>, if you find yourself really really needing to look punk (via Boing Boing). <a href="http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2011/05/your-secret-weapon-for-standout-social-mediasuccess/">This short article argues</a> that responsiveness is the key to using social media successfully in business. I wonder how this carries over to higher education applications? <a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/203734/">Some North Dakotiana</a>. The newest project by UND (M.A.) and PKAP alumnus Joe Patrow: <a href="http://www.dga.org/Craft/VisualHistory.aspx">The Directors Guild of America Visual History Project</a>. Pretty fantastic stuff! <a href="http://vimeo.com/23499919">A full version of </a> <a href="http://vimeo.com/23499919">Reality 86'd </a> <a href="http://vimeo.com/23499919">which documented Black Flag's final tour</a>. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0714861030/">A taxonomy of office chairs</a>. After months of wrangling over dates, contract details, and having his people call my people, it's now official that (fellow blogger and founder of the Punk Archaeology Movement), <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>, will be the 2011 Cyprus Research Fund lecturer. What I'm reading: R. Gastman and C. Neelon, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/history-ofamerican-graffiti/oclc/526057591">The History of American Graffiti.</a> New York 2010 (via Kostis Kourelis) What I'm listening to: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings (after a fantastic concert in Fargo on Wednesday night!

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<title>Twitter, Curation, and the UnMuseum</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/twitter-curation-andthe-unmuseum/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2011 13:00:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/twitter-curation-and-theunmuseum/</guid> This past semester we enjoyed a visit from a very well-regarded scholar and museum direct. In a seminar with faculty and graduate students on public history, he commented that he could not quite recognize the scholarly value of Twitter. At this comment, my colleagues and students looked over at me, a relatively well-known Twitter user in my department, and expected me to defend the service as a medium for scholarly debate. I was caught off-guard a bit and fumbled around before responding that I rarely saw genuine scholarly debates on Twitter, but often used it as a way to communicate with my academic colleagues. While I stand by this answer, I began recently to think of the role of Twitter in curating the web. A colleague asked me recently to recommend a good RSS reader. I realized that I never use my RSS reader any long and rely on my Twitter feed to point out articles, blog-posts, and other web content of interest.&nbsp; I was reflecting on this while I was enjoying Gustmans and Neelons <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/history-of-americangraffiti/oclc/526057591"> The History of American Graffiti </a> (New York 2010). The authors of this work comment that the difficulty involved in documenting the history of graffiti is that as a tremendously ephemeral form of public art, curation practices were essentially non-existent. When <a href="http://www.moca.org/museum/exhibitiondetail.php?id=443">exhibits of graffiti appears in major galleries or museums</a>, the art itself is often removed quite radically from its original context (and I know this can be argued for almost all art in museums). Not only is the art documented in such a way to make it permanent, but it is protected from the vagaries of time, rival artist, and other forms of sanction. The tension between the subversive character of graffiti and its celebration by the cultural elite, is well-known. Thinking about this on my walk home one day this past week, got me to consider how we could use Twitter to develop a curated space of in situ graffiti art.&nbsp; My community of Grand Forks, is hardly known for its street art, although the bustling rail yard does provide a link between the town and the wider world of graffiti production. I began to consider, nevertheless, how taking geolocated photographs of graffiti with time stamps and then circulating these photographs on Twitter could begin to produce a virtual gallery of local street art. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/gfgf.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:block;float:none;margin-left:auto;border-top:0;margin-right:auto;borderright:0;padding-top:0;" title="GFGF" border="0" alt="GFGF" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/gfgf_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="754"></a> Unlike the museum, where the curator produces the exhibits for the masses, using Twitter to curate street art would, in effect, rely upon the community to curate art for the community. A smart-phone and a Twitter application is all that someone would need to contribute to the gallery of local art. Contributing to the gallery would be as easy as including a hashtag on the Tweet and a link to a photograph which would then become part of an expanding and rotating collection. The lack of permanence of Tweets could be a concern for the creation of an archive, but the lack of permanence of individual Tweets has a nice parallel with the lack of permanence of most of the street art. In short, social media services like Twitter can provide a medium to curate an ever changing collection of graffiti art with essentially off-the-shelf tools. Of course, none of this is a revelation to followers of social media trends. At the same time, it certainly feels like we have not yet realized the potential for something like Twitter to curate more than just the space of the internet. The proliferation of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/non-places-introduction-to-an-anthropology-ofsupermodernity/oclc/31737839">non-places</a> which must include real space of the physical environment as well as the virtual spaces of the internet provides ample reason to reconsider the way in

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<title>Summer Cyprus Reading List</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/summer-cyprusreading-list/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 24 May 2011 05:15:24 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/summer-cyprus-readinglist/</guid> My summer will be broken in half this year with the first five weeks in Cyprus and the second part of the summer in beautiful Grand Forks.&nbsp; So it makes sense to break my summer reading list in half as well. Ill admit that I am somewhat embarrassed by some of my goof-off reading. Im still trying to figure out if cyber-punk goes beyond William Gibson. I managed half of Neal Stevensons <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age"> Diamond Age or A Young Ladies Illustrated Primer </a> (1995). I also brought along Bruce Sterlings <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/distraction-a-novel/oclc/39182210"> Distraction </a> (1998).&nbsp; I also found a copy of George Effingers <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/whengravity-fails/oclc/13860315"> When Gravity Fails </a> (1987) figuring it never hurt to have some Orientalism in my cyberpunk. To prove that I havent given up completely, I also plan to read A. Bonniers dissertation: &nbsp; <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/harbours-and-hinterlandslandscape-site-patterns-and-coast-hinterland-interconnections-by-the-corinthian-gulf-c-600-300bc/oclc/705864544"> Harbours and Hinterlands: Landscape, Site Patterns, and Coast-Hinterland Interconnections by the Corinthian Gulf c. 600-300 B.C. </a> (2010). Ill also work my way through the most recent volume of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology which is called <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/1092-7697/15/2/">Going Places: The Archaeology of Travel and Tourism</a> (2011). Mostly, I plan to read drafts of chapters for the Pyla- Koutsopetria Archaeological Project monograph that is now well underway. And of course, Ill be reading the <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/category/polis/">Polis Notebooks</a> and trying to make sense to the complex remains of a church at the site called EF2.

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<title>Cypriot Contrasts</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/cypriotcontrasts/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 25 May 2011 03:31:18 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/cypriot-contrasts/</guid> Larnaka is a brilliant example of a postcolonial town. The intersection of tourism and the postcolonial identity of Cypriot culture has created wondrous juxtapositions. An island themed restaurant with a marketing tie in to Havana club shares a block with a sushi bar. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/transnationalism2.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Transnationalism2" border="0" alt="Transnationalism2" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/transnationalism2_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a> <p align="left">Goodys and Flocafe, Greek chains, shares a block with Starbucks and McDonalds. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/transnationalism1.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Transnationalism1" border="0" alt="Transnationalism1" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/transnationalism1_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a> <p align="left">Falafel and Lebanese food on a side street: <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/middleeast.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="MiddleEast" border="0" alt="MiddleEast" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/middleeast_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="313"></a> <p align="left">A caf with Coca-Cola advertising fronting one of the few remaining 19th-century, waterfront mansions. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/diachronia.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Diachronia" border="0" alt="Diachronia" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/diachronia_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a> <p align="left">American steaks. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/america.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="America" border="0" alt="America" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/america_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a> <p align="left">And just in case you need a juice, you have options: <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/juice.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Juice" border="0" alt="Juice" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/juice_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a>

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<title>Pottery Problems at Pyla-Koutsopetria</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/pottery-problems-atpyla-koutsopetria/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 26 May 2011 13:38:41 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/pottery-problems-at-pylakoutsopetria/</guid> One of the most vexing issues that we faced this winter as we tried to write up the excavation results we discovered a little handful of Roman pottery that was forcing us to re-consider the chronology of the architecture on Vigla. A number of the sherds came from foundation or fill deposits which are essential for dating architecture and occupation levels at the site. We decided to pull these artifacts and check out identification of them. We have about 13,000 lots of pottery so this was looking like a pretty big task.&nbsp; At the same time, we recognized that even a handful of sherds in a sensitive context could provide a date for the entire building. In fact, the construction style of the walls on Vigla provides no indication of the date for the structures there. So we pulled all the possible Roman pottery from the stratigraphic units excavated on Vigla. Most of it was coarse and utility wares and, more importantly, most of it could easily date as early as the Hellenistic era. Even the two pieces of fineware ended up being relatively less diagnostic than our original readings would indicate. While, on the one hand, this might sound like reading our pottery to match our historical chronology, on the other hand, it was exciting to begin the second order analysis of our own material. In other words, we were able to formulate new research questions on the basis of our excavations and mine our own material for answers. At the end of the day, we were able to honestly eliminate Roman outliers from the half dozen problematic layers.

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<title>Archaeology in Motion</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/archaeology-inmotion/</link> <pubDate>Sat, 28 May 2011 04:52:24 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/archaeology-inmotion/</guid> Since coming to Larnaka almost 10 years ago, Ive been fascinated by the traffic patterns in an intersection immediately outside our hotel. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/larnaka1sm.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;borderwidth:0;" title="Larnaka1sm" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/larnaka1sm_thumb.jpg" alt="Larnaka1sm" width="454" height="306" border="0" /></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/larnaka2sm.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;borderwidth:0;" title="Larnaka2sm" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/larnaka2sm_thumb.jpg" alt="Larnaka2sm" width="454" height="306" border="0" /></a> <p align="left">Its a kind of a four way intersection, but there are no traffic signals or marks on the road to give drivers an indication of where to position their cars to make their plans understood. Combined with the challenge of driving on the left side of the road, this intersection can be terrifying to the novice American driver in Cyprus. In the past, when the traffic was particular chaotic, Ive had experienced drivers simply despair and abandon their cars wedged in some precarious position and pinned there by the relentless flow of traffic. <p align="left">Ive tried to photograph this intersection in the past with almost no luck. There is simply no way to document the swirling maelstrom (or elegant dance) of cars, pedestrians, scooters, motorbikes, busses and trucks as they flow through this space. I am sure that <a href="http://www.archaeology.org/0811/etc/conversation.html">the patterns of activity have left marks</a>, but even these marks do not capture the movement itself. With photography, we can produce the blurred motion of cars through the intersection during the day, and this gets us halfway to capturing real motion in a static space. The smudges of color captured during a 1 second exposure on an overcast day are indecipherable except as moving vehicles. <p align="left">It is at night, when I can set set the exposure to 30 seconds, that the intersection begins to come to life. The contrails left by the cars bring to life the array of patterns possible through the intersect. The photo below is a combination of 7 30 second exposures (or about 3:30 of activity). <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/intersectionnight1.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;borderwidth:0;" title="IntersectionNight1" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/intersectionnight1_thumb.jpg" alt="IntersectionNight1" width="454" height="306" border="0" /></a> <p align="left"><strong>UPDATE: You can compare this to a video shot by my collaborator Scott Moore who has moved his blog <a href="http://ancienthistoryramblings.wordpress.com/">here. Click through for Scott Moore awesomeness</a>. <p align="left">[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMLrxWWOVQ]

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<title>Basket Handles like a Longaberger Party</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/basket-handles-like-alongaberger-party/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 30 May 2011 03:57:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/basket-handles-like-alongaberger-party/</guid> If Nelly can have so many keys you'd think I was valet parking, we can have so many basket handles, its like a <a href="http://www.longaberger.com/">Longaberger party</a>. (As most people know, there aint no party like a Longaberger party) Basket handles come from a type of amphora dating from the Cypro-Archaic to the Hellenistic period. We found numerous examples in the survey, which makes sense since our study area showed <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/preliminary-analysis-of-pylakoustopetria-archaeological-data-or-thinking-out-loud-4/">sustained activity from the Iron Age into the Hellenistic period</a>. The basket handles found in stratigraphic context come from our work on <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/the-site-of-pyla-vigla-on-cyprus/">the site of Vigla</a> and appear to date to the Hellenistic period. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bh2.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border-width:0;" title="BH2" border="0" alt="BH2" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bh2_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="675"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bh3.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border-width:0;" title="BH3" border="0" alt="BH3" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bh3_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="484"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bh4.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border-width:0;" title="BH4" border="0" alt="BH4" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bh4_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="441"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bh5.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border-width:0;" title="BH5" border="0" alt="BH5" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bh5_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="837"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bh1.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border-width:0;" title="BH1" border="0" alt="BH1" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bh1_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="603"></a> Ive spent time preparing illustrations by Matt Dalton and Brandon Olson for publication over the weekend. Were back to the museum for the first half of the week and then off to <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/category/polis/">Polis</a> for the month of June.&nbsp; For more on our PKAP and Polis adventures be sure <a href="http://ancienthistoryramblings.wordpress.com/">to check out my colleague Scott Moores blog</a>.

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<title>The Poor Little Sherd</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/the-poor-littlesherd/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 31 May 2011 03:46:32 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/the-poor-littlesherd/</guid> Scott and I tell <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/telling-stories-witharchaeology/">the story</a> of one little sherds abrupt rise to glory and fame and its just as sudden crash.&nbsp; Its like <a href="http://www.vh1.com/shows/behind_the_music/series.jhtml">VH-1s Behind the Music</a>, except its about a potsherd. Going through the finds collected over 9 years of work at the site of Pyla-Koutsopetria has reminded us of so many stories spun from the finds on the project. While many of these stories involved our imaginings of the history of the site, just as many reminded us of our field work and the process of constructing a historical narrative. Thanks to Scott for providing us with the great little Kodak camera and keeping us from re-dating a building to the Byzantine period. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfmHwT-lqco]

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<title>Archaeology of Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/archaeology-ofarchaeology/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:46:20 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/archaeology-ofarchaeology/</guid> The beginning of a field season is perhaps the best time to consider the link between archaeology and tourism. A recent issue of the <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/lrq311148405/"> International Journal of Historical Archaeology does just that</a>, and it makes clear the close link between the modern developments of tourism and archaeology. The desire to know the past through careful, firsthand observation of the remains of the past, is deeply tied to epistemological develops associated with the rise of modernity. Authenticity emerges from the accurate representation of the real. At the same time, both tourism and archaeology understood the real as existing within fairly circumscribed limits. Just as tourism hid the reality of the support systems that allowed the authentic past to be available for the casual tourist to experience. Archaeology drew upon middle class faith in positivist, scientific knowledge to support the construction of past realities. The messy details of archaeological epistemologies were hidden from view behind authoritative publications that grounded the past in neatly organized typologies. The articles in the IJHA volume work to use archaeology to disclose the other side of tourism. They focus on the elusive character of authenticity and the space behind the neat faade presented to the visitor to a tourist attraction, hotel, or historical site. It struck me as strange, however, that the archaeologists never turned their critical gaze on their own part in the tourism industry or the authenticity industry. Archaeology, after all, leaves behind its own traces in the landscape, its own archaeological record. Excavation not only removes and documents layers but also leaves behind traces of its own practices, social organization, and epistemological expectations. The veil that archaeology has tended to draw over its own methods and procedures has show the socially imposed limits of its own gaze. For example, just as archaeology has revealed the difficult conditions of the minorities and lower class individuals and families who worked to create the tourist experiences in the US, they did not offer similar examinations of the living conditions of archaeological worker in, say, the Eastern Mediterranean or Middle East who worked to produce well-known, tourist and scholarly attractions that grace archaeology textbooks. Moreover, the remains of archaeological field camps, excavation houses, museums, and even the excavations themselves should reveal considerable evidence regarding the social organization of archaeological practice. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/archaeologyofarchaeology2.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border:0;" title="ArchaeologyofArchaeology2" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/archaeologyofarchaeology2_thumb.jpg" alt="ArchaeologyofArchaeology2" width="454" height="342" border="0" /></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/archaeologyofarchaeology1.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border:0;" title="ArchaeologyofArchaeology1" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/archaeologyofarchaeology1_thumb.jpg" alt="ArchaeologyofArchaeology1" width="454" height="342" border="0" /></a>

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Maybe these aspects of archaeology have been studied, but I cannot recall any specific examples. The yard outside the storerooms where we work is littered with the material necessary to conduct excavations and restore historical buildings. The space is surrounded by high walls and features secure storerooms well away from the exhibit space of the local museum. Surely the tools and this space present crucial evidence for the practices central to the production of antiquity in the modern world.

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<title>Goodbye, Larnaka</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/goodbyelarnaka/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 02 Jun 2011 15:17:47 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/goodbye-larnaka/</guid> Scott and I left Larnaka after a full day of work on Wednesday and were beginning to settle into our new digs in Polis and figure out how we can help the team here move closer to publication. We left the material from Pyla-Koutsopetria ready for the next shift of scholars to study. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/museumstuffinorder.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="MuseumStuffinOrder" border="0" alt="MuseumStuffinOrder" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/museumstuffinorder_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a> We also made a quick stop at the Panayia Chrysopolitissa. Its an important and typical Late Medieval (15th c?) church in Cyprus with its later, Italian-influenced tower, spoliated columns and basilican plan.&nbsp; The beautiful courtyard is an added bonus. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/pancwithpalms.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PanCwithPalms" border="0" alt="PanCwithPalms" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/pancwithpalms_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/pancfromsouth.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PanCfromSouth" border="0" alt="PanCfromSouth" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/pancfromsouth_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/spolia.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Spolia" border="0" alt="Spolia" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/spolia_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a>

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<title>Friday in Polis</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/friday-in-polis/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:41:28 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/friday-in-polis/</guid> <p align="left">We seem to work every day here at Polis, but with views like this (from our room), its hard not to feel like there is something good about a Friday. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/polisview.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PolisView" border="0" alt="PolisView" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/polisview_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/polisview2.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PolisView2" border="0" alt="PolisView2" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/polisview2_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="370"></a>

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<title>More (and better) on Basket Handle Amphora</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/more-and-better-onbasket-handle-amphora/</link> <pubDate>Sun, 05 Jun 2011 13:49:35 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/more-and-better-onbasket-handle-amphora/</guid> Our adventures with basket handles continued over the last few days at PylaKoutsopetria and <a href="http://ancienthistoryramblings.wordpress.com/">Scott Moore</a> and I recorded another clever video showing how we used spatial data from survey and excavation to develop a typology of <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/basket-handleslike-a-longaberger-party/">our vexing basket handled amphora</a>. We should be able to argue that traditional vertical stratigraphy that is artifacts found in secure places or contexts below the surface of the ground can inform our understanding of horizontal stratigraphy that is artifacts that are found in specific places across the surface of the landscape. While it is impossible to use horizontal or surface stratigraphy to make precise chronological arguments for artifacts, the appearance together of certain types of artifacts nevertheless represents a diachronic cultural phenomenon (albeit one that may well represent change over the course of centuries).&nbsp; Its exciting whenever it is possible to see patterns in the combination of excavated material with survey material. Check out our enthusiasm: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD7bsrVgKbQ]

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<title>Translating Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/translatingarchaeology/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:58:22 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/translatingarchaeology/</guid> Two ways of translating and visualizing archaeological relationships. The first is a Harris Matrix. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/draftharrismatrixef2.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;borderwidth:0;" title="DraftHarrisMatrixEF2" border="0" alt="DraftHarrisMatrixEF2" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/draftharrismatrixef2_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="171"></a> This is a 3D visualization of bodies in a cemetery: <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/cemetery_bodies.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;borderwidth:0;" title="Cemetery_Bodies" border="0" alt="Cemetery_Bodies" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/cemetery_bodies_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="184"></a> <p align="left">Ive been spending lots of quality time translating trench notebooks and plans into more easily understood and interpreted forms.

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<title>Job in Classics at University of North Dakota</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/job-in-classics-atuniversity-of-north-dakota/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Jun 2011 03:01:15 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/job-in-classics-atuniversity-of-north-dakota/</guid> My current employer is looking for a Classicist! Check out the job advertisement and please circulate it any interested candidate! Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of LanguagesClassics.<br>Ph.D. in hand by 8/11.<br>Evidence of college level teaching experience, and scholarly promise required. Specific area of research specialization is open. As the sole member in charge of Classics, applicants should be prepared to teach all levels of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies. We look for evidence of and dedication to successful beginning language instruction as well as an area of research that could serve as the basis for interdisciplinary contributions to Arts &amp; Sciences curricula. Interest in program building is essential. The ability to make creative use of information technology is also a desirable quality. Active publication record required for tenure and promotion. Send letter of application, current CV, 3 letters of recommendation and unofficial transcripts to: Dr. Sherrie Fleshman, Search Committee Chair<br>Dept. of Languages, Merrifield Hall Room 320<br>276 Centennial Drive Stop 8198<br>Grand Forks ND 58202-8198. Email to: sherrie.fleshman@und.edu.<br>Applications must be postmarked by July 7, 2011. The University of North Dakota is an EOAA employer. For more information about the Department, please visit our website: www.und.nodak.edu/dept/lang. Salary: $50,000 plus/year

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<title>Polis 2011 Doin' Work</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/polis-2011-doinwork/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 08 Jun 2011 13:46:22 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/polis-2011-doinwork/</guid> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/doinwork.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="DoinWork" border="0" alt="DoinWork" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/doinwork_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/pots2people.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Pots2People" border="0" alt="Pots2People" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/pots2people_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a>

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<title>Patrick Leigh Fermor</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/patrick-leighfermor/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 13 Jun 2011 02:28:40 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/patrick-leighfermor/</guid> Patrick Leigh Fermor died this weekend. I read <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/roumeli-travels-in-northern-greece/oclc/169188"> Roumeli </a> and <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/mani-travels-in-the-southernpeloponnese/oclc/61247198">Mani</a> on my first trips to Greece, and he helped me appreciate that it was good thing to be tourist, to take in local culture, and the consider the confluence between Greeces Modern, Ottoman, Byzantine, and Classical past. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/patrick-leigh-fermor-british-adventurerwriter-and-war-hero-dies-at-96/2011/06/10/AG5bfpQH_story.html">Heres a nice obituary</a>.

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<title>Pottery Reading</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/pottery-reading/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:29:44 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/pottery-reading/</guid> While Im mostly relegated to pre-sorting sherds, I do, nevertheless, spend lots of time with pottery and it begins to feel like this <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/potteryreading.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PotteryReading" border="0" alt="PotteryReading" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/potteryreading_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="342"></a>

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<title>Harmless, and very effective.</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/harmless-and-veryeffective/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:08:59 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=621</guid> Or, The Archaeology of Home, by Susan Caraher While Bill is working on projects in Cyprus this summer, I am holding down the fort at Walnut Street while we overhaul our bathroom. When you own an old house (ours in 1900), you never know what to expect when you open a wall or lift a floor. There is always a substantial amount of archaeology to be done, even in the home. We've found original thresholds where walls have been opened up, niches where walls were closed, brick surrounds for fire stacks that no longer exist, not to mention the cast iron Detroit Jewel that had been hoist up to the attic of all places. The bathroom really is a major project, taking the entire room back to studs. Our plumber rescued a couple of little treasures from the floor when he gutted the room last week. One is a coloring book with names of people (perhaps former owners of the home?) and the other is a well-preserved little bottle (sans lid, only) with an intact label. Indicative of "simpler" times, these magic tablets seems to cure everything. The label reads "Bell-ans for Indigestion. Pain, Flatulence, Nausea, Vertigo, Sour Stomach, Biliousness, Colic, Cramps, Distress from Overeating or Drinking. Harmless, Pleasant to Take and Very Effective." Mind you, it required up to 6 tablets in a dose to be very effective. It is always fun to glimpse the past through even the simplest of artifacts. Oh, and there are several Bell-ans left in the bottle if anyone is feeling a bilious attack coming on! <div class="mceTemp" style="text-align:center;"> [caption id="attachment_623" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Bell-ans for Indigestion"]<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/bell-ans-bottle.jpg"><img class="sizemedium wp-image-623 " title="bell-ans bottle" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/bell-ans-bottle.jpg?w=225" alt="" width="225" height="300" /></a>[/caption] [caption id="attachment_624" align="aligncenter" width="214" caption="Harmless and Very Effective"]<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/harmless-and-veryeffective.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-624 " title="harmless and very effective" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/harmless-and-very-effective.jpg?w=214" alt="" width="214" height="300" /></a>[/caption]

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<title>Gigapan-ed Basilica</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/gigapan-edbasilica/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:17:07 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/gigapan-edbasilica/</guid> The Gigapanda returneth. <a href="http://www.gigapan.org/profiles/18023/">Scott Moore (aka the Gigapanda)</a> and I began work on producing a Gigapan photograph of the basilica here at Polis that weve been working on. Our connection to the internets is too slow to upload the <a href="http://www.gigapan.org/profiles/18023/">Gigapan site</a>, so I can only offer a rather modest preview here. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/ef2basilicasmall.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="EF2BasilicaSmall" border="0" alt="EF2BasilicaSmall" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/ef2basilicasmall_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="92"></a>

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<title>Reconstructing Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/reconstructingarchaeology/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:57:17 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/reconstructingarchaeology/</guid> Most people imagine that archaeologist spend most of their time reconstructing the past. In fact, much of what archaeologists do when they are on-site is reconstructing the archaeology of the site. For example, this summer Ive been working with a team to reconstruct the the excavation of a basilica style church in Polis in Cyprus. To do this we are drawing on five standard sources for archaeological research. 1. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/more-onpolis-notebooks/">The excavation notebooks</a>.&nbsp; There are the basic descriptions of the archaeology prepared by the trench supervisors. They are the primary sources for understanding the relationship between various events which caused the building to become an archaeological site.&nbsp; The notebooks describe both the process of excavation and the remains excavated.&nbsp; The notebooks provide evidence for context.&nbsp; In other words, they explain how objects, buildings, and soil came into relationship with each other. 2. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/pottery-reading/">Finds</a>. The finds particularly ceramics help us to provide the date for the various depositional events or contexts. These events could be the building of a particular wall or the paving of a space with a mortar floor or the robbing of the stones from a wall or the collapse of a roof which buried objects below the rubble. 3. Plans. Careful excavators do more than simply describe their excavation, but they also draw plans of what they see. At Polis, they also had the services of some talented architects who prepared careful drawings of the results of the excavation after each season. Part of the challenge is correlating the daily trench plans with the final plans.&nbsp; Daily plans often show features or deposits that the excavators remove before the final plans can be prepared. I spend hours each day flipping between daily trench drawings and the final plans trying to understand the evolution of the site and the relationship between features that remain visible and those excavated away. 4. Photographs. To help with this is a collection of slides and photographs. These slides complement the plans and trench drawings and can often provide information on relationships that the excavators did not document in their notebooks and drawing. Incidental details like the way two walls bond or the extent of a floor can be gleaned from photographs. 5. Finally, when all else fails, I can go and look at the site! Its a bit overgrown right now, so its difficult to see much in the way of detail, but like the photographs there are occasionally details of the site that excavators have missed or two decades of winter rains have revealed <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/polisnave.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PolisNave" border="0" alt="PolisNave" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/polisnave_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a>

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<title>A Day Off in Polis</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/a-day-off-inpolis/</link> <pubDate>Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:47:37 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/aday-off-in-polis/</guid> My Grandfather called days like this a <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/busman%27s_holiday">bus-drivers holiday</a>.&nbsp; <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/khrysochouvalley3.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="KhrysochouValley3" border="0" alt="KhrysochouValley3" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/khrysochouvalley3_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/mosque.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Mosque" border="0" alt="Mosque" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/mosque_thumb.jpg" width="306" height="454"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/churchpalms.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="ChurchPalms" border="0" alt="ChurchPalms" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/churchpalms_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> <p align="center"> <p align="center"> <p align="center"> <p align="center"> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/khrysochouvalley2.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="KhrysochouValley2" border="0" alt="KhrysochouValley2" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/khrysochouvalley2_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/officialgreeter.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="OfficialGreeter" border="0" alt="OfficialGreeter" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/officialgreeter_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/khrysochouvalley.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="KhrysochouValley" border="0" alt="KhrysochouValley" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/khrysochouvalley_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> <p align="center"> <p align="center"> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/abandonedvillage.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="AbandonedVillage" border="0" alt="AbandonedVillage" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/abandonedvillage_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a>

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<title>Excavating Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/excavatingarchaeology/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:12:49 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/excavatingarchaeology/</guid> There is a particular kind of reflection that comes from reading a notebook description about the excavation of a benchmark set by a previous years excavators or architects. <blockquote> In the area around benchmark 6" soil is dark brown and moist. Digging reveal the large fragments of an earlier benchmark - L6 or 6' - immediately to the west of BM 6'" </blockquote>

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<title>Emba</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/emba/</link> <pubDate>Sun, 26 Jun 2011 09:20:56 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/emba/</guid> Its Sunday, and were hard at work wrapping up our work at the basilica of E.F2 in Polis. But since Ive been silent for a while, heres a snazzy photo of the church at Emba. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/emba.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Emba" border="0" alt="Emba" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/emba_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> More soon! I promise!

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<title>Lab Work</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/lab-work/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jun 2011 05:01:18 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/lab-work/</guid> The storeroom of an archaeological project is an archive. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/labwork2.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="LabWork2" border="0" alt="LabWork2" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/labwork2_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/labwork1.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="LabWork1" border="0" alt="LabWork1" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/labwork1_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="675"></a>

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<title>The Sling Pellets of Vigla</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/the-sling-pellets-ofvigla/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:39:28 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/the-sling-pellets-ofvigla/</guid> Brandon Olson, a specialist in Hellenistic and Early Roman pottery and military equipment explains the significance of the military finds from the Hellenistic military site of <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/51704693/A-Report-on-the-Excavations-at-Pyla-Vigla2011">Vigla</a>.&nbsp; We surveyed and excavated this site as part of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeoligical Project and Bradon who worked on the site and received his M.A. in History from the University of North Dakota, has returned to work on the publication of the metal objects discovered over the course of excavation. &nbsp; <div style="width:448px;display:block;float:none;marginleft:auto;margin-right:auto;padding:0;" id="scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFCDD9C333F4C5D:c2154a6b-5599-4745-b28e-59d28de41132" class="wlWriterEditableSmartContent"><div>[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUvBb5H YSfQ&amp;w=448&amp;h=252&amp;hd=1]</div></div>

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<title>Five things that I learned in Cyprus this summer</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/five-things-that-ilearned-in-cyprus-this-summer/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:09:08 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/five-things-that-ilearned-in-cyprus-this-summer/</guid> I cant count how many fascinating things I encountered in Cyprus this summer, but five things stand out in my mind.&nbsp; I think I might develop these more fully over the next few weeks, but with our work here mostly done, my bags mostly packed, and my attention span pretty limited, I thought I might put together a quick list of thoughts. So, here they are: 1. Modular research designs beget modular publication designs. Weve had to rethink how we plan to publish the results of our work at the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project. From the very first year of the project, we set modest single season goals. As the project grew from a single season of work to almost 10 seasons of work, we expanded and adjusted these goals. We kept true to our basic research questions, increased our pool of evidence incrementally, and designed each season to make clear contributions to our questions. As a result, we will be able to publish a part of our project as a selfcontained and substantial contribution (the survey), leave part of our project for publication in the future (the results of excavations at two specific areas: Koutsopetria and Vigla), and cut part of our publication goals entirely (the Bronze Age material at Kokkinokremos) without jeopardizing the integrity of our work.&nbsp; While we came to our project as a group of fairly junior scholars (I was still a graduate student!) and this justified our tentative approach, I cant imagine designing a field project in any other way. The age of grandiose, multi-season field projects may be over. 2. Churches are not floor plans.&nbsp; I spent the last four weeks studying the architectural remains, plans, and excavation reports from the 6th-13th (?) c. basilica at the site of E.F2 at Polis. The church underwent an amazing series of modifications through its lifetime. The beautiful state plan prepared by the site architectures communicated only a tiny bit of the information that walk around the site can give. Looking at the relationship between walls, the extent of mortar, and the differences in various wall construction styles reminded me that buildings like this were dynamic living entities.&nbsp; The convention of depicting them as floor plans reduced the architecture to a static entity without history. Looking at the walls and floors careful returned the building to life. I also was fortunate enough to travel around the area and look at various standing churches which proudly displayed their own histories. These buildings like our basilica at E.F2 not only showed signs of their life as sacred Christian structures, but also revealed that another aspect of sanctity through the attention of formal archaeological and architecture study and restoration. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/church1.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="church1" border="0" alt="church1" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/church1_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/church2.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="church2" border="0" alt="church2" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/church2_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="675"></a> 3. Arches. When you do not have sources of marble on the island, arches often do just fine. I think that our church at E.F2 must have been framed with arches across its narthex and a dramatic south portico.. 4. Video is easy. Scott Moore and I have discovered that we can produce pretty decent video using inexpensive equipment and publish it over the YouTubes. How did it take us so long to understand this? Why dont more archaeological projects use the YouTubes to publicize our sites? Why are we talking about blogging (<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/blogging-and-

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peer-review/">here</a> and <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/more-onacademic-publishing-and-blogs/">here</a>) when video is so much more interesting?! Check out our antics <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/the-poor-little-sherd/">here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/more-and-better-on-basket-handleamphora/">here</a>, and <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/the-slingpellets-of-vigla/">here</a>. 5. The World Still Exists. The longer Im in academia, the more I have to face up to the reality that the world back home in Grand Forks, North Dakoty, at the University of North Dakota, in the realm of students, committees, and colleagues still exists when I go to Cyprus to do research. M.A. theses are submitted, committees meet, obligations (almost responsibilities) proliferate, students enroll, and all the other stuff happens when I am pondering archaeology, architecture, and arches. Who knew? And how do people manage this?

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<title>Fourth of July</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/fourth-of-july/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 04 Jul 2011 12:41:24 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/fourth-of-july/</guid> This past year my parents put my childhood home on the market. For whatever reason, I didnt feel any great emotional response to these developments. Maybe its because my wife and I have been working hard to create our own home, or maybe its because I have spent so little time in my childhood home since I left for graduate school in the early 1990s.&nbsp; Whatever the reason, I began to think about the area where I grew up on my long flight home from Cyprus and during my fitful attempts to negotiate jetlag over the past couple of days. I realized that I did not know very much about where I grew up archaeologically. For example, I had no real idea when my childhood home was built. I had a vague feeling it was built in the 1960s, but nothing more specific than that. (I am regularly shamed by my buddy Kostis Kourelis meditations on <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/search/label/Philadelphia">his neighborhood in Philadelphia</a>!). My efforts here are a low-key, more academic and hnerdtastic version of <a href="http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/">this</a>. I grew up in North Wilmington in a typical east coast suburb. My increasingly fragmented childhood memories include an index of hyperlocal places, routes, and features in the landscape. I plan to maps these in relation to contemporary and historical aerial photographs and maps in ArcGIS, and to record some of my memories here in text form. Our summertime activities were centered on the nearby <a href="http://www.windybushswimclub.com/index.html">Windybush Swim Club</a> the local pool and the street Wheatfield Drive where our family home was. Our street (as Ill talk about later in more detail) was largely built in the late 1960s.&nbsp; The pool was built in a depression at the bottom of Windybush road to serve that community. The community was largely built in the 1950s and the pool was built in 1958. As kids, each Fourth of July we would decorate our bikes and ride them first down our street (Wheatfield Drive) in a parade (presumably organized by the local civic association). After that, wed parade down Windybush Road to the swim club where wed have a cook out and do what, as kids, wed do every day we could all summer play in the pool. Heres the Google Streetview perspective of the route down Windybush Road. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image.png"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image_thumb.png" width="450" height="369"></a> <p align="left">To the pool. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image1.png"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image_thumb1.png" width="450" height="369"></a> I plotted our routes here on this GIS map.&nbsp; The background image is from <a href="http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline/bing-maps.html">Bing Maps which integrates with ESRIs ArcGIS</a> (h/t to <a href="http://www.theclassicalarchaeologist.com/">Brandon Olson</a>). <p align="center">&nbsp;<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/fourthofjuly.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="FourthofJuly" border="0" alt="FourthofJuly" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/fourthofjuly_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a> <p align="left">Here Ive used the 2007 <a href="http://datamil.delaware.gov/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home">digital 0.25 meter orthophotos of the State of Delaware at a scale of 1:2,400</a>. <p align="center"><a

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href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/fourthofjuly2007.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="FourthofJuly2007" border="0" alt="FourthofJuly2007" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/fourthofjuly2007_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a> <p align="left">And here I use the 1968 Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service photographs. These are as close as I can get to what this area looked like when I was a kid. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/fourthofjuly1968.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="FourthofJuly1968" border="0" alt="FourthofJuly1968" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/fourthofjuly1968_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a>

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<title>The Church at E.F2</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/the-church-at-ef2/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:05:43 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/the-church-at-ef2/</guid> While recovering from jet lag over the long weekend, I started to digitize a georeferenced plan of the church at E.F2.&nbsp; We are lucky enough to have some fantastic architecture state plans of the basilica and environs.&nbsp; <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/bingpolisonlyplan.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:block;float:none;margin-left:auto;border-top:0;margin-right:auto;borderright:0;padding-top:0;" title="BingPolisonlyPlan" border="0" alt="BingPolisonlyPlan" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/bingpolisonlyplan_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="334"></a> The church is also neatly visible in Bing Maps.&nbsp; So that allowed me to check my rather informal georeferencing of the building. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/polisef2bing.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PolisEF2Bing" border="0" alt="PolisEF2Bing" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/polisef2bing_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="334"></a> <p align="left">The plan lined up pretty well. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/polisef2bingplan.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PolisEF2BingPlan" border="0" alt="PolisEF2BingPlan" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/polisef2bingplan_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="334"></a> <p align="left">First, I drew the the walls and some of the buttresses. This was an interesting interpretative project in and of itself. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/polisef2bingplanwalls.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PolisEF2BingPlanWalls" border="0" alt="PolisEF2BingPlanWalls" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/polisef2bingplanwalls_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="334"></a> <p align="left">Then I confronted the reality that sometimes you have to digitize the stones: <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/polisef2bingplanstones.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PolisEF2BingPlanStones" border="0" alt="PolisEF2BingPlanStones" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/polisef2bingplanstones_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="334"></a> I need to digitize some of the various lines that contribute so much to the architects plans, but I have a draft now: <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/bingpolisnewplan.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="BingPolisNewPlan" border="0" alt="BingPolisNewPlan" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/bingpolisnewplan_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="334"></a>

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<title>Fragments of a Brief: A New Media Portal for Archaeologists</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/fragments-of-a-brief-anew-media-portal-for-archaeologists/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:43:02 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/fragments-of-a-brief-anew-media-portal-for-archaeologists/</guid> Over the past few weeks, Ive continued to think about how archaeologists use new media to document their sites, processes, and interpretations.&nbsp; My projects have used blogs, Twitter (and other social media), podcasts, video, photographs, and text to communicate our work to a diverse audience of stakeholders. Almost all of the tools we use are off the shelf and required very little development to make them suitable for our needs as archaeologists. One of the side-effects using off the shelf, remote hosted products like YouTube or Twitter is that projects do not have a single place for all of their online content to appear.&nbsp; While it is easy enough to embed video and podcasts in a blog, the basic format of the blog with its chronological organization and rather linear set of relationships make it less than optimal showing parallel streams of media collection. For example, it is difficult to juxtapose a video with a textual description of the same building or feature.&nbsp; Ill admit that it is possible to do this, but the linear arrangement of a blog tends to privilege the most recent entry rather than allowing parallel themes to develop in a single space. I have had the good fortune of chatting with a more tech-savvy colleague of mine about how he might imagine a new media portal for archaeologists that would allow them to display video, social media content, text, images, podcasts, et c. all in a single space.&nbsp; Taking a cue from many of the newest iPad applications, we discussed a single page design which would aggregate content from a wide range of sources. The page would update automatically as new content appeared in various off-the-shelf sites (YouTube, Wordpress, Twitter, et c.).&nbsp; The page allow the visitor to explore single types of media say video as well as across media through the use of tags and date-stamps.&nbsp; The result would be a one-stop destination for an audience.&nbsp; For the content creator, this site would be low to no maintenance as it automatically aggregated material pushed to the usual sources through an RSS or similar feed. One could eventually imagine this kind of site providing an outlet for raw archaeological data as well as a new and social media content. With the right support, sites like these (which would involve, I think, relatively little technical development and relatively little server space) could be made available to projects seeking to a quick way to create an online presence or to aggregate an existing range of content.&nbsp; For projects with a CRM focus required to provide outreach, this would provide a simple location for a range of content. For more academic projects, an aggregating web site could provide a useful teaching tool for students around the world as well as an opportunity to communicate the experience of archaeological work in near real time. In some ways, the site could become a poor-mans <a href="http://omeka.org/">Omeka</a>. Instead of focusing on the database and (digital) object creation aspects, the site would emphasize the curation of already existing new and social media (and perhaps some day syndicated online data) content.&nbsp; At some point, the site could become a space for near-real-time data presentation.

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<title>Anchorites in Grand Forks</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/anchorites-in-grandforks/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:44:56 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/anchorites-in-grandforks/</guid> The conference website is up, so it must be official! The University of North Dakota will host the <a href="http://und.edu/conferences/anchoritic/">International Anchroitic Society</a> conference this fall (September 16th-18th).&nbsp; In my effort to shatter a personal record for conference papers in a single semester (my personal best is 4), I have submitted an abstract for consideration at this conference. Also, the Cyprus Research Fund is one of the sponsor (check us out on <a href="http://und.edu/conferences/anchoritic/sponsors.cfm">the sponsorship page</a>!). It seemed like a really good thing to have Cyprus Research Fund support this conference as the Cypriot St. Neophytos ranks high on any list of dedicated anchorite saints. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image2.png"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image_thumb2.png" width="450" height="424"></a> So here is my hastily written abstract. If you can make anything of this, I hope you can see my shift from an interest in space (e.g. my work on <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=U2KXRCJ3gq8C&amp;lpg=PA269&amp;dq=Theodore%20 of%20Kythera&amp;pg=PA269#v=onepage&amp;q=Theodore%20of%20Kythera&amp;f=false">St. Theodore of Kythera, in particular</a>) to an interest in time (e.g. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/periods-and-peasants/">my recent reading and comments on Kathleen Daviss Periodization and Sovereignty</a> .)&nbsp; The paper has not been accepted and the abstract is a bit on the raw side, but it is not dissimilar to some ideas that have been contemplating lately. Margins of Space and Time in Hagiography of Middle Byzantine Greece<br>Abstract for the 2011 International Anchoritic Society Conference <b></b> The early Middle Byzantine Era in Greece is a dynamic period in both the history of the region and in the literature of Byzantine monasticism. In general, scholars have argued that this period saw a shift from individualized asceticism to practices oriented around more coenobitic forms of monasticism. At the same time, the region of Greece and the Aegean witnessed significant shifts in population that produced new areas of wilderness in which various monastic vocations could engage. The activity of Arab raiders in the Aegean depopulated islands making them into deserts, coastal regions went from being literally liminal to politically liminal, and geopolitical shifts re-opened for Christian settlement territories abandoned as too exposed to the Muslim raids. This paper looks at several locally produced saints Lives from the Aegean basin and considers the role of the wilderness and liminality in the interplay between Byzantine monasticism and Byzantine society. In particular, this paper will argue Middle Byzantine hagiography from the Peloponessos played a key role in the re-occupation and appropriation the margins of both space and time. Unlike better-known saints associated with the Imperial capital of Constantinople, the lives of more obscure and often neglected local saints, like St. Nikon, St. Luke of Steiri, St. Theodore of Kythera, and St. Ioannis the Stranger, engaged a local landscape at a moment when Byzantine institutions were undergoing a significant change. Spatially, the middle Byzantine saint through their authors sought to re-center the profane world by traveling out into the wilderness. By focusing their sacred activities in the margins, the Byzantine saint created a spiritual counter-weight to the populated centers of institutional authority in the towns and cities under Byzantine control. The demographic, political, and economic changes of the so-called Byzantine Dark Age and the revived fortunes of the Byzantine state and local communities stimulated the need to reinforce social and institutional centers. Sacred margins implied profane centers and bonded human to the divine by spatializing this fundamental Christian duality. The authors also discovered in these

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liminal spaces evidence for the margins of local time. Local saints wandered not only the depopulated spaces beyond the edge of local settlement, but also among the ruins left by the earlier inhabitants. By setting their sacred dramas among these earlier buildings, largely in ruins, the authors and their holy men and women marked out not only the end of inhabited space but also the edge of the present. The visible remains of past prosperity reminded local residents of the disruptions of 7^th and 8^th centuries and located the sacred world of the saint on the ragged edge of the local present. Reclaiming the ruins of the past for the present re-established local continuity and like the monastic occupation of the wilderness, re-centered the profane world through contact with the sacred. By focusing largely on local saints, this paper is able to contextualize the efforts of those authors in a specific time, place, and historical circumstances. In these narratives, holy men and women incorporate the margins into a renewed Byzantine landscape by appropriating it for the sacred center. The profound division between sacred and profane in Byzantine Christianity paralleled the distinction between the wilderness and the reviving profane centers of Byzantine society, economy, and administration. The activities of local saints to reclaim the margins for the sacred landscape reinforced profane centers by establishing the limits in time and space of their opposite.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/friday-varia-and-quickhits-14/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 08 Jul 2011 10:25:10 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=697</guid> Just a few, very early morning Friday Varia and Quick Hits. Be sure to check out a rare, exotic, and timely <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> for some summer reading to while away the "frog-days" of summer. David Pettegrew has offered some commentary on the <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Society for Biblical Literature's London Meeting</a>. Via <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a> (and in a different context), <a href="http://150.vassar.edu/">Vassars 150th Birthday webpage </a>is really nice. The use of <a href="http://www.liveshare.com/">LiveShare</a> is really slick. What I'm reading: G. Lucas, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeology-oftime/oclc/57182049"> Archaeology of Time </a>. (London 2005). What I'm listening to: <a href="http://www.parisdjs.com/index.php/post/Greenwood-RhythmCoalition-Sol-Vibrations">Greenwood Rhythm Coalition, Sol Vibrations </a>, Thurston Moore, Demolished Thoughts . </ul> Have a great weekend!!

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<title>A Tour of the E.F2 Basilica at Polis</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/a-tour-of-the-e-f2basilica-at-polis/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:16:16 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=699</guid> Before I left Polis for the Northern Plains, Scott Moore and I prepared a short tour of the<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/the-church-at-e-f2/"> E.F2 Basilica there</a>. We've been working on the basilica for the previous month and used the short video tour as a way to summarize some of our results. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNLd83GBQcg] For the academic purists, I can assure you that we've also written up a rather lengthy document that set out our preliminary conclusions!!

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<title>Another View of the E.F2 Basilica at Polis</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/another-view-of-the-ef2-basilica-at-polis/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:13:46 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=702</guid> Those of you not particularly interested in Early Christian Polis are probably suffering right now and for that I apologize. I've been on the road, so I can only think about one thing at a time, so I continue to think about the <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/thechurch-at-e-f2/">E.F2 Basilica at Polis</a>. <a href="http://gigapan.org/gigapans/81471/">So here's another view of the basilica</a>. This time, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/gigapan-ed-basilica/">we used the Gigapan</a> to take a panorama of the church.

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<title>The Field</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-field/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:16:26 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-field/</guid> This is a second in series of blog posts on the landscape of my childhood home. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/fourth-of-july/">Part 1 is here</a>. At the end of our road in Wilmington, Delaware, there was an open field.&nbsp; We called this plot of land simply, The Field.&nbsp; Technically, it was part of the easement for the high-tension lines that ran through this section of North Wilmington.&nbsp; It fit between two developments, ours, and the neighboring Westwood Manor and as such, it fit into almost any definition of liminal space.&nbsp; We accesses the field by wandering up a driveway at the end of our cul-de-sac and passing to the north of a wooden fence. A well-worn dirt path extended from the top of the driveway to a bend in a road in Westwood Manor. By linking these two developments, we were able to by-pass the busy and narrow Veale Road and get access to other main thoroughfares particularly Silverside Road which were wider with bike lanes. The southern part of the field was bounded by The Woods. These kinds of waste areas so prized by peasants in the Middle Ages formed the edge of our imaginative world. As far as I can recall nothing much ever happened in the field. It was usually overgrown so not particularly conducive to sports, although I have a vague memory of playing some kind of sports on it a few times. It lacked any distinguishing features like rocks or holes to capture the imagination.&nbsp; There were legends, of course, about the field having caught fire once.&nbsp; Mostly, however, it was route between two neighborhoods and a buffer zone between our space and space that was a bit more foreign. <p align="left">Historically, the field seems to have predated our street, but it does not appear on the 1937 aerial photographs. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thefield1937.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="TheField1937" border="0" alt="TheField1937" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thefield1937_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="454"></a><br> This is based on the 1937 aerial photographs, but I suspect the orthorectifying is a bit off and perhaps should be offset to the north by approximately 25 m. <p align="left">So the power lines probably cut through the area sometime in the 1940s around the time that Westwood Manor was built (more on this later).&nbsp; <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thefield1954.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="TheField1954" border="0" alt="TheField1954" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thefield1954_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="454"></a> <p align="left">In my memory, The Field was always open, but in 1987 a house was built on part of The Field encroaching on The Woods.&nbsp; Despite this intrusion, in the early 1990s, the well-trod path linking Westwood Manor and The Street remained visible in aerial photographs. It runs along the north edge of the <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thefield1992.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="TheField1992" border="0" alt="TheField1992" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thefield1992_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="454"></a><br> By 2007, the path is visible only as a slight white line and the 1987 house has developed almost the entire open space. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thefield2007.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-

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right:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="TheField2007" border="0" alt="TheField2007" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thefield2007_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="454"></a> <p align="left">Like the Middle Ages, the waste was developed and the imaginative fringe of my childhood universe taken over and developed.

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<title>The Angels of Miletus</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/the-angels-ofmiletus/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:09:13 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/the-angels-ofmiletus/</guid> At some point in its history angels protected the city of Miletus in Asia Minor.&nbsp; We know this because at some point in Late Antiquity someone inscribed a prayer to seven angels on the external wall of the theater in this city. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image3.png"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image_thumb3.png" width="450" height="268"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image4.png"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image_thumb4.png" width="450" height="298"></a> Rangar Cline who is a long-time reader of this blog, expert on Late Antique angels (<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/ancient-angels-conceptualizing-angeloi-in-the-romanempire/oclc/690904609">heres his book</a>), and all around good guy has recently published <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/v004/4.1.cline.pdf">an article in the Journal of Late Antiquity on this inscription</a>.&nbsp; He argues that <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=wdfjYd9dpH4C&amp;lpg=PR4&amp;dq=deissmann%20ligh t%20from%20the%20ancient%20east&amp;pg=PA453#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">the traditional Justinianic date of this inscription</a> is probably wrong. This is significant to me because scholars have tended to compare this inscription to the two Justinianic inscriptions from the Isthmus. Indeed, Rangar has made this comparison. Both inscriptions call on divine powers to protect the city and those living within it. Moreover, both texts it would seem echo something like liturgical language. The final phrase in the Miletus text is sometimes compared to the language of the diptychs in the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. It finds parallels in both the texts from the Isthmus as well as a text from Philippi (<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/28019578/Epigraphy-Liturgy-Justinianic-IsthmusCaraher">see p. 9-10 here for references</a>). <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image5.png"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/image_thumb5.png" width="450" height="19"></a> Of course, the possible echo of the liturgy is not what attracted attention to this text. As Rangar points out, this inscription features the use of out the combination of magic letters or sounds presented in the form of a vowel rotation. These otherwise nonsensical letters are set into circles which Rangar sees as representations of amulets or designed to evoke other objects associated with personal protection. He also points out that personal objects sometimes featured liturgical language comparing the text from Miletus to an amulet found elsewhere in Asia Minor which features the sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy). The Justinianic date of this inscription is based largely on the argument that the theater became part of a re-fortification of the city in the 6th century.&nbsp; Scholars saw the text as part of an effort to invoke supernatural protection to complement the physical protection of the fortifications. Recent archaeological work on the cities of Asia Minor, however, has pushed the date for the refortification of Miletus into the 7th century.&nbsp; Rangar, in turn, argues based on letter forms, comparanda, and the ambiguous Christianity of the text, that this inscription should probably be dated to earlier than the 7th century.&nbsp; As a result, he suggests that the text

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should no longer be regarded as Justinianic in date, but rather returned the more chronologically ambiguous milieu of Late Antique spirituality.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/friday-varia-and-quickhits-15/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:02:38 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/friday-varia-and-quickhits-15/</guid> After a brief sun-shower this morning, the skies are clearing for what may be a sunny Friday.&nbsp; So it seems like a good day for some varia and quick hits. Ive begun to play with Google+ and like the interface.&nbsp; Ive also been impressed by how many people are member already. This may be as cool as <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-googlewave.html">Google Wave</a>. <a href="http://vimeo.com/26416193">This is a neat time lapse</a> video of the protest in Cyprus following the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelos_Florakis_Naval_Base_explosion">massive explosion of confiscated munitions</a> on July 11 at the Evangelos Florakis naval base near Zygi. If youre looking for some things to read that will help you become a better teacher, be sure to check out <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> both this week and last! Ive been experimenting with various timeline producing programs and have found <a href="http://www.beedocs.com/">Beedocss Timeline 3D</a> to be quite satisfactory.&nbsp; More on this soon. <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Revised-European-Journal/128224/">More ratings of academic journals</a>, this time from the Europeans. It looks like the rankings of archaeology are due to be released later this year. Im off to the <a href="http://webapp.und.edu/dept/oid/programsEvents/workshops.html#TwT">CILT/OID Teaching with Technology final presentations</a> this morning.&nbsp; Ill live tweet some of the presentations at the <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/oidatund">OID Twitter feed</a>. What Im listening to: Bon Iver, Bon Iver . What Im reading: George Alec Effinger, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/fire-inthe-sun/oclc/19127822">Fire in the Sun (Budayeen)</a> . (1989).</ul>

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<title>The Creek</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/the-creek/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:16:50 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/the-creek/</guid> This is a second in series of blog posts on the landscape of my childhood home: <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/fourth-of-july/">Part 1 is here</a>, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-field/">Part 2 is here</a>. As a kid, the creek provided an enduring source of interest and fascination.&nbsp; The Creek itself was pretty modest.&nbsp; In fact, it does not even appear on the standard hydrology map of New Castle County.&nbsp; It began in a neighbors backyard and was fed by the local storm drains. It curled its way through The Woods (which Ill talk about later) before merging with a larger creek around .5 km to the south. Needless to say, we did not have a particularly global perspective on the course of our creek, except that it flowed out from the safe confines of our neighborhood into the great beyond. Like many of our pre-modern predecessors, we recognized that the creek could serve as a route out of our neighborhood and beyond. Generally, the acknowledged boundary of our creek was the footbridge at the western end of Windybush Road. For some reason the developers had not connected the neighborhood of Old Windybush with the newer subdivision. Old Windybush seems to only date to a few years before New Windybush. The oldest houses in Old Windybush appear to date to right around 1950. New Windybush to less than 5 years later.&nbsp; There is no reason to assume that these two subdivisions were developed separately. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thecreek1992zoom.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="TheCreek1992Zoom" border="0" alt="TheCreek1992Zoom" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thecreek1992zoom_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thecreek1992.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="TheCreek1992" border="0" alt="TheCreek1992" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/thecreek1992_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a><br> The Creek and Local Hydrology set atop 1992 Aerial photographs In any event, the Creek continued to wander through backyards of Old Windybush before merging with another creek and continuing to the east. I have clear memories of ruins of perhaps an old farm house standing somewhere along the route of the creek. Examining the 1992 aerial photographs which were taken in the winter with what appears to be an infrared filter does not show any obvious buildings. About .5 km from the confluence of our creek and the larger creek, the larger creek passes under the railroad tracks and the interstate, I-95. We rarely tracked the creek this far, but I do recall following it under the interstate.&nbsp; Of course, this may not have been our creek, but Perkins Run to the north. About 1.5 km after passing under I-95, our creek joins with Perkins Run which empties into the Delaware River after another 1.5 km. Perkins Run was the much more substantial creek and it ran through the woods to the East of Windybush pool. We certainly followed this creek for most of its course as kids and I remember discovering where it joined with the mighty Delaware (or at least where is passed under I-495). <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/perkinsrunbing.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="PerkinsRunBing" border="0" alt="PerkinsRunBing" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/perkinsrunbing_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a><br> The Creek, Perkins Run, and Local Hydrology set atop Bing Maps As kids,

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the creeks were more than simply routes between neighborhoods. They were another example of wastes that fueled our imagination. We discovered salamanders, observed (what we thought to be) tadpoles, built bridges and dams, races boats made of sticks and leaves, inevitable fell into the water and got wet and muddy.&nbsp; We also confronted the unknown as we adventured south out of our neighborhood. I have to wonder whether the engagement with the landscape so close to home influenced my decision to become an archaeologist. I clearly remember the thrill of going just a bit further along the Creek and being amazed at finding ruins so close to my own backyard.

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<title>Time after Time</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/time-after-time/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:48:39 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=730</guid> This summer I am working on three separate projects: one on peasants in the landscape of the ancient Corinthia, one that looks at marginal time in Middle Byzantine hagiography from the Peloponnesus, and one that considers potential avenues for post-colonial critique in Byzantine Archaeology. All three projects intersect in crucial recent discussions on time in archaeology. Peasants, of course, represent a particularly ahistorical category of individual in the anthropological, historical, and archaeological record (see <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/periods-and-peasants/">here</a> and <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/more-on-peasants/">here</a>). Defined by economic and social relationships to the means and modes of production, any study of peasants has to balance a desire to place this group of producers in specific economic, political, and social relationships relationships against the need to preserve the integrity of a widely-recognized transhistorical category. The crucial issue, then, is whether a peasant of the 5th century BC is substantially the same as a peasant of the early 20th century. In other words, we need to ask whether peasants and their material signature exist within a specific historical time or merely as the products of particular transhistorical circumstances. Scholars have typically regarded peasants as part of the latter and identified them as indications of a pre-industrial or pre-modern condition. In this case, peasants represents a condition of life outside of a normalized industrial or modern modes of production. Variation among peasants and their material conditions remains secondary to assumptions regarding their fundamental character. Time for the peasant stands still as they await the liberation of inevitable modernity and industrialization. This approach to the time and the archaeological character of groups like peasants is often regarded as typical of the modern archaeological methods and interpretations. One antidote to this kind of interpretative determinism comes from an effort to document other methods for understanding time in the past. By re-historicizing time, we can begin to escape from assumptions rooted in our periodization schemes, chronologies, and disciplinary structures. I am giving <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/anchorites-in-grand-forks/">a paper later this summer</a> looking at evidence for indigenous archaeological practices in Middle Byzantine saints' lives. In particular, I am interested in how Middle Byzantine saints understood ruins. In several cases these saints went into the wilderness (into liminal or marginal space) and discovered the ruins of churches or other religious buildings. They frequently would rebuilt these structures and re-integrate them within the life of the community (variously defined). These buildings represented the ragged edge of the present for the saints. They simultaneous recognized the past as alien (the past is a foreign country!), but also as part of their wilderness. This effort to recognize the radical alterity (as the kids say) of the ruins and to integrate it into life of the community coincides with what G. Lucas describes as a "double temporality" in archaeology. As such archaeology "fragment[s] time as much as it restores it." (G. Lucas, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaeology-of-time/oclc/57182049">The Archaeology of Time</a> . (London 2005), 130-131). In the Byzantine period, the understanding of time and archaeological practice should perhaps be set against liturgical notions of time, particularly when the context is overly religious in character. The Byzantine liturgy is meant to both collapse time through the simultaneous performance of the liturgy on earth in the eternal time of heaven, as well as to remind the participants of the very historical character of the salvation narrative. Temporality then frames two important forms of truth in the Byzantine tradition : historical (in the salvation narrative which took place in a particular time and place) and spiritual (which happens outside of time entirely). My paper will look particularly at how saints negotiated the margin of time as they encountered ruins located at edge between the present and past. Finally, time has played a key role in how we understand Byzantine archaeology. The debates

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centering on continuity or change in the Early Byzantine period emphasize two different notions of archaeological time. Advocates of change recognize the potential for significant, substantial breaks in the archaeological narrative. Scholars who look for change observe emphasize incremental transformation and the continuous flow of history connecting the past to the present. The location of Byzantium and Byzantine history in the master narrative of the West makes the debate surrounding its relationship to Antiquity particular urgent. The tendency to see a break between Byzantium and the Ancient World allows scholars to regard Byzantium as something outside of the Western tradition. On the other hand, arguments for continuity have tended to stress Byzantium as the culmination of numerous ancient practices. An approach to Byzantine archaeology that draws on post-colonial critique can foreground the indigenous practices and take Byzantium out of time by challenging the assumptions of the Western master narrative. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE8y7QAJ3ug]

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<title>Final Church Sketch of the E.F2 Basilica</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/final-church-sketch-ofthe-e-f2-basilica/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 20 Jul 2011 13:05:47 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/final-church-sketch-ofthe-e-f2-basilica/</guid> A few weeks ago, I started to prepare a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georeference">georeferenced</a> sketch of the E.F2 Basilica (<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/the-church-at-e-f2/">for more on that click here</a>).&nbsp; I finished that this week. Sketching a plan is a great way to be productive especially when subjected to constant interruptions or distractions (heat, thesis defenses, job talks, et c.). Here is the original. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/churchplan.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="ChurchPlan" border="0" alt="ChurchPlan" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/churchplan_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="437"></a> Heres my sketch added to the original: <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/churchsketchwplan.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="ChurchSketchwPlan" border="0" alt="ChurchSketchwPlan" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/churchsketchwplan_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="437"></a> <p align="left">And heres the final sketch without the original plan: <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/churchsketch.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="ChurchSketch" border="0" alt="ChurchSketch" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/churchsketch_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="437"></a>

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<title>Thesis Defense: Neoplantonism and Monotheism in Late Antique Rome</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/thesis-defenseneoplantonism-and-monotheism-in-late-antique-rome/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:54:50 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=740</guid> Amidst the parade of job candidates for the <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/job-in-classics-at-university-of-northdakota/">Classics position</a> here at the University of North Dakota, I was able to squeeze in a thesis defense. Tom Bakerud successfully defended his thesis on Neoplatonism and Monotheism in Late Antique Rome yesterday. He was my second-to-last active graduate student (and then there was one...) so it was a great pleasure and relief to have him defend successfully. The defense was collegial, but rigorous, and Tom comported himself well. Here's the abstract for his thesis: <blockquote> This thesis is a response to the idea that the fourth century pagan aristocracy in Rome was polytheistic and experienced a transition from polytheistic paganism to monotheistic Christianity. Moreover, it argues against the idea that Christianity had primary agency in the spread of monotheism throughout the Roman world at the elite level. I suggest instead that the development of monotheism was influenced primarily by Neoplatonism in the second century C.E., which fostered a general monotheistic discourse shared by Christians and non-Christians alike. Previous scholarship on Roman religion and philosophy in the fourth century interpreted the relationship between pagans and Christians as a binary opposition or conflict in which Christianity eventually usurped the primacy of polytheistic pagans and established a unified, monotheistic religion. Edward Gibbon initiated the idea of binary opposition with his work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the late 18th century. Subsequently, 20th century scholars of Late Antiquity such as Ramsay MacMullen, Charles Freeman, and Robin Lane Fox continued to view fourth century religion in terms of a binary opposition between polytheistic pagans and monotheistic Christians. Their interpretations however fell prey to fourth century Christian rhetoricians and polemicists. Nuanced studies and historiographical works on the subject of Late Antique religion have dismissed the idea of binary opposition in favor of the new concept of pagan monotheism. 21st century scholars of Late Antiquity such as Michael Frede, Peter Van Nuffelen, Polymnia Athanassiadi, and Stephen Mitchell argued in favor of a monotheistic pagan religion in the fourth century, founded primarily on Neoplatonic concepts. This thesis provides a nuanced study of pagan monotheism in the Western Roman Empire, focusing closely on the writings of pagan and Christian aristocrats and intellectuals. My method relies primarily on a paradigm of Kantian Idealism, Foucauldian discourse analysis, and case-studies of specific primary sources. Chapter three of my thesis will consist of case-studies which highlight specific fourth century pagan and Christian writers, and the Neoplatonic and monotheistic elements within their writings. The primary sources that I focus on are mostly letters and treatises of a political, literary, and philosophical nature. The overall purpose of this thesis is to supplement previous research on the concept of pagan monotheism by focusing on the neglected Western Roman Empire, and also to encourage further research by other scholars of Late Antiquity. </blockquote>

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-4/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:22:57 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=744</guid> After a sweltering week, we're being treated to a beautiful Friday. So, ideal weather for some quick hits and varia. David Pettegrew's <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Corinthian Matters</a> keeps getting better and better. He gleans some great Corinthian matter from the internets and dusty old tomes and records it all on his blog. It took me 5 years to convince the man to blog, but the wait has been worth it. <a href="http://ancienthistoryramblings.wordpress.com/">Scott Moore </a>sent me a link to a web application called <a href="http://beta.broadcastr.com/">Broadcastr</a>. From what I can gather, it lets you record geocoded podcasts. This has some obvious and pretty cool applications for, say, a university campus or an archaeological project. I haven't messed with it yet, but I'm certainly going to. I'm excited about installing the newest <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/">Mac OS X Lion</a>, but following the advice of Mac Guru <a href="http://timpasch.com/">Tim Pasch</a>, I'm creating a bootable Tibackup first using<a href="http://www.shirtpocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html"> SuperDuper</a>. Yikes. This might take a while. <a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/210188/publisher_ID/40/">Major reorganization of parts of the administration</a> here at the University of North Dakota. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. I'm pretty excited about <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/england-v-india2011/engine/current/match/474472.html">England v. Inda</a>. And you can't deny the momentary thrill when MS Dhoni (!!) seemed to catch Kevin Pieterson behind! What I'm listening to: Gang Gang Dance, Eye Contact . What I'm reading: Tim Murray ed., <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/time-andarchaeology/oclc/40820998"> Time and Archaeology</a> . (New York 1999). </ul>

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<title>A Stapled Plate</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/a-stapled-plate/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 25 Jul 2011 13:20:33 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=749</guid> From time to time, we find a piece of pottery with mending holes in it. I've always understood certain types of ancient table wares were worth mending. They were either heirloom quality or valuable to their present owners even in their damaged state. Recently as my parents cleaned out the basement of their home, some pieces of cut-glass table ware were passed on to me, including this piece mended with what appear to be lead staples. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Staples.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/staples.jpg" border="0" alt="Staples" width="450" height="444" /> The staples do not go all the way throughout the glass and the break appears to have been clean. There is a very slight discoloration of the glass suggestion some kind of glue might have been used to seal the crack. I suspect this kind of repair to date to the first half of the 20th century. I suppose the plate was probably a salad bowl or designed to accommodate some kind of small dish. It measures less than 15 cm in diameter. I suppose it was suceptible to repair because it was not designed to hold liquid and it was a fairly nice piece of cut-glass (I suppose, but I really don't know). It is a sad testimony to our disposable culture and dependence on mass-production to see something like this as an object of remarkable curiosity.

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<title>Some Tech Stuff</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/some-tech-stuff/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:49:59 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=753</guid> I'm going to do my best <a href="http://learningaloud.com/blog/">Mark Grabbe</a> or <a href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Sam Fee</a> imitation and offer a few observations about technological changes over the past few weeks. These are essentially random, but maybe someone will find something of interest amidst my tech ramblings: I've upgraded to the new Lion operating system on my MacBook Pro. For those of you who fear change in all its forms, fear not!! While I do notice changes, they are not so overwhelming to have disrupted my basic, daily workflow. More importantly, so far, the upgrade was pretty painless. The revised spaces might well become useful as I tend to have too many applications open at the same time. I am sure that I'll eventually find uses for things like the Launchpad (or I will stop using it). The only real disruption so far is that installing Lion seems to have made my spellcheck in <a href="http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/">MarsEdit 3.x</a> to stop working in the Rich Text Mode. So I have to check my spelling in the HTML editor mode. I get that the new operating system is also designed to work seamlessly with their new cloud services, and I am approaching that with an open mind, but the truth is that my use of the cloud is spread pretty widely right now (Dropbox, Amazon, Mediafire, Google, et c.), and I can't really imagine moving to a single cloud service - even a dreamtastic one integrated fully with my Mac's OS. One the major issues here, of course, that I am not a 100% Mac person . I still depend on my PC for certain specialized applications and some of my more mundane day-to-day tasks. One little issue with OSX Lion. I am a bit disappointed that Front Row went away. I use a Mac Mini to power my home entertainment system. Primarily I use it as a music server (run through a <a href="http://www.cambridgeaudio.com/summary.php?PID=320">Cambridge Audio DacMagic D/A converter</a>) so I really got to like Front Row. I know that there are other options out there, but as this post probably shows, I am not much for change. Along similar lines, I was surprised that the newest Mac Mini will lack a built in optical drive. I saw this coming, of course, but for people who use their Mini as a media server and still have some commitment to physical media for music (although it's waning), it will be annoying to have to buy an external CD drive to rip music to the Mini. I know, Apple is not interested in catering to tiny subsets of the Macuser community, but it is remarkable how many people use Mac Mini or other Apple products to run their home stereo systems. The lack of Front Row is not a big deal, but the lack of an optical drive may make me consider other options. </ul> There were two other big tech-news stories over the past couple months that I guess I should say something about: Google+. Like many of my colleagues, I can already imagine ways that Google+ can work in an online teaching environment. Creating a circle for a class would allow me to easily push out notifications to students while keeping them separate from my day-to-day drivel. I could even imagine things like the video <a href="http://www.google.com/tools/dlpage/res/talkvideo/hangouts/">Hangouts</a> to have meetings of, say, my Digital History Practicum, or small groups of students. Close integration with the YouTubes (which, frankly, can integrate with almost anything) could provide another interesting way to bring together content in various media seamlessly. (One wonders whether Google+ will incorporate some of the features developed in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave">Google Wave</a>.) <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/234825/9_reasons_to_switch_from_facebook_to_google.html"> Some similar points are made here</a> (h/t Sam Fee). The only thing I'll eagerly await is a good way to integrate Google+ with Twitter.

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<a href="https://www.spotify.com/us/hello-america/">Spotify</a>. I listen to a ton of music. All the time. And Spotify has blown my mind. In fact, it blew my mind so quickly that I ponied up the $10 a month for the Premium version and can now stream "high-quality" music to my office. While my ears are pretty sensitive to compression, the quality from Spotify is certainly adequate considering my sound system in my office is pretty modest (a miniwatt N3, Energy C2 speakers, and my MacBook Pro (no DAC yet)). </ul>

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<title>The Street in Context</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/the-street-incontext/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:37:56 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/the-street-incontext/</guid> This is a second in series of blog posts on the landscape of my childhood home: <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/fourth-of-july/"> Part 1 is here </a> , <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/the-field/"> Part 2 is here </a> , and <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/the-creek/">Part 3 is here</a>. During the summer months, we spent as much time as possible outside in the street. We lived at the end of a cul-de-sac so traffic was light. We always had plenty of neighbors who were around our age and the local attractions like the Field and the Creek provided endless fascination. As I got older, I began to wonder where the street really was and what was there before. Aerial photographs can provide some idea of how the Street fit into its historical environment. The earliest settlement in the area of the Street was Arden. <a href="http://www.arden.delaware.gov/">Arden was founded in 1900 as a singletax commune</a>. By 1922, it spurred the developed of adjacent Ardentown and in 1950, Ardencroft.&nbsp; The communities of Arden and Ardentown are clearly at the top right of the 1937 aerial photograph below. At this time, most of the land around what would eventually become the Street was farmland bounded by Arden, Silverside Road to the southwest, Marsh Road to the northwest and the railroad to the southeast.&nbsp; The community to the far southeast of the photograph below is the town of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claymont,_Delaware">Claymont, Delaware</a>, which dates back to the colonial period. Claymont has become a bit better known today as one-time hometown of Vice President Joe Biden. (Biden worked for a few summers at Windybush pool). <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea37.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="HomeArea37" border="0" alt="HomeArea37" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea37_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a> By the next round of aerial photographs, the area had seen significant development with Claymont pushing to the northwest and the clearing of the land for the Windybush neighborhood clearly visible. The Arden area also seems to have pushed to the southwest across the line of Harvey Road which connected that community to Claymont.&nbsp; Immediately to the west of the future location of The Street the neighborhood of Westwood Manor had been carved out of a wooded area.&nbsp; The future site of our neighborhood, howevever, remained farmland. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea54.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="HomeArea54" border="0" alt="HomeArea54" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea54_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a> <p align="left">The neighborhood we called Northfield had been developed (perhaps it was the north field of the local farmer?) and it would appear the land that would become Hilton was partitioned. The Street, meanwhile, remained an orchard. The clearing cut through the southern limits of the orchard (and coinciding exactly with the future location of the Street and the Field) was an easement for high-tension power lines. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea54detail.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="HomeArea54Detail" border="0" alt="HomeArea54Detail"

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src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea54detail_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a> <p align="left">By 1961, the entire area had been developed. The change is dramatic!!! It is notable, however, at the in 1961, The Street was not developed. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea61.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="HomeArea61" border="0" alt="HomeArea61" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea61_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a> <p align="left">The orchard was still there to the northeast of our house and the farmland immediately to the east of our house would continue to exist into my childhood as the massive back lot garden of a local Windybush resident. I suspect that some of the mature fruit trees in the mans back lot dated to the before Windybush or the Street. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea61detail.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="HomeArea61Detail" border="0" alt="HomeArea61Detail" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea61detail_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a> <p align="left">The biggest change to our local area came in 1963 when I-95 cut between the northwest expansion of Claymont and the southern sprawl of the neighborhoods surrounding the Street.&nbsp; According to the county, our house was built in 1962, so a year after the 1961 aerial photographs. The Street is called Wheatfield Drive suggesting the earlier use of the land (but also a generic, rustic neighborhood name).&nbsp; The 1968 aerial photographs document the appearance of I-95. It connected to our area via Harvey Road. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea68.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="HomeArea68" border="0" alt="HomeArea68" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea68_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a> <p align="left">The detail shows the preserved fields to the east of our house. Moreover, it shows our house backing onto a wooded area that had originally stood between two fields. Our backyard had an old dog-wood tree and a massive tulip poplar typical of older, hardwood stands in the area.&nbsp; These trees clearly pre-dated the development of the area and stand as a reminder of the earlier organization of land in the area. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea68detail.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="HomeArea68Detail" border="0" alt="HomeArea68Detail" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea68detail_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a> <p align="left">I lelf the area for college in 1990, returning only in the summer. As one might expect, development of the area continued with gradual encroachment on the few remaining open fields. In general, the wooded areas remained.&nbsp; The aerial photograph below is from 1992. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea1992.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="HomeArea1992" border="0" alt="HomeArea1992" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea1992_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a> <p align="left">In 2010 <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea2010.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="HomeArea2010" border="0" alt="HomeArea2010" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/homearea2010_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="458"></a>

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<title>Campus in the Summer</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/campus-in-thesummer/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 28 Jul 2011 18:43:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/campus-in-thesummer/</guid> The GigaPan has arrived in arrived in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Ryan Stander and I took it out for a spin on a partly cloudy Thursday morning. We are particularly interested in capturing the Chester Fritz Library, which celebrates its 50th Anniversary this year. People on campus tend to see its South side. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/southlibrary.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="SouthLibrary" border="0" alt="SouthLibrary" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/southlibrary_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="135"></a><br><a href="http://gigapan.org/gigapans/82854/">Heres the GigaPan</a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/southlibrary2.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="SouthLibrary2" border="0" alt="SouthLibrary2" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/southlibrary2_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="178"></a><br><a href="http://gigapan.org/gigapans/82857/">Heres the GigaPan</a> The librarys best side, though, is its North Side facing University Avenue. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/northlibrary.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="NorthLibrary" border="0" alt="NorthLibrary" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/northlibrary_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="163"></a><br><a href="http://gigapan.org/gigapans/82853/">Heres the GigaPan</a> <p align="left">As a bonus, we did the English Coulee (but its nowhere near as good as <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/uofnorthdakota/5616760183/in/gallery-myund72157626491992752/">this picture</a>) <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/couleecropped.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="CouleeCropped" border="0" alt="CouleeCropped" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/couleecropped_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="201"></a><br><a href="http://gigapan.org/gigapans/82851/">Heres the GigaPan</a>

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/friday-varia-and-quickhits-16/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:05:05 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=783</guid> It's a beautiful Friday and a perfect day for a little gaggle of varia and quick hits: About 10 people sent me links to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/arts/geographic-information-systems-help-scholars-seehistory.html"> New York Times article on Geographic Information Systems in the discipline of history</a>. As per usual, the NYT is a bit behind on major trends, but it is nice that this confluence of technology and research is recognized. <a href="http://collusion.toolness.org/">Collusion is a Firefox plug-in</a> that lets you track, in real time, how people track our behavior on the web. I haven't tried it, but it seems super cool. I can't wait for <a href="http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/">MarsEdit</a> to get their spell checking fixed. It's the best blog editor for Mac that I've tried, but the lack of spell check is killer for someone like me. Some cool stuff lately on where and how we work. <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/beyond-the-cubicle/">There was an online piece</a> from the NYT on the changes in cubicle culture. And, at the same time, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/category/headquarters">a new blog feature over at the Atlantic </a> that shows off the workspaces of tech companies. Oatmeal has published his semi-annual <a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/state_web_summer">state of the web report</a>. It's a must read for people in tech. (h/t to <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/evannelsonund">Evan Nelson</a>) <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-latest-google-compete-weaponthe-gmail-man/10217">This Microsoft ad taking on Gmail is pretty funny</a>. If you go to <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Corinth</a>, you just have to ask for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIL3fbGbU2o">Rich Corinthian Leather</a>. </ul> &nbsp; [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIL3fbGbU2o] It's cool to think that someone called an entrepreneur <a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/210657/"> opened a bookstore recently here in Grand Forks</a>. <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904233404576457930970524522.html">I never understood why getting on a plane sooner is a privilege</a>. It would seem to me that the airlines should have first class board last and de-plane first. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/england-v-india2011/engine/current/match/474473.html">India has come out strong this morning against England</a>. At this moment their 79/3. What I'm listening to: EMA, Past Life of Martyred Saints; The Ravonettes, Lust, Lust, Lust . (both via Kostis Kourelis). What I'm reading: S. Holdaway and L. Wandsnider, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/time-in-archaeology-time-perspectivismrevisited/oclc/184827650">Time in Archaeology: Time Perspectivism Revisited</a> . (Salt Lake City 2008)

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<title>A Neighborhood Church</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/a-neighborhoodchurch/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:25:05 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=803</guid> This post is a re-mixed posting of<a href="http://www.dayofarchaeology.com/newtunes-old-world-and-an-old-church/"> my Friday "Day of Archaeology" blog post</a>. <a href="http://www.dayofarchaeology.com/">The Day of Archaeology project</a> collected over 400 descriptions of a single day for an archaeologist. On Friday, a buddy of mine called to tell me that he had the keys to an old and abandoned church in my neighborhood. Situated some 3 blocks north of my house, the church was a regular landmark on our neighbood walks. It sits on a corner lot in a turn of the century neighborhood that represents one of the first blocks developed from commercial purposes to residential in Grand Forks. The church was built in 1905 as Trinity Lutheran church. This congregation was founded in 1884 and moved the the current structure from a church (apparently) built in 1887. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="TrinityLutheran2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/trinitylutheran2.jpg" border="0" alt="TrinityLutheran2" width="450" height="301" /> In its original form the church had more impressive windows on its east and south sides. In 1944, the church suffered a significant fire, and by 1950, the windows had been covered. This photo is from before 1918. <br /><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Trinity Lutheran 3.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/trinity-lutheran-3.jpg" border="0" alt="Trinity Lutheran 3" width="368" height="600" /> This photo is from after the fire. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Trinity1950s.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/trinity1950s.jpg" border="0" alt="Trinity1950s" width="489" height="600" /> In 1919, the church was turned over to a Church of God congregation (an evangelical protestant group that may be associated with Pentacostalism or the 19th century holiness movement). It remained a functioning Church of God until the flood of 1997 when it reverted to city ownership. Some newspaper articles suggested that it served as a private residence for some time in the early 21st century, but there is no evidence for that in either the tax rolls or in the structure of the building. The interior of the building has been "scraped". In other words, any thing of architecture or functinal value was removed from the interior. The walls, however, seem largely intact, suggesting that the scraping did not extend to copper piping or electric wires. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="TrinityLutheranInterior.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/trinitylutheraninterior.jpg" border="0" alt="TrinityLutheranInterior" width="450" height="301" /> Most of the damage to the interior derived from its abandoned condition. The roof leaked causing part of the ceiling to collapse. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="TrinityCollapse.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/trinitycollapse.jpg" border="0" alt="TrinityCollapse" width="401" height="600" /> While the roof of the church was in difficult condition, the foundations of the church seem to be in better shape. Sections of the original yellow to buff (local) bricks remain visible showing that the church had a solid brick foundation and that it had been repaired recently (in the last 20 years) with a layer of concrete. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="OldBricks.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/oldbricks.jpg" border="0" alt="OldBricks" width="450" height="301" />

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A large, concrete baptismal font remains in the basement preserving evidence for immersive baptism: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Font.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/font.jpg" border="0" alt="Font" width="401" height="600" /> Some evidence for the great fire of 1944 remain where the roof was visible from inside the church. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="TrinityFiredamage.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/trinityfiredamage.jpg" border="0" alt="TrinityFiredamage" width="450" height="301" /> The fate of this neighborhood church remains uncertainly. At present it is the property of the city and some local organizations have expressed interest in acquiring the parcel of land (which includes a turn of the century home that served as the rectory). Pessemistic reports on the structural integrity, however, of the building have caused some people to recommend its demolition. The church is a contributing property to the Near South Side historical district which also preserves several other architecturally significant (and mostly later) churches. Old Trinity Lutheran is unique in the area as it is one of the few remaining churches built on ordinary city lots and nestled among contemporary residental structures. It predates the more architecturally complex (and dramatic) Gothic revival Prebyterian Church (1910) and St. Mary's Catholic Church (1918), and the Art Deco United Lutheran (1931), and is a contemprary structure to the Beaux Arts-ish Christian Science church (1904). In fact, church is probably the second oldest standing church in town. The domestic and relgious buildings in the few blocks surrounding the church capture almost all of the major architecture influences on the community prior to 1950. While the architectural integrity, needs of the community, and economic resources available to preserve the building are all considerations for preserving this church, its place in the urban fabric would seem to offer a strong case for its preservation.

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<title>Teaching Tuesday: Quizzes in an Asynchronous Environment</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/teaching-tuesdayquizzes-in-an-asynchronous-environment/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:15:32 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=806</guid> As readers of this blog know, I've been committed to teaching my History 101: Western Civilization class in an asynchronous way over the internet for almost 3 years. In other words, I let the students engage the material at their own pace with very few deadlines other than the end of the semester. <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2010/10/28/a-defense-of-asynchronous-teaching/">I defend my approach to teaching here</a>. One of the biggest challenges to teaching asynchronously is how to test students on content. History is one of those fields that remains committed to teaching some basic content and not just ambiguous catch words like "critical thinking". As our course fulfills a global diversity requirement here at the University, there is even greater pressure on us to include an emphasis on content in such a way that demonstrates our students have achieved a degree of familiarity with various kinds of diversity in our world. While some of this can be achieved by writing assignments, and the course is relatively writing intensive, I've found that short, "multiple guess" type quizzes with each course content module also work to reinforce key ideas. The problem with giving these quizzes in an asynchronous environment is that students regularly ask me for the answers to questions on the quizzes. Thus far, I've been reluctant to provide students with the answer key out of fear that the students will just circulate the key rather than engaging the material. One student could take the quiz early, record the questions and answers and provide them to other students. Pedagogically, I like the idea of showing the correct answers on the quiz, but this has the potential to create - very quickly - a culture of cheating in the class. One solution that I have employed, it maintaining substantial banks of questions for each week. At present, I have over 250 questions for 16, 10 question quizzes. Unfortunately, I think I have maxed out my creativity and the quiz question bank seems unlikely to grow any more, any time soon. So, while a robust question bank will make it difficult to cheat in a consistent and predictable, it does the subvert the temptation to cheat easily in order to get a nice boost to your grade by knowing the answers to at least a few questions before the quiz began. The other solution, offered by the staff in <a href="http://und.edu/cio/cilt/index.cfm">our Center for Instructional and Learning Technologies</a>, is to simply let students take the quiz over again. Instead of offering the students the correct answers to each quiz question, let them take the quiz once and then retake it if they do not do as well as they like. This might just work for a few reasons. First, my quizzes are not particularly difficult from a "critical thinking" or analytical standpoint. Mostly they ask students to demonstrate that they are familiar with a particular body of content. Second, each quiz (and question in the bank) draw from a rather limited body of potential content. In other words, once a students sees what I'm looking for in the quiz (and from a particular unit) the student should be able to master that content without much difficulty. Even if the quiz questions are different, they will still ask questions pertaining to the same body of information. They will not get two entirely different quizzes. Finally, this will reward students who approach the class in a deliberate way. They'll have the time to take a quiz, see their grade, and retake it if necessary to improve their mark. Even if all students do the first time through the quiz is look at the questions and guess, taking the quiz again should help them focus their attention on key concepts from the particular learning module. I think that I might allow students to take each quiz three times. In part, I like the number three and it will allow students to take a trial run to determine the concepts that I deem important, take it one time "for real", and then take it one time to try to improve. Any thoughts on this?

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<title>The Rough Roads of Corinth</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/the-rough-roads-ofcorinth/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:10:41 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=808</guid> Readers of this blog know that the arrival of a new Hesperia is not quite a good as Christmas, but probably as fun as a close relative returning home after a long trip. (You know the feeling, when you know that there are goodies for you in their bag.) I was particularly excited to see the final publication of Jen Palinkas' and James Herbst's article on the "<a href="http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.2972/hesperia.80.2.0287">Roman Road Southeast of the Forum at Corinth</a>". First off, who's ever heard of publishing a road. What makes this even more crazy is that the road wasn't paved! Second, who knew so much could be said about a road. The article runs to close to 50 pages. Hesperia is one of the few places that would let someone publish a 50 page article on a road. While most of the article is a detailed description of the road surface, road building technologies (including water pipes, curbs, and sidewalks) and the relationship of the road to its surrounding structures. The first surfaces detected in excavation date to between the late 1st c. BC and the mid 1st century AD. The excavators are then able to piece together the development of the road through to the 12th or 13th century A.D. The detailed description of the relationships between the curbs, the water pipes running beneath the road, and the sidewalks (installed around the mid-2nd century) is particularly interesting. At one point (p. 299) they argue that a water drain pipe was installed by tunneling "under the road surface". What would that look like to the excavators and how would one know that something was tunneled under a solid surface? I was also curious about the character of the ceramic assemblages associated with the various levels of the road. We are told that at later levels (phase 5 dating from the late 4th to 12th century) "were distinguished from the road layers of earlier phases by their larger and more frequent pebble and tile inclusions, perhaps a result of waste brought by demolition and ruin of the domus that spilled over into the street." (p. 307). This got me wondering what the assemblages from earlier phases of the wall looked like? This, of course, could tell us something about how ceramic depositional processes in an urban environment worked. Was the material domestic waste? Or was it (like in later periods, apparently) construction or destruction debris? Some of the discussion of the sidewalks is pretty fascinating too. The east sidewalk was carefully preserved at its original level whereas the west side rose consistent with the level of the road. When I read this, I immediately began to think of my buddy Eric Poehler's work on the roads of Pompeii (which Palinkas and Herbst cite elsewhere) and wondered whether the uneven elevation related to the movement of wheeled traffic along the road. If wheeled-traffic tended to stay to one side of the road, then the curb or even the sidewalk would incur regular damage that would require repair and perhaps account for its change in elevation. The most interesting part of the article for me, is the description of the life cycle of the road in relation to its surroundings. The growth of the urban fabric and the maintenance of the road transformed how someone would encounter and experience the road in the landscape. The earliest levels of the road preserved the surface of the route provided relatively unobstructed view of the surrounding countryside as one approached the city of Corinth. Later level, preserved a road that took the more traditional form of an urban thoroughfare, walled in by the expanding urban sprawl of the city of Corinth. As the city contracted in the 5th century, the unobstructed vistas returned to travelers along the road and the surface fell into increasing disrepair. I have knee-jerk reaction to any archaeological publication that seems to argue for the material decline in the urban fabric in the 4th-6th century. But I'll concede that the evidence for the deteriorating condition of this road seem to confirm a view that the urban fabric was undergoing some kind of significant change - at least in this area - after the 4th century. That the road continued to function in

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some way as late as the 12th and 13th century, however, indicates that local memory and practices continued even as the fabric of the community shifted through time. (One minor bummer is that this volume of Hesperia seems to have published directly to Jstor. I think this must be a good thing for them as now the archive of older volumes and other American School of Classical Studies at Athens publications and the most recent volumes of Hesperia are together in one place. The downside, is that my institution seemed to have access to Hesperi when it lived on the Atypon Link, but now, it does not seem to have a subscription to Hesperia's new home. I need to figure this all out, but it's a bummer either way.)

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<title>A Church Wrapped for Protection</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/a-church-wrapped-forprotection/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:25:11 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/achurch-wrapped-for-protection/</guid> Ive spent a good bit of time this week working on ways to protect or at least document <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/a-neighborhoodchurch/">old Trinity Lutheran church at 3rd Ave. and Walnut St. in Grand Forks</a>. Its the second oldest standing church in town and the last of a group of wood-framed neighborhood churches nestled into residential neighborhood through the city at the turn of the centure.&nbsp; While it seems almost inevitable that the city will destroy the old church as it sits in a unforgiving intersection of zoning, building code, local resources, structural problems, and urban development. At the same time that Ive been tilting at windmills, I re-read D. ur i s article titled Byzantine Architecture on Cyprus: An Introduction to the Problem of the Genesis of a Regional Style, in N. P. ev enko and C. Moss eds. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/medieval-cyprus-studies-in-art-architecture-and-historyin-memory-of-doula-mouriki/oclc/39856102">Medieval Cyprus: Studies in the Art, Architecture, and History in Memory of Doula Mouriki. (Princeton 1999)</a> .&nbsp; In this article he describes how village women wrap the Medieval church of St. Ioulitta and Kyriakos at Letimbou in yarn to protect it from evil forces (p. 79). I visited this church with Amy Papalexandrou this summer and, sure enough, the church was wrapped in yarn.&nbsp; Maybe this is what we need to do to protect Trinity Lutheran! Wrap it in yarn. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/letimbou2.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Letimbou2" border="0" alt="Letimbou2" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/letimbou2_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/letimbou1.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Letimbou1" border="0" alt="Letimbou1" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/letimbou1_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="306"></a> <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/letimbou3.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="Letimbou3" border="0" alt="Letimbou3" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/letimbou3_thumb.jpg" width="454" height="675"></a>

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-5/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:11:40 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=819</guid> On our way onto campus this morning the sky looked like this: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="AugustSky.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/augustsky.jpg" border="0" alt="AugustSky" width="450" height="269" /> Never a good sign, but like all things, this should pass and give way to sunshine by the afternoon. So, in anticipation of a sunny day, I offer some quick hits and varia. It's pretty interesting news that the <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/02/loeb_classical_library_plans_for_digital_versio n_of_its_classics">Loeb Classical Library is going digital</a>. The green and red texts are unrivaled in their convenience and (general) reliability. Several generations of Classicists and ancient historians have teethed on them. Online, however, they are going to have competition from all kinds of sources including <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/collections">the sophisticated, powerful, and free Perseus</a>. It will be interesting to see whether the reputation of the Loeb series will let them carve out a profitable (in ever sense) niche in the world of online texts. I've taken to using <a href="http://notational.net/">Notational Velocity</a> based in part on a recommendation from <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5826449/lifehacker-pack-for-mac-our-list-ofthe-best-free-mac-downloads">LifeHacker</a> and a follow-up recommendation by <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/move-quickly-from-idea-to-draft-with-notationalvelocity/35085">ProfHacker</a>. It has been impressively forked into <a href="http://brettterpstra.com/project/nvalt/">nvALT</a> which has enhanced further the super light duty note taking program and text editor. The particular strength of this little application for my note taking style is that it makes it easy to link notes together to create webs of distributed content. For example, when I refer to a book or an article in a note, I can easily link my original note to a new note on that particular article or book. After a day or two of note taking I have developed a complex net of ideas, notes, and text that follow the course of my ideas. And the software is free and super easy to use. David Pettegrew has chimed in on the Palinkas and Herbst, "Roman Road Southeast of the Forum at Corinth" article in Hesperia. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/therough-roads-of-corinth/">I blogged on it here</a> and <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2011/08/04/a-roman-road-in-the-panayia-field/">David's post is here</a>. <a href="http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/24c674cb911b46b68a75e89cbf2161aa/ND-Monastery-Cows/">Monks and Cows in North Dakota</a> (h/t to Mike Fronda). T<a href="http://www.assumptionabbey.com/">he century old Catholic monastery of Assumption Abbey</a> is going to stop raising cows because they can't find enough monk-cowboys. <a href="http://markmenjivar.com/you-are-what-you-eat/statement/">You Are What You Eat</a> (h/t to <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/the-ladder-of-inference-and-markmenjivars-you-are-what-you-eat/">Colleen Morgan</a>). This is a photo exhibit of what people have in their refrigerators. It is profoundly archaeological in its ability to capture the mundane. It is also hugely depressing and revealing. If you haven't checked out the <a href="http://www.dayofarchaeology.com/">Day of Archaeology</a>, you should. It's pretty remarkable the number, diversity, and quality of posts from working archaeologists of all stripes. <a href="http://www.dayofarchaeology.com/new-tunes-old-world-and-anold-church/">My post is here</a>. <a href="http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/dayof-archaeology-shape-of-the-twittersphere/">Shawn Graham's first efforts to find patterns in the Day of Archaeology Tweets is here</a>.

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<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/08/inside-north-korea/100119/">Photographs from North Korea</a> (h/t to <a href="http://kottke.org/11/08/a-view-into-north-korea">kottke.org</a>). The first photograph on this page is simply amazing. I haven't checked Facebook for over a week. I think I'm done with it. I'm not entirely jazzed about Google+, but I think that's where I'll end up especially once I learn to link my Twitter account to publish to Google+. What I'm listening too: New Order, Low-Life ; New Order, Power, Corruption, and Lies . (As an aside, I think that "Love Vigilantes" (from Low-Life ) is among the most depressing songs ever written. All I can think of when I hear it is Ian Curtis. What I am reading: A. Kaldelis, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/hellenism-in-byzantium-thetransformations-of-greek-identity-and-the-reception-of-the-classicaltradition/oclc/166357707">Hellenism and Byzantium</a> . Cambridge 2007; J. Fabian, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/time-and-the-other-how-anthropology-makes-itsobject/oclc/8866627">Time and the Other</a> . Columbia 1983. </ul> And as I am done with this post, resolution has come to our stormy morning and the sun has pushed away the clouds... <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="AugustSkyResolved.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/augustskyresolved.jpg" border="0" alt="AugustSkyResolved" width="450" height="269" />

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<title>Wear Marks</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/wear-marks/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:49:22 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=828</guid> One of the most exciting things in my archaeological "career" was when I began, as a young archaeologists, to recognize signs of wear on ancient objects and architecture. I remember <a href="http://myweb.fsu.edu/dpullen/">Daniel Pullen</a> or, maybe, <a href="http://www.wooster.edu/Academics/Areas-of-Study/Sociology-Anthropology/Faculty-andStaff/P-Nick-Kardulias">Nick Kardulias</a> patiently showing me a piece of chert which was used as a blade in a doukani (threshing sledge) and showing me how you could see the marks left by the silica (?) in the grain on the stone. As a text guy, this blew my mind. Owning an old house has taken some of the excitement from discovering wear marks. For example, the signs of wear of our rickety back landing seems a bit more like hazard than a physical memory of years of cookouts, backdoor getaways (not mine, I promise!), summer time chats with neighbors, punishing blizzards, and sparkling spring rains. Every now and then, however, there is some sign of wear in our house that brings back the old feeling of fascination. This weekend a contractor pointed out some strange wear patters on a piece of molding above the passage between our front room (probably the living room originally) and our back room (originally the dining room). <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="WearPattern1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/wearpattern1.jpg" border="0" alt="WearPattern1" width="450" height="301" /> Looking more carefully at the molding above the door showed strange signs of wear: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="WearPattern3.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/wearpattern3.jpg" border="0" alt="WearPattern3" width="450" height="301" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="WearPattern2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/wearpattern2.jpg" border="0" alt="WearPattern2" width="450" height="301" /> It was difficult to tell if the wood molding was cut away or worn away by rubbing or something. The ceiling in this room is the original plaster ceiling so one would assume it would show signs of wear or disturbance (plaster shows almost everything!) if whatever effected the molding involved the wall or ceiling. It is possible - if a bit unlikely - that the molding was damaged before it was installed, but the house shows almost no signs of this kind of cosmetic modification. Since much of this molding was prefabricated (even in the late 19th century), this wear could be from its shipping into Grand Forks. One could imagine a piece of rope holding a bundle of these molded door frames together and rubbing away part of one during its journey by rail into Grand Forks.

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<title>The East end of EF2</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/the-east-end-ofef2/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:55:57 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/the-east-end-ofef2/</guid> As readers of this blog know, Ive been working with a team to publish the Early Christian basilica at the site of Polis EF2.&nbsp; One of the most perplexing things about this building is the relationship between the east end specifically that three eastern apses - and the foundations of the nave and aisle walls. The eastern apses do not bond with main walls of the nave or the aisle foundation walls. The widening of the aisle foundations at the point in which they join with the main nave would suggest that the main and flanking naves are later than the aisle foundation walls. In other words, it would make the best sense if we imagined the widening of the aisle foundations wall as a response to an apse being built with thicker walls. The apse is a more structurally complex and demanding component of the church and it would make sense that the aisle foundation wall received additional thickened to support more effectively a reconstructed eastern end. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/ef2eastend.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="EF2EastEnd" border="0" alt="EF2EastEnd" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/ef2eastend_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="433"></a> The archaeology might well add some support to this sequence of building in the eastern part of the church. Efforts to find evidence for a foundation trench for the thickened eastern buttresses of the church were not successful. In other words, it seems like the fill below the floor of the eastern part of the church post-dates the thickening of the aisle foundation wall.&nbsp; This would be consistent with a major rebuilding of the eastern end of the church. It is notable that the eastern wall of a portico that ran along the south side of the church building rested against (but did not bond with) the south side of the south aisle apse. This has allowed us to sequence the construction of the portico after the construction of the eastern apses and the modification of the eastern end of the church. So the phasing of the church must go, aisle foundation walls, nave, and portico. The ceramics from the fill associated with the construction of the apse are 7th century.

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<title>More on the Neighhorhood Church</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/more-on-theneighhorhood-church/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:50:14 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=834</guid> Over the past three weeks I've been fighting a quixotic battle to save <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/a-neighborhood-church/">the last woodframed neighborhood church in Grand Forks, ND</a>. Built in 1905, this church stands as the last example of the kind of simple, religious architecture common in turn of the century neighborhood throughout the community. Today, the church stands in an endangered neighborhood which still manages to preserve some of the character of the early 20th century streetscape. The church is the second oldest in town. Last night I attended a meeting of the <a href="http://gfpreservation.com/">Grand Forks Historic Preservation Commission</a> and was generously allowed to speak to members regarding our little church issue. The meeting was interesting for a number of reasons. I'll admit that it was my first encounter with this kind of organization, and the complexities of the church's situation were fairly daunting. The biggest point of emphasis at the meeting - particularly on the part of the staff and chair - was that this building was going to be demolished. That point was non-negotiable. The city owns the property and had allocated money for its "mitigation". Apparently the most vexing issue involved the lack of parking around the church. This, of course, is beyond ironic as this Google Earth photograph shows the immediately across the street from the little old Trinity Church is a massive, typically half-filled parking lot of United Lutheran. Now I understand that the city does not regard private parking for another building as an alternative to on-site parking, but, the absurdity of the situation almost pushed me to the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI">Allen Iverson point</a> (i.e. we're here talking about preserving the second oldest church in town and you guys just want to talk about PARKING. It's PARKING. Not the church, not historic preservation, not the endangered streetscape, but PARKING). <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Parking.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/parking.jpg" border="0" alt="Parking" width="450" height="322" /> The greatest disappointment of this conversation was the inability of the committee to imagine solutions or alternatives. The word impossible was thrown around a good bit in these conversations. The only thing we could do, then, was to discuss how the Historic Preservation Commission might deal with the destruction of a significant building. For my part, I urged the Commission to document the building as thoroughly as possible. In fact, I would have liked to see the city, which owns the building and has the money for its demolition, to have offered some part of those resources to document the building before it was demolished. This, apparently, was also impossible, although I am not sure why. It seems to me to be a reasonable expectation for any organization. If a group is going to demolish a historically important building, then they should document this building in as thorough way as possible. In fact, I'd like to think that our civic government would feel all the more compelled to document historic buildings before their destruction. Fortunately, Emily Wright, the executive director of the <a href="http://www.gfclt.org/">Grand Forks Community Land Trust</a>, which will receive this property after the destruction of the church, agreed to provide resources to document the building as thoroughly as time and money will allow. Taking nothing away from Emily's initiative, the board of directors of this organization show that she likely had significant support and encouragement from a number of board members. In the end, my experience with the Historic Preservation Council was not altogether positive. They were willing to listen to me and sympathetic, but at the same time, it seems like the will to preserve this church or even to ensure that it was documented thoroughly was fairly modest.

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<title>House for Sale</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/house-for-sale/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:23:01 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=838</guid> Readers of this blog know that I am not above a few advertisements for myself. <strong>UPDATE: ALMOST SOLD!!!! We're under contract on the house now! So, we're selling our turn of the century <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Foursquare">American foursquare</a> house in beautiful Grand Forks, North Dakota. The best way to get official information about our house is going to Greenberg realty and typing in our MLS number (11-117). But if you just can't be bothered, this is what the page will look like. There is a photo tour and all that good stuff if you do a search for houses at $89,900 <a href="http://www.greenbergrealty.com/grflexmls.cfm">on the Greenberg page</a>. (The entire interface is fairly inelegant!) <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="OurHouse.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/ourhouse.jpg" alt="OurHouse" width="450" height="410" border="0" /> My wife and I have loved this home. The house sits in the Near Southside historic district and is very typical of the architecture of this area. It was built in 1900 and is a great example of an American Foursquare. It has a substantial living and dining room on the first floor as well as a kitchen. The upstairs had originally three bedrooms, but one now serves as an upstairs laundry room. We renovated the bathroom last month. Like any old home, when we purchased it, it had some minor structural issues. The foundation of Red River bricks needed some minor reinforcement. We repaired the roof including new architectural shakes and removing rotting parts of the roof or soffits. We also reinforced the front porch so it is architecturally sound. In the interior, we repaired or replaced all of the damaged or deteriorating plaster (in some cases with dry wall). We also striped the doors and replaced missing hardware with pieces appropriate to the period. The house has a good bit of original architectural detail preserved including three lead windows, interior columns supporting the passage between the entry hall and the formal living room, and original woodwork around doors and windows. The downstairs features hard wood floors that we have refinished and in some places replaced. The upstairs floors are fir and are mostly in good shape, but need to refinishing. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="HouseforSale.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/houseforsale.jpg" alt="HouseforSale" width="450" height="269" border="0" /> For the practical minded, the house has a massive two car garage with plenty of storage, a great backyard, great neighbors, and would not need any major work for at least a decade. So go to the MLS and check it out and spread the word!

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-6/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 12 Aug 2011 12:26:53 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=842</guid> It's a sunny Friday morning at the end of a hectic week, so I can only muster a modest list of quick hits and varia. I really like<a href="http://blogs.middlebury.edu/middstart/"> Middlebury's microphilanthropy page MiddStart</a>. I think it's a great model for similar projects. The University of North Dakota ranked #1 on the <a href="http://www.campusgrotto.com/top-partyschools-for-2012.html">Princeton review list of schools where students study the least</a> for the second year in a row (scroll to the bottom for the illustrious list). <a href="http://learningaloud.com/blog/2011/08/05/are-expectations-for-learner-activities-inside-andoutside-of-the-classroom-changing/">Mark Grabbe had an interesting (if coincidental) thoughts </a>on the issue of study behavior and academic outcomes. <a href="http://blog.photography.si.edu/2011/08/02/five-tips-for-designing-preservablewebsites/">These are some great observations</a> regarding the design of preservable websites. I'm a bit late on this, but <a href="http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3492/3031">this is a pretty interesting article</a> in this months First Monday on the visibility of Wikipedia in scholarly publications. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/house-for-sale/">Did I mention that we're selling our house here in Grand Forks?</a> While I'm excited about t<a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/sri-lanka-v-australia2011/engine/current/match/516206.html">he Australian side's total domination of Sri Lanka in a ODI this week</a>, I am just stunned and confused by <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/england-vindia-2011/engine/current/match/474474.html">England's sudden rise to world domination</a>. What I'm listening to: Jay-Z and Kanye West, Watch the Throne . (<a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15725-watch-the-throne/">Pitchfork's 8.5 rating is a bit optimistic</a>.) What I'm reading: R. Young, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/colonial-desire-hybridity-intheory-culture-and-race/oclc/30318652">Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race</a> . (London 1995)

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<title>Do University of North Dakota Students Study Enough?</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/do-university-of-northdakota-students-study-enough/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:57:12 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=845</guid> The Princeton Review's annual College Rankings are hardly an unproblematic source for "real" information on university life. Each year, the rankings allow some schools to trumpet their achievements while other schools are left shrugging their shoulders or making efforts to counteract perceived liabilities in the rankings. For the past two years, the University of North Dakota has ranked number 1# among the school's surveyed for students studying the least. While we can critique the character of the survey or deride the sensationalist character of the Princeton Review's efforts, many schools have taken to reflecting on these ranking and responding to them by<a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Another-Year-AnotherTop/128464/"> attempting to change policies and campus culture</a>. The initial response by UND administrators to the Princeton Review's ranking <a href="https://secure.forumcomm.com/?publisher_ID=40&amp;article_id=211842&amp;CFID=277538 659&amp;CFTOKEN=99977328">was the standard PR stuff</a>: <blockquote> tudents taking the survey may not have included certain kinds of studying in their answers, Johnson said. A number of our students engage in research with faculty members, he said. This is not typical at other institutions. Students often dont think of research and other types of experiential learning as studying, Johnson said. Steven Light, associate provost for undergraduate education, said UNDs extracurricular offerings prepare students for classes but are not considered traditional studying. </blockquote> These are not particularly compelling responses. If anything, students tend to have rather expansive views of what constitutes academic work, but I suppose it is possible. In contrast to the Princeton Review's results, it remains (vaguely) heartening that the NSSE Survey (a far more systematic survey of student life) reported that students studied for between 11 and 30 hours per week. The majority of students in our major (history) tend to prepare rather regularly - if not diligently, so the results of the Princeton Review survey only partially jive with my own experiences. What I can say, however, is that there are easily observable reasons why our students would tend to underreport hours spent in preparation. Students here at UND still revel in a kind of anti-intellectual, anti-acadmic macho culture. Admitting that you study for class may seen as a kind of weakness. Denying that you study, in turn, forms a kind of resistance to the oppressive demands of a foreign and problematic institution. At the same time, studying 11 hours a week (the bottom number indicated by the NSSE survey) could hardly be enough to survive and academically rigorous curriculum. (<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/some-thoughts-on-academicallyadrift/">Recent critiques of undergraduate education</a> have tended to emphasize the decline in timeconsuming, long-form, writing assignments.) I seem to remember the old adage that for each hour in class, we were to spend 3 hours preparing. In this equation a 3 credit class would represent about 9 hours per week of work and a full schedule of 5 classes a daunting 45 hours of work outside of class time. This seems unlikely, but not impossible. I know that I studied all the time as an undergraduate, but I also liked to study. I wish I could convey my passion for studying to students, but in hindsight, I understand it to be a product of trust. I trusted that my professor and I were on the same side and so when they made difficult demands, I responded to those demands and regarded them (mostly) as things that I needed to do to make my life better. Many of my students today seem to view me (in particular) as a person put in place to make their lives worse.

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To make on more, final, observation, the top complain in all my classes is that they are too difficult and time consuming. This would seem to confirm that our students are prepared to resist the demands of course work. Perhaps the culture of resistance is the key to unpacking the meaning of our Princeton review rankings. <blockquote></blockquote>

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<title>Rough Draft: Liminal Time and Liminal Space in the Middle Byzantine Hagiography of Greece and the Aegean</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/rough-draft-liminaltime-and-liminal-space-in-the-middle-byzantine-hagiography-of-greece-and-the-aegean/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:39:30 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=847</guid> The scholarly process can be a source mystery for students and the general public. Even I occasionally wonder how my peers transform ideas into provocative and sophisticated final products. Part of the goal of this blog was to make my scholarly process a bit more transparent. Typically my ideas begin as blog posts, I develop them into conference papers, and then, if they seem like they have potential, I attempt to mold them into some kind of publishable shape. Often my best ideas languish between conference papers and lectures. In the spirit of transparency, I'm posting a rough draft of a paper that I will deliver at the <a href="http://und.edu/conferences/anchoritic/">International Anchoritic Society Conference</a> here in Grand Forks. The paper's title is "Liminal Time and Liminal Space in the Middle Byzantine Hagiography of Greece and the Aegean". I've blogged on the paper <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/time-after-time/">here</a> and <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/anchorites-in-grand-forks/">here</a>. [scribd id=62402931 key=key-7dqqgvm9nqqucyhl4ng mode=list]

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<title>Two Interior Panoramas</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/two-interiorpanoramas/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:24:53 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/two-interiorpanoramas/</guid> Since <a href="http://ancienthistoryramblings.wordpress.com/">R. Scott Moore (aka the Gigapanda)</a> has generously lent me the <a href="http://www.gigapansystems.com/">Gigapan</a> for the semester, Ive been getting my moneys worth from the robotic gizmo. We first took a <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/campus-in-the-summer/">series of exterior gigapans of the campus in the summer</a>. This week, we moved onto taking some interior photographs. Since the Chester Fritz Library on campus is celebrating its 50th Anniversary, we continued to focus on that structure.&nbsp; The most difficult challenge is controlling for exposure. While the Gigapan manual recommends that you lock exposure, I worried that this would result in the amazing windows along the north wall of the Main Reading Room in the Chester Fritz being washed out.&nbsp; The result of not locking the exposure, however, is the dark striations across the photograph.&nbsp; I also had particular trouble exporting the photograph from the Gigapan Stitch software to the Gigapan website. I received an error that read: Error time data did not match format: data=0-00-00 00:00:00 fmt=%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S. Eventually I had to download the stitched photograph into Raw format and then upload it to the Gigapan site. &nbsp;<a href="http://gigapan.org/gigapans/84376/">To see the photo in all its Gigapantastic goodness, go here</a>. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/clfmainreadingroomsmall.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="CLFMainReadingRoomSMALL" border="0" alt="CLFMainReadingRoomSMALL" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/clfmainreadingroomsmall_thumb.jpg" width="504" height="102"></a> <p align="left">I also took a photograph of the East Asia Room. This room is one of the best rooms on campus. It features objects associated with Chester Fritzs time in China.&nbsp; The lighting was much more stable in the room so I was able to control the various exposures more successfully. <p align="left"><a href="http://gigapan.org/gigapans/84382/">To the photo in all its Gigapantastic goodness, go here</a>. <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/eastasiaroomsmall.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;paddingright:0;display:inline;border-top:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="EastAsiaRoomSMALL" border="0" alt="EastAsiaRoomSMALL" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/eastasiaroomsmall_thumb.jpg" width="504" height="48"></a> <p align="left">Be sure to zoom around in this picture to check out the various objects on the wall and fur

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<title>Where I work</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/where-i-work/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 18 Aug 2011 12:18:46 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/where-i-work/</guid> I really like the Where Ideas Come From feature over at <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/category/headquarters">The Atlantics technology blog</a>. The posts mostly feature cutting edge software and application developers that swim around at the edge of most of our awareness (<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/where-ideas-come-from-insidebumps-headquarters/242841/">Bump</a>, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/where-ideas-come-from-insidethumbtacks-headquarters/243373/">Thumbtack</a>, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/where-ideas-come-from-inside-geglobal-researchs-headquarters/242842/">some tech company called GE</a> (where do they come up with these names?)).&nbsp; The big For the past few years, Ive been thinking about how faculty space and how our love of offices, corridors, and personal lab spaces might work against efforts to foster collaboration on campus. My office is my sanctuary. Its a place where I think and read and write (and blog). <p align="center"><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/myoffice.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;border-bottom:0;border-left:0;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;bordertop:0;border-right:0;padding-top:0;" title="MyOffice" border="0" alt="MyOffice" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/myoffice_thumb.jpg" width="504" height="200"></a><br> <a href="http://gigapan.org/gigapans/84433/">for the gigapan of the space go here</a> While it has the space for collaboration, it doesnt allow for anyone elses personality. The chaotic clutter and crowded arrangement is my creative space.

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-7/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:35:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=860</guid> It's a beautiful sunny day here in the Northern Plans (or North Dakotaland), so a perfect day for a robustly random Friday varia and quick hits:

The first issue of<a href="http://ejournals.lib.auth.gr/parekbolai"> Parekbolai: An Electronic Journal for Byzantine Literature</a>. (via <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>) This has been making the Facebook/Twitter/Google+ rounds this week: <a href="http://mindshift.kqed.org/2010/11/10-reasons-to-ban-pens-and-pencils-in-the-classroom/">10 Reasons to Ban Pens and Pencils in the Classroom</a>. A funny, but not particularly clever, response to calls to ban phones, laptops, tablets, et c. <a href="http://www.taki183.net/#gallery">Some more examples of Taki 183</a>. Just the other day, I was thinking of all the great things that DuPont has provided for the world (including a good part of my college education), but I did not remember that they invented <a href="http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/dupont/FarmingWithDynamite/Limage01.html">Farming with Dynamite</a> . A somewhat amusing info graphic<a href="http://digg.makeuseof.com.s3.amazonaws.com/how-to-twitter.png"> on how to Twitter</a>. Some pretty cool examples of the necessity for ruins: <a href="http://www.bethdow.com/ruins.html">Beth Dow's photography</a>. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/realestate/commercial/cities-see-another-sideto-old-tracks.html">Talk of turning the Reading Viaduct </a>into one of those amazing elevated parks like the High Ling Park in Manhattan. Grand Forks needs to look into this idea that preserving historic landscape often costs LESS than destroying them. And, Danny Macaskill. This stuff blows my mind: </ul> </ul> </ul> [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShbC5yVqOdI] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR3WwzBoYDo">Pace like Fire</a> (keep watching to at least 5:20) <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/08/09/139276372/fire-destroys-u-krecord-distribution-center-millions-of-cds-lost">This is a pretty depressing story</a> about the impact of the London riots and the related fires on the independent music industry. It seems that a warehouse was destroyed containing a huge percentage of many labels physical media. (via <a href="http://theneedleandthegroove.com/">The Needle and the Groove</a>) What I'm reading: M. Maas, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/exegesis-and-empire-inthe-early-byzantine-mediterranean-junillus-africanus-and-the-instituta-regularia-divinaelegis/oclc/53057670">Exegesis and Empire in the Early Byzantine Mediterranean</a> . Tbingen 2003. (How did I miss this when it came out!?) What I'm listening to: Fleet Foxes, Helpless Blues. This is just pure awesome. When I go on tour, it will be in this vehicle: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;border:0 initial initial;" title="PureAwesome.jpg"

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<title>A new semester and a new year...</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/a-new-semester-and-anew-year/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:29:20 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=863</guid> The new semester begins tonight at 5 pm (or something). This is my first semester with tenure which I officially received on August 15. It felt a lot like my team winning the World Series (which I have experienced) or the Super Bowl. I woke up the next day expecting things to be or feel different and then was disappointed when they were the same. My coffee tasted the same, the sky looked the same, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/where-i-work/">my office did not become larger or smaller</a>. And my teaching and research loads did not change either. So here's my fall semester: 1. Two old classes. I'm teaching two classes that I've taught every semester for the past four years. I love the routine, the opportunity to tweak the classes minutely and judge the results the next semester, the battle with boredom of going through the same material each semester (which I liken to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia">acedia</a>, a kind of monastic boredom), and the chance to compare students in very similar situations. And I often think of it as a kind of cricket match (as <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/england-v-india-2011/engine/current/match/474475.html">I watch Sachin Tendulkar in what is likely his last at bat in England</a>). The patience to do the same thing over and over, but also the flexibility to adjust to variables and changes. The two classes are: History 101: Western Civilization I (online) and History 240: The Historians Craft, which is the required course for our majors. 2. A new class. I am also teaching a new class of sorts. I am teaching a digital and public history practicum. This course will focus on developing a boutique-y collection of digital artifacts to celebrate the Chester Fritz Library's 50th Anniversary (The Fritz @ 50: 1961 to 2011). I have a class of four diligent but inexperienced graduate students, some good allies in <a href="http://webapp.und.edu/dept/library/Collections/">the Department of Special Collections</a>, <a href="http://gigapan.org/gigapans/84376/">a Gigapan</a>, <a href="http://timpasch.com/">a brilliant tech advisor</a>, and a bunch of good will. Like <a href="http://nodakhistory.omeka.net/exhibits/show/nodaktheses">my effort in the Spring</a>, our goal is to produce a small, well-curated digital exhibit, for the library using off the shelf components as much as possible. 3. Got Papers? I have somehow committed to four (?) conference papers this fall and winter. I have no idea how this happened. I've posted a rough draft of the <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/rough-draft-liminal-time-and-liminalspace-in-the-middle-byzantine-hagiography-of-greece-and-the-aegean/">first one here already</a>. I'll be giving Liminal Time and Liminal Space in the Middle Byzantine Hagiography of Greece and the Aegean at the <a href="http://und.edu/conferences/anchoritic/">International Anchoritic Society Conference</a> here in Grand Forks. At the American Schools of Oriental Research Conference, I'll be (co-)authoring a paper on our ongoing work <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/the-site-of-pyla-vigla-on-cyprus/">at the site of Pyla- Vigla on Cyprus</a>. (I might also be involved in a paper on my work on Polis at this conference, although this is not at all clear). Finally, in January I'll be giving a paper with <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">David Pettegrew</a> at the Archaeological Institute of America's Annual Meeting titled "<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/producingpeasants-from-pottery/">Producing Peasants in the Corinthian Countryside</a>". This paper will draw on our decade old survey data from around the Corinthia. (To make my life easier, I've decided not to actually attend ASOR or the AIA.) 4. Publication Projects. I also have four ongoing publication projects. The first and most pressing one is to shape my paper, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/more-ambivalentlandscapes-of-corinth/">"The Ambivalent Landscape of Christian Corinth" from the Corinth in

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Contrast Conference into publication shape</a>. I've received really good feedback from the editors of a volume that will come from this conference, and now I need to take it all in. I also need to push into final form <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/29902863/Early-Christian-Baptisteries-Working">my short encyclopedia article on Early Christian Baptisteries</a>. I've also (more or less) committed to writing up a piece on post-colonialism in Byzantine Archaeology. This will develop from <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/why-hybridity-m/">a paper I wrote years ago</a>, with every intent of publishing, and gave at a working seminar at the Gennadius Library in Greece. The last publication project involves the results of our survey on Cyprus. We have finally decided to publish the results of the survey aspects of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Survey separate from the results of our excavations at the site. We have a completed draft of this manuscript more or less prepared and have submitted a book proposal to the American Schools of Oriental Research Archaeological Reports Series. 5. And the other stuff: <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/house-for-sale/">Did I mention that we're moving</a>? I continue to tilt at windmills in an effort to document <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/a-neighborhood-church/">an early 20th century church here in Grand Forks</a>. We have a verbal agreement with <a href="http://hepperolson.com/">an architect to illustrate</a> the building. I've been working with some people looking to revitalize the College of Arts and Sciences webpage (<a href="http://arts-sciences.und.edu/keli/index-dev.cfm">ssshhhh</a> this is the top secret not ready for primetime development page.) <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>! At least one book review. Following Formula 1, NASCAR, Cricket, Baseball, the NFL, and College Football. </ul> So it should be a fun semester!!!

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<title>The Robinson House</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/the-robinsonhouse/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:51:05 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=867</guid> As readers of this blog know, we've been working on moving house. We are almost done the process of selling out 1900 American Foursquare and purchasing a slightly older home a few blocks away. This made me think about houses in the community. A few months ago, a colleague mentioned that the University was looking to destroy <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/category/elwyn-robinsonsautobiography/">Elwyn Robinson's</a> former home on Princeton St. near campus. The home was built in 1912 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_L._McVey">Frank McVey, then President of the University of North Dakota</a>, as an investment property for his wife. Robinson moved into the house in 1941 and purchased the property in 1946 for $7000. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="RobinsonHouse1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/robinsonhouse1.jpg" border="0" alt="RobinsonHouse1" width="450" height="269" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="RobinsonHouse2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/robinsonhouse2.jpg" border="0" alt="RobinsonHouse2" width="450" height="269" /> In Robinson's own words (from <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/category/elwyn-robinsons-autobiography/">his memoirs</a>): Much more than these matters was our move to a duplex on Princeton Street on January 31, 1941. The opportunity came when Dr. Frank Foley, head of the geology and State Geologist, got a job with the United States Geological Survey and prepared to move at the end of the first semester to Salt Lake City, Utah. The duplex had been built about 1912 by the wife of the university president, Frank McVey, as an investment property. The McVeys had left the university in 1919 when Dr. McVey became president of the University of Kentucky, but in 1941 he still owned the property (Mrs. McVey had died in the meantime). Mr. James Wilkerson, the business manager of the University of North Dakota, looked after it for President McVey, by this time in retirement. The rent was $32.00 a month. Our move on January 31 was a simple one, for aside from a crib, tow trunks, and an innerspring mattress, we had no furniture (of course we had dishes, bedding, cooking utensils, clothing, a radio, and books). We were lucky in that the Foleys (Frank's wife was Adelaide and they had a small child Barbara) wanted to sell their furniture and that, because Eva had drawn her money out of the Ohio Teachers Retirement system - $457.01, we had money with which to buy what they wanted to sell. Our diary (Volume I, p. 29) showed what we bought: an old dropleaf table with leaves, $5.00; washing machine, $15.00; overstuffed chair and footstool, $12.50; refregerator, $60.00; two kitchen chairs, $3.50; large rug, $4.00; small rug, $1.00; chest, $8.00. From Betty Crum, a neighbor at 316 Cambridge Street, we bought a radio table for $2.75 and a table lamp for $1.00. We also bought a new Jenny Lind bed from Montgomery Ward for $7.95 and new bedsprings from Panowitz's for $8.95, a new floor lamp for $3.85, a second-hand bureau to be refinished for a buffet for $8.00. The ruffled curtains for the livingroom cost $5.93. We spent $157.00 in all. Before we moved Eva finished an unpainted chair purchased from Panowitz's for $2.50. We were delighted with our new home. It was light and had a lot of space. On the first floor the livingroom was separated from the diningroom by built-in cases with glass doors about five feet high. On the livingroom side they were bookcases, on the diningroom side they were china cabinets. These rooms and the upstairs bedrooms had good maple floors. The small kitchen had an electric

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stove, built-in cupboards, a small closet with shelves to the ceiling, and the original sink put in when the house was built in 1912. The same was true of the old-fashioned fixtures in the upstairs bathroom. There was a large closet under the stairs and near the front door, another off the upstairs hall. Each of the bedrooms, good-sized rooms, had a closet. French doors opened off the diningroom on to a porch. It had glass windows in large panels that were removed and stored in the spring, installed again in the fall, leaving a screen enclosed porch where we were often to have meals during the summer. The basement on our side of the duplex had the furnace and hot-water tank. The other side had the coal bin, the laundry tubs and washing machines, a toilet, and a room where a university student stayed. It was a poor place, too cool in winter, dusty, with cardboard walls and a poor board floor. After we moved, the student, who cared for the furnace and the snow removal for the room, fell ill. Dean French of the Medical School came to see him and said it was a poor place for anyone to stay. We discontinued the practice and took care of the furnace and the snow ourselves. When we moved, I worried about whether I would have the strength to do the chores that the new place would entail. It worked out, however. The heating system was a hot water one, the water circulating by a gravity-convection system, the hot water rising to the radiators and the cooler water returning to the furnace boiler. It was a large furnace for heating both apartments and of a size to burn North Dakota lignite which had a lower heat value than soft coal. A group of faculty members who heated their houses with lignite, headed by Henry Doak, ordered lignite a carload at a time through Hanson and Maves, a fuel dealer in East Grand Forks. Each one told Henry how many tons he could take when a carload was to be ordered. Then the whole carload was delivered by Hanson and Maves trucks at once, not stored. There was a substantial savings for we paid, I believe, about $3 or $4 a ton for the lignite delivered. I have no records to consult, but I believe the duplex burned about 20 tons a winter, so my cost for heating would be about $40.00 a season, very reasonable. When the lignite was delivered there was a lot of coal dust in the basement. Ashes had to be carried out every weekend, a big chore. Near the furnace there was a booklet on handfiring of lignite put out by the extension service of the University of Illinois. By studying the booklet, I thought that I became quite skillful in firing the furnace. The house did not cool off too much at night even in severe weather. It was very comfortable.<br /> The system for heating water for dishes, bathing, and washing clothes was less satisfactory. A pipe from the hot water tank led into the fire-box of the furnace, heating the water in cold weather adequately, but in warm weather the gas heater under the tank had to be lit. Then the tank had to be watched closely, for there was no automatic control of the gas heater. The same tank supplied hot water for both apartments. While we were getting used to our new quarters, we were also becoming better acquainted with our neighbors, most of whom we already knew. Our apartment in the duplex was the west one, away from the street. The east apartment, 423 Princeton, was occupied by Margaret Libby Barr, her husband Paul, head of the art department, their daughter Martha Ann, about seven, and their son Robert, not quite a year and a half. We had known the Barr family since we had come to Grand Forks. They were very friendly and kind to us. Before the winter [of 1946] was over came an event that, like the coming of Robert and Wynona Wilkins, was to have a beneficial influence on the rest of our lives. It was the purchase of the duplex at 423-425 Princeton Street. Dr. Frank McVey, growing old and retired from the presidency of the University of Kentucky, wanted to sell. Both George and Marion Richards, the tenants in the front part of the duplex, and Eva and I wanted to go on living there. And so, though I was not at first particularly anxious to do so and had had no plans to buy a house, we and the Richards decided to buy the property together. We dealt not with Dr. McVey but with Mr. James Wilkerson, business manager of the university who had been taking care of the property for him. The asking price was $7,000. The Richards and we each paid $1,400 down and we borrowed the remaining $4,200 at the Red River National Bank at 4 percent interest. Each family was to pay $25.00 a month on the mortgage, the payments to cover interest, principal, and real estate taxes. I suppose the low rate of interest in a time of post-war inflation was partly because of the 40 percent down payment. Now the crucial importance of the government bonds that we had been buying since just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor became clear. To make up our share of the down payment, we cashed the bonds (nearly $1,100) and borrowed

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$300 from the university federal credit union.

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<title>A Byzantine Roof</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/a-byzantineroof/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 24 Aug 2011 11:58:34 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=876</guid> My post today is a modest contribution to some work that <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2011/08/three-fingers-of-clay.html">Kostis Kourelis is doing over at his blog</a>. On Monday, he offered a brief post on Byzantine roof construction. My colleagues and I at the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project have been thinking a good bit about roof construction also. Our interests in roofs derives from our study of a 6th century A.D. annex room associated with an early Christian basilica. It seems clear that the room was two storeys and had a heavy roof covered with thick, flat, "Kopetra" type tiles. The second floor had collapsed into the first and there is no evidence for whether the room had an internal support. We did, however, find some large plaster fragments that we have associate with the tops of the walls. The most interesting fragment (and please excuse my sketch) looks like this: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="KoutsopetriaPlaster.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/koutsopetriaplaster.jpg" border="0" alt="KoutsopetriaPlaster" width="500" height="307" /> The chunk of plaster preserves the impression of the beam that ran along the top of the wall. It also had the impression of the perpendicular rafter which sat atop the beam. On the top of the piece of plaster we discovered the impressions of reeds or small sticks. This must have been the layer of rushes, beanstalks or rushes described in the 4th century B.C. inscription cited in Kostis' post. The tiles would have sat atop the reeds preserved in the plaster impression. The plaster impression preserve some evidence for the construction process. It would seem that the wall beam and rafters were set into place and the gap between the rafters was filled with plaster (or a kind of mortar) immediately before the reeds were put in place atop of the rafters. The plaster or mortar would have had to be still wet for the small reeds to make an imprint. In effect, this piece of plaster preserves the roof as it was being built. This makes some sense, I suppose, because it ensured a strong seal between the roof and the wall to prevent water from entering the wall and weakening the rather humble used to bond the stones. <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">David Pettegrew</a> and I have documented a series of roofs at the opposite end of their life cycle at the early to mid 20th century rural site of <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/collections/show/4">Lakka Skoutara in the Corinthia (follow this link to an archive of over 600 photographs taken over 10 years at the site).</a> <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/show/1235">The roof of House 5</a> showed no evidence of the mud-and-reed layer between the tiles and roof structure although it is possible that this layer eroded away quite quickly as the roof deteriorated. The roof of house 5 appears to have been supported by some well-cut timber that set atop walls reinforced with cinder block suggesting that a fairly recent date of construction. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/show/1235"><img style="display:block;marginleft:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/newimage.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="299" /></a> <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/show/1894">The roof of House 3</a> shows a similar construction style with the use of more rustic rafters. The mud plaster interior walls stood until early in this century (2001), but deteriorated rapidly after the roof collapsed. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/newimage1.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="301" /> <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/items/show/1921">House 14</a> was the only house in

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the settlement that preserved the mud-and-reed packing between the tiles and the rafters. This photograph is from 2001 and the packing remains barely visible. By 2009, the entire roof had collapsed and evidence for the mud layer under the roof tiles was lost. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="House 14 Roof.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/house-14-roof.jpg" border="0" alt="House 14 Roof" width="299" height="450" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/newimage2.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="337" /> The temptation to recycle the precious roof tiles even in our century manifest itself in the roof of our house 2. The first photo is from 2001 and the second from 2002. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="House 2 2001.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/house-2-2001.jpg" border="0" alt="House 2 2001" width="450" height="307" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/newimage3.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="305" />

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<title>Three Things about Blackboard</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/three-things-aboutblackboard/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 25 Aug 2011 12:36:30 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=882</guid> I am not a "Blackboard Hater", but I have to admit to being baffled by Blackboard, our Learning Management System, a good bit of the time. On the one hand, the University of North Dakota has (apparently) a fair Blackboard complete suite of Blackboard services, applications, and plugins, and Blackboard does seem able to do an almost bewildering number of teaching related things. On the other hand, Blackboard seems to lack some of the simple functionality that most of us have come to expect from software these days. I'll be the first to admit that well-designed software has made me soft. I've come to expect almost infinite flexibility from even the least expense web-based application and I have become increasingly reluctant to adjust my workflow to accommodate limitations imposed by the tools that I rely on to accomplish my daily tasks. And, since I teach online, managing my History 101: Western Civilization class, which has seemingly innumerable moving parts and sometimes close to 100 students is a daily responsibility. So, any friction that I encounter in setting up and running this class can easily multiply. Over the past week, I have encountered three little issues with Blackboard that have produced a significant amount of friction in my set up and management of my class. 1. Copying Group Discussions. Each semester I break my History 101 class into a groups of 30-40 students to make it easier for them to participate in an online discussion board. Mostly my discussion board questions or prompts ask them to write short (200-300 word) essays on a particular historical questions and draw together the primary source readings, my lectures, and secondary source readings. While most content copies easily from one semester to the next, these discussion board prompts do not. As as a result, I have to re-enter the discussion board prompts for each of the 15 discussion forums for two or three groups each semester. This is time consuming and, more than that, annoying. I am sure there is a technical reason why this doesn't work, but from the end user perspective, this doesn't seem a particular unusual or strange request. 2. Copying Quiz Instruction. A similar area of friction involves managing my 15 weekly quizzes. Each quiz has the same format and the same instructions, but there is no way to batch change the instructions on the quizzes. So when I changed my quiz format slightly this fall, I had to change the settings on 15 separate quizzes. Not only is there a good chance that I messed this up in some way (e.g. forgot to change the settings or instructions on a quiz), but this also took me the better part of an hour to accomplish. While an hour is not a huge amount of time in the greater scheme of a semester, it is still amazing to me that this simple functionality is absent in Blackboard. I have to think that batch editing quizzes would qualify as typical faculty behavior. 3. Preventing Students from Creating Discussion Board Forums. I discovered this semester that students could create their own Forums in group discussion boards. From what I can tell, a Forum in Blackboard-speak, is group of threads centered around a particular topic. Oddly enough, it is possible to prevent students from creating new discussion threads within those Forums, but not to prevent them from creating the Forums themselves. This is baffling. Maybe the strange character of the Forum (is it a thread or what?) allowed it be overlooked by Blackboard developers? Because students can create Forums on their own, the first couple weeks of the semester involves me asking them not to do that and, instead, focusing their energies of responding to the prompts that I have provided rather than creating unique and typically unrelated threads. While none of these issues are major, they consistently add friction to my experience with Blackboard and online teaching. None of these issues seem particularly idiosyncratic to my style of teaching or evaluation and none of them - from the end user experience - seem particularly tied to security, design, or software logic issues. In short, there is no reason why these things should not be fixed and work, except that the software has design problems.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/friday-varia-and-quickhits-17/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:45:27 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=884</guid> It's Friday, it's the end of the first week of the semester, there's been earthquakes (and earthquacks), hurricanes, and storms. But it's beautiful here on the Northern Plains and serene in my office. So there really is no better time for some varia and quick hits. I get that Steve Jobs was a kind of cultural icon. Moreover, I love my newish MacBook Pro. I bought a first generation iPad and a first generation iPod Touch. I wrote my M.A. thesis on a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_Duo">PowerBook Duo</a> and my undergraduate thesis on a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Plus">Mac Plus</a> (which died, like so many of the line, from overheating). I run my stereo from a MacMini and have a fantastic theater display in my office. But, I feel like the hubbub over his resignation is overwrought. He's a guy who's sick. I sincerely hope he gets well. I appreciate the products that he sold us. But, he's just a guy who makes things that people like me want to buy. (And we should always remember <a href="http://www.mcintoshlabs.com/us/Products/pages/ProductDetails.aspx?CatId=Amplifiers&amp;Pr oductId=MC275">the original McIntosh</a>) So in my effort to find some sanity in the handwringing over Steve Jobs' resignation, I looked to my buddy Sam Fee's blog <a href="http://www.thefee.net/delirium/">Arranged Delirium</a>. He didn't have any insights to offer (yet), but I did discover a link to <a href="http://www.samfee.net/photography/">his fantastic photography</a>. He certainly needs to bring his camera out to the Northern Plains. One of my tiny side projects has been to work with a fantastic team to revise the <a href="http://artssciences.und.edu/">College of Arts and Sciences webpage</a>. We're still working on bringing content to it, but the design is there. (And if you look closely, you'll see a photograph of ole R. Scott Moore.) <a href="http://daytum.com/billcaraher">My Daytum is back and alive again</a>. I'm recording how many words I write, how I get home from school, and the temperature in my office first thing in the morning. Beloit College has published its <a href="http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2015/">Class of 2015 Mindset List</a>. If nothing else, it reminds us that our students are very different from us. It was a bit stunning to realize that many of my students were in Middle School when 9/11 happened. According to Gallup, <a href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/the-happiest-states-ofamerica-north-dakota-on-the-rise/">North Dakota is the second happiest state</a> in the U.S. "So What" is one of my favorite Miles Davis' songs and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhv8iOY08TY&amp;feature=channel_video_title">this YouTube of animated sheet music is really cool</a>. If you haven't, check out the first <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday </a>of the year. And keep looking back, because there are big things afoot for the ole Teaching Thursday scene. This is one of my favorite racing weekends of the year. The Cup guys are at Bristol (at night!!) and the F1 fellas are at Spa. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/sri-lanka-v-australia2011/engine/match/516211.html">Everyone looks good in the warm-up matches</a>. What I'm reading: <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1r6137tb">Eric C. Kansa, Sarah Witcher Kansa, and Ethan Watrall, Archaeology 2.0 . (Cotsen Institute of Archaeology 2011)</a> What I'm listening to: Femi Kuti, Day to Day .

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<title>Hybridity in Byzantine Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/hybridity-in-byzantinearchaeology/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:55:02 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=887</guid> As readers of this blog know, I've been thinking about hybridity in Late Antique and Byzantine material culture for the past 4 or 5 years. I started to try to articulate some of my conclusions in 2008 and in a stalled paper that I presented a few times, tried to develop into an article, and then left half-formed deep in some corner of my hard-drive. More recently I've decided to write up a short article on the topic for a volume that I'm editing on Method and Theory in Byzantine Archaeology. While I have some of the basic ideas pulled together, I have only managed to erect a very basic framework for my observations. Byzantine archaeology deserves to engage the ideas of hybridity in a more theoretically robust way because discussions of cultural exchange are already so central to how we understand the significance of Byzantium in the greater narrative of national, Western and even World history. As many scholars have seen Byzantium as sitting outside the master narrative of the West - with its emphasis on earlier cultures representing clear stages in a development toward our modern world, Byzantine culture appears as a static and potentially inert body of cultural characteristics that functioned primarily to absorb features from other societies and pass them on. As such hybridity in the discourse of Byzantine archaeology manifests itself in two mains ways: 1. Byzantium as Colonizer. As the Byzantine State sought to project authority across the Eastern Mediterranean, it refracted into a myriad of region styles as the practices of the Byzantine capital projected against the traditions, resources, and requirements of "local" practice. Like so many interpretative paradigms established to evaluate the limits and extent of an imperial power's influence, the question of regionalism and regional styles in Byzantine architecture, art, and decoration has become an important avenue for understand both the character of the so-called "Byzantine commonwealth" and the significance of the capital and its patrons as producers of cultural and political power. On Cyprus, the juxtaposition of imported Proconessian marble columns at the basilicas of Ay. Georgios - Peyias and the limestone vaulting at the nearby and contemporary basilicas at Polis reflects the interplay between the wider Aegean world and local traditions. The limits to how far external traditions could penetrate the Cypriot landscape and how they influenced the development of local "regional" styles of building, for example, not only forms a key debate among contemporary archaeologists, but also represents a tool for recognizing Byzantine culture. The hybridity of the Byzantine periphery required scholars to define the essential characteristics of the Byzantine capital, identify "the other", and make arguments for how the two responded to one another in a colonial encounter. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Column.JPG" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/column.jpg" border="0" alt="Column" width="401" height="600" /> 2. Byzantium as Colonized. With the arrival of the Crusaders in the East, the Byzantine state had to endure a period of colonization by Western Frankish powers. Scholars have already applied the term hybridity to the results of this period of intense cultural contact. While scholars have yet to apply this term with its full post-colonial coloration, they have nevertheless recognized the contact between two essentialized cultures - the west and Byzantium. The resulting hybrid which sought to deploy features associated with both cultures in a strategic way, formed the foundation for the Late Byzantine cultural flourishing and exerted significant influence on the development of West. The instability of the Fanco-Byzantine hybrid and its threatening position in relation to our own cultural expectations has rarely been engaged explicitly. Implicitly, however, our inability to understand, for example, the "Byzantine" church at Merbaka which may have been built by a local (albeit idiosyncratic) Frankish aristocrat, likely represents an intense discomfort associated with the fluid

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nature of identity in societies deeply invested in dynamic, hybrid, forms of expression. These two features of Byzantine culture do not stand as independent past realities, but already exist as core features of the discourse in Byzantine archaeology. The place of Byzantium outside of the master narrative of the West contributed to efforts to essentialize Byzantium (and associate it with the Oriental "Other"). This facilitated efforts to consider Byzantine material culture as capable of producing hybrids with both regional styles and the styles of the "colonizing" West. The added complication to this is the position of Byzantium as a contributing component of Greek nationalism, for example. In this context, Byzantium is bot

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<title>Methods, Questions, and Digital Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/890/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:46:14 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=890</guid> Amidst the beginning of the semester din, I did capture enough time to settled in and read a new book: E. Kansa, S. Witcher Kansa, and Ethan Watrall eds., Archaeology 2.0: New Approaches to Communication and Collaboration . (Cotsen Institute of Archaeology (UCLA) 2011). The book is a product of a session at the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) in 2008 and is the first volume in the new Cotsen Digital Archaeology Series . It is published with a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">Creative Common BY-SA</a> license (By Attribution, Share Alike). The volume is available <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1r6137tb">for free here</a>. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Archtwopointotitle.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/archtwopointotitle.jpg" border="0" alt="Archtwopointotitle" width="397" height="600" /> This book may well become a landmark volume in the history of archaeology and the bundle of technologies that we associated with Web 2.0. The volume spans a range of topics from core infrastructure, to technical and theoretical concerns, collaborative research environments, and realistic perspectives on sustainability. Each of the topics considers the significance of Web 2.0 technologies in advancing the way in which archaeologists organize, produce, and share data on the web. The credentials of the participants in this volume speak for themselves and their body of technical work is cutting edge. More than taking a leap into the future, the book captures a precise moment in the history of the discipline's long-term engagement with technology. The greatest strength of this book is that it is steeped in the practical realities of archaeological data sharing. For the contributors, data sharing is not merely the exchange of raw data (databases, spreadsheets, GIS and CAD arrays, or whatever), but the full range of conversations that Web 2.0 (variously defined) technologies has made possible. User-generated archaeological information has changed the way that archaeologists conduct research. At the same time, the contributors to this volume remained profoundly realistic. No one imagined a situation where all data is stored in some great archive but rather in a distributed way across numerous different archives on the web. The different organization of data, the limited ability to centralize resources, and the institutional structure of the discipline present significant obstacles to any single method imagined to accommodate the mass of pre-existing and born-digital archaeological data. In the place of the fantasy of a single repository, comes more sophisticated ways to syndicate, integrate, and query (and search) for archaeological data across the web like those provided by the Alexandria Archive's Open Context and Michigan State's iAKS. The web has radically changed concepts of visibility, collaboration, and scholarly performance so it is now possible to consider projects like the online UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology to be equal (if not superior) to traditional print publications. Blog, social media, and other collaborative spaces have become important avenues for certain types of archaeological conversations. (It was flattering to see my blog mentioned in Sarah Witcher Kansa's and Francie Deblauwe's article on middle space in scholarly communication in zooarchaeology (it would have been even cooler had they spelled my name right!)). While much of the book went over well-trod ground among those who follow trends in the digital humanities, the scope, accessibility, and intensely reasonable perspectives offered by the authors made the book particularly compelling. There was little in the way of naive sensationalism or even the utopian tech-evangelism that is sometimes found in these kinds of volumes. The limits of funding, issues of sustainability, and the need to protect certain kinds of sensitive data appear as serious considerations without simple answers. While this is a reality among scholars discussing digital archaeology and history, it rarely seems to be so fully articulated and recognized in the texts that these scholars produce imagining the digital futures of our disciplines. The greatest limitation of this text comes not from the technological side, but rather from the

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intellectual or academic side. An issue that I have raised on my blog before stems from reflecting on the interpretative agendas advanced by many Mediterranean archaeologists. While the idea exists that it could be possible to collect data from numerous projects, across a vast area, and crunch it into a broad reaching, novel synthetic perspective, I think that it remains an open question whether there is a substantial scholarly interest in this kind of research. Vast, quantitative studies of even single regions from single data sets - remain relatively rare in our field. And, there are significant questions whether the quality of data produced even in the most carefully monitored projects reach a sufficient standard to allow for complex generalizations across regions. Moreover, more qualitative analysis - which does not rely necessarily upon the raw data of excavation or survey, but on published objects - is becoming better served by the greater accessibility and visibility of standard print publications via various journal databases and projects like Google books. (And it is worth noting that standard issues like naming of various vessel types, places, or even contexts (across multiple languages) are not any more easily resolved in databases than in more traditional publications). In my world, most academic archaeologists design their field research to collect data that answers a particular question. Their research question, then, absorbs their energy, structures their data, and shapes their interpretative and publication strategies. In fact, the absence of useful data is often the reality that prompts fieldwork. At the same time, the inadequacy of other projects' data is the conceit that makes one's own data stand apart. This is not to say that comparative analysis does not occur between projects or that we don't search for comparative "type-fossils", but rather that this work tends never to be a major research priority. In fact, in Mediterranean archaeology tends to approach comparative analysis from the attitude that "our data" is unique and meaningful in and of itself, and other data "merely" provides it with context. (I do understand that this is not the same process for professional archaeologists or CRM types. There is obvious and tremendous value to the various digital projects described in the volume that sought to open up the vast body of "grey literature" to a wider professional audience.) The issues facing large scale data distribution schemes isn't, then, a technological one, but rather a more profoundly methodological one. Archaeologists simply are not asking the kinds of questions (yet) that queries across vast swaths of intensively produced data would support. So, the lack of support for the massive data repositories, comes as much from the intellectual limitations of our discipline as from institutional, professional, or technological concerns. This being said, I do recognize that changes in technology does shift the conceptual footing of the discipline, but the nature of archaeology as a craft (as opposed to a more rigorously standardized science or profession) remains a major limitation to how scholars think about data.

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<title>Preserving Neighborhoods through Documenting Their History</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/preservingneighborhoods-through-documenting-their-history/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:48:18 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=899</guid> Over the past month, I've been working to coordinate the documentation of one of the oldest churches in town before it is "<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/more-on-the-neighhorhoodchurch/">mitigated</a>". I've been working with the good folks at the <a href="http://www.gfclt.org/index.html">Grand Forks Community Land Trust</a>, a doctoral student in our program, and a preservation-minded local architect to get the church documented and prepare a short publication so that people know the history of the building that was lost. As part of this work, I've begun to talk with the president of the board of the Community Land Trust about the potential for formalizing our relationship. Without getting into detail about how the CLT works, their goal is to provide affordable housing and invest in the local community. One of the main ways that they'll do this is by renovating older homes or building new ones on vacant properties. Since much of the affordable housing and open lots in the city are located in historic neighborhoods (the Near North Side, <a href="http://gfpreservation.com/register/riverside.php">Riverside</a>, and <a href="http://gfpreservation.com/register/southside.php">the Near South Side</a>), there is an opportunity to work with the CLT to document the history and fabric of these communities on a very small scale. I've been imagining a plan where the CLT and, perhaps, the Department of History co-produce studies of the blocks where new or renovated CLT properties are located. Each block study will include a sketch or architectural plan of the block, basic history of the house types, the history of the development of these properties, and the history of the community. Each of these studies would be published and made available to the local community at a nominal cost. The sketch or drawing of the block will serve as a house-warming gift to the first residents of the home. It will also be deposited in the local and state archives as a contribution to the architectural and social history of the community. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GFNeighbors.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/gfneighbors.jpg" border="0" alt="GFNeighbors" width="450" height="190" /> While this will certainly cost money, there are numerous groups active in town who are looking for innovative ways to strengthen the sense of community. By providing both new and existing residents with a carefully documented history of their neighborhood, its architecture, and its residents, we'd seek to contribute to the local sense of place by grounding the present in the past. For the other residents of the neighborhood, the local histories would help to ensure that the spirit of preservation would remain strong in town and help the community to have information in front of them to make informed decisions about the future of their neighborhoods. As the CLT expands, the number of blocks and histories would expand as well establishing a sound foundation for local history of the community. And, finally, this would provide an excellent opportunity for community engagement for the Department of History and our fledgling public history program.

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<title>Office Sounds</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/01/office-sounds/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:39:12 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=902</guid> I've been a bit interested in sonic landscapes, but the technology to capture sonic landscapes seems a bit overwhelming. I can do things with photographs, with illustrations, and with descriptions, but the way microphones work has always baffled me. Never mind. I tried it yesterday in my office. The air conditioner on the floor above mine drips down onto the window unit in my office. The window unit in my office hasn't run since 2009, but it dutifully endures the drip, drip, dripping of the unit above. Drip: [audio http://www.und.edu/instruct/wcaraher/Sounds/Drip.mp3] The drip goes on everyday, all day. I listen to music to cancel it out. I've captured the drip here on a <a href="http://www.bluemic.com/snowball/">Blue Snowball</a> and processed the sound using <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/">Audacity</a>. It's my second effort to do something like this. (Click here for my first effort: <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/PodCasts/Voices_of_Archaeology/Trench_Sounds. mp3">Trench Sounds</a>)

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/friday-varia-and-quickhits-18/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:14:34 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=916</guid> One of the simple pleasures in my life is reading Latin with a handful of undergraduates each week at Latin Friday Morning. Good conversation, a great language, and Julius Caesar. And another beautiful North Dakot-y sky: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="DakotaSky.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/dakotasky.jpg" border="0" alt="DakotaSky" width="450" height="269" /> Some quick hits and varia: <a href="http://www.zotero.org/blog/announcing-zotero-3-0-beta-release/">Stand alone Zotero 3.0 Beta has made me fall in love with Zotero again</a>. <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gibson-interview-cities-in-fact-andfiction">Some of William Gibson's thoughts on cities in Scientific American</a>. <a href="http://evolutionofweb.appspot.com/">A gorgeous graphic history of the web</a>. <a href="http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2011/jay-z-and-alan-lomax/">How Alan Lomax owns Jay-Z's "Takeover" (</a>h/t Brad Austin). There's some sweet irony here when Jay-Z mocks Nas for not owning the rights to his own song: </ul> <blockquote> Then I heard your album about your Tec on the dresser<br />So yeah, I sampled your voice<br />You was using it wrong<br />You made it a hot line<br />I made it a hot song<br />And you ain't get a coin, nigga<br />You was getting fucked then<br />I know who I paid, God - Serchlite publishing </blockquote> <a href="http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2011/08/the_art_of_publ.php">Some fun thoughts on blogging as public thinking</a>. Did you remember to read your <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a> yesterday? <a href="http://boingboing.net/2011/08/30/car-decaying-in-the-forestsand-islandwisconsin.html">Some abandonment porn</a>. <a href="http://www.indianajonestheexhibition.com/home.html">Indiana Jones teaches real archaeology via National Geographic</a>. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/28/are-research-papers-a-waste-oftime">Are research papers a waste of time</a>? <a href="http://knowledgenetwork.ubc.ca/CKNet/Home.html">A cool way to map knowledge at a university</a>. What I'm reading: Betsey Robinson, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/histories-of-peirene-acorinthian-fountain-in-three-millennia/oclc/693810990">Histories of Peirene: A Corinthian Fountain in Three Millennia</a> <span style="background-image:initial;backgroundattachment:initial;background-color:transparent;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:italic;backgroundposition:initial initial;background-repeat:initial initial;border:0 initial initial;margin:0;padding:0;"> (Princeton </span>2011) What I'm listening to: Tinariwen, Aman Iman ; Bunny Wailer, Blackheart Man .

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<title>Archaeology as Remix</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/archaeology-asremix/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:08:07 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=921</guid> This past week, I romped through Mark Amerika's newest book <a href="http://www.remixthebook.com/">Remixthebook</a> (Minneapolis 2011). As with his previous non-fiction-ish offerings, this book defied categorizing and description. I was mostly a meditation on his creative process taking as a point of departure his creative work as a<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VJ_(video_performance_artist)"> performance VJ</a>, as an author, and as a critic. He focused primarily on the links between creativity and the work of remixing our lived worlds. His argument, laced through a complex, poetic text, is that to be alive, creative, and conscious is to exist in a constant flow of spontaneous, post-production remixing. As his definition of creativity expands and his understanding of remixing grows more ragged, the lived, creative, and performative become a blur and increasingly stand in for reality. As archaeologists, we are in a constant state of remixing. Even the most basic archaeological arguments require us to move between times (the present and the past, relative and absolute dates, stratigraphy and periodization), move between media (ceramics, architecture, lithics, texts, digital data, images, maps, plans), move between voices (the art historian, the historian, the scientist, the critic, and the skeptic), and move between genres (narrative, analysis, catalogue, data). Our work flow is punctuated by the constant shifting between software, media (of different shapes, sizes, genre, forms), and our own creative output. Archaeological work is a process of constantly performing and remixing bits (both in the traditional sense and increasingly the digital sense) into new objects that present themselves for remixing. 1. This next week, Amy Papalexandrou has asked me to help her produce a 20 page synthetic, interpretative text for an exhibit catalog for an upcoming exhibit at the Princeton Art Museum -City of Gold: The Archaeology of Polis Chrysochous, Cyprus. Our short paper will look at the Late Antique to Medieval city and remix over 30 years of archaeological work, the physical objects present at Princeton, and our most recent research at the site (which is itself the remixing of finds, notebooks, architecture, past-texts, and archaeological method to perform new arguments and new syntheses). In our somewhat-harried correspondence, we took as points of departure an inscription, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/unctarheel1989#p/a/u/0/NNLd83GBQcg">a short-video I narrated on site</a>, and our most recent research. It goes without saying that the previous scholarship on the site forms a persistent backing track for our remix. More importantly, we are writing a text that is designed for an informed and interest public, rather than a professional group of scholars, students, or researchers. So while our source material will - more or less - be the same as any other production of our site, our audience will be a bit different. The remix has context and responds to its environment. 2. I've been working with a small group of students to produce a public, digital history exhibit on the 50th Anniversary of the Chester Fritz Library (which is the main library on campus here). The students are busy pulling together photographs, texts, documents, and other objects from the university archives. They are also working on how to integrate these objects across a range of digital media - a blog, a Twitter feed, an Omeka.net page, and a Flickr account - and to narrate using these objects across these various spaces. While the source base for our remix is not so different from that confronting any scholar looking to produce historical analysis, the output of our work is quite different. We are intentionally distributing our remix across multiple media and thinking actively how our remixes (as a team and as individuals) will be unique to our audience. In the context of our work with the library, we're following Amerika's lead by using the context of remix to join the work of the "authors" with the work of the audience. By preserving (re-producing?) some of the fragmented state of the original media (individual texts, documents, objects), we attempt to entice people to remix our material in new ways. We've performed the initial act of selection and

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become partners in the conversation. 3. In an effort to think more radically about the notion of remixing, I've begun a conversation with <a href="http://timpasch.com/">Tim Pasch</a> - a computer guru type in Communications at the University of North Dakota. We both have an interest in sound and he records his own, highlytextured digital music. In the course of these conversations, he mentioned software that could translate digital images to sounds. This makes sense, of course, a digital image is a just a gaggle of digital data that could be read by any interface to produce output. The data behind a digital image could be rendered as text, images, sound or almost any medium imaginable via suitable software. As we chatted about this, I offered to send him raster images from my project in Cyprus and invited him to use images which show the distribution of pottery, the survey grid, or topography and to render them as sounds. We've even discusses the potential for capturing sonic landscapes using both microphones, but more radically - capturing images with an explicit eye toward transforming them into sounds. Remixing the landscape would, then, extend beyond simply filtering digital data collected from the landscape and incorporate using the software filters as a lens for primary data collection.

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<title>Why no one saved an old church</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/why-no-one-saved-anold-church/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:28:13 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=925</guid> A team from <a href="http://hepperolson.com/">Bobbi Hepper Olson's architectural firm</a> begins to illustrate <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/more-onthe-neighhorhood-church/">the church at 3rd and Walnut St. today</a>. She's been willing to take on this task a discount in the name of historic preservation. I have also reached an agreement with a doctoral student at the University of North Dakota to write a short history of the building and its congregation. We'll publish the study of the church and the drawings of the building with the support of the <a href="http://www.gfclt.org/">Grand Forks Community Land Trust</a> and the <a href="http://www.und.nodak.edu/instruct/wcaraher/CyprusResearchFund/Donors.html">Cyprus Research Fund at the University of North Dakota</a>. Stay tuned for some photographs While it feels good to do our part in preserving the memory of this building, it has troubled me that the building itself cannot be saved. I have heard the proximate causes for the decision to "mitigate" (in local lingo) the building which range from the lack of parking, to structural problems, the difficulty bringing the building up to code, and the idea that many people "tried hard enough" to save it. These causes, however, all seem to me to be temporizing, ex post facto justifications for the decision to demolish the building. After all, zoning and code variances exist to allow historic neighborhood to retain their character and structural problems in wood-framed structures rarely pose insurmountable problems (farmers, for example, often re-roof dilapidated barns). I'd like to offer three observations on why this church is not going to be saved. Most of these have come from conversations with Chris Price, the doctoral student who is working to document the church and its congregation. 1. The church is hidden. The church sits on a one-way street with mature trees that obscure its steeple. The church lacks any substantial setback from the road or sidewalk which makes it difficult to distinguish from the residential buildings surrounding it. Car traffic down these roads can easily pass the church without noticing it. In fact, most people I tell about the building do not even know that it is there and many say that even when looking for it they pass it by at first without noticing. These Google Street View screen shots make the point better than my description. This picture shows the view from along Walnut Street. The church is the last building on the right. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="WalnutStView2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/walnutstview2.jpg" border="0" alt="WalnutStView2" width="450" height="335" /> This picture show the view from along 3rd where you can notice the steeply running parallel to the telephone poll just right of center. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="3rdStView.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/3rdstview.jpg" border="0" alt="3rdStView" width="450" height="343" /> It hasn't helped, of course, the church has remained empty since 1997 so not only is it occluded from view physically, but also socially. My wife and I walk along Walnut to get to restaurants downtown and for a traveller down Walnut on foot, the church is a distinct landmark. 2. The church shares its basic fabric with the neighborhood. Unlike almost every other church in town, the 3rd and Walnut church shares its basic fabric with its neighborhood. The church is woodframed, has a steeply-pitched roof and domestic style windows, and sits on a standard parcel of land. At sometime in the last 50 years, aluminum siding was added covering its original wood siding and further blending it with updated domestic architecture in the area. The church makes only one concession to pretense: its English Steeple. While local residents have done all they can to preserve the domestic architecture of the Near South

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Side, there is a clear and common preference for monumentality. After all, many people see the monumental buildings and more elaborate homes as defining the historic character of neighborhoods. The everyday character of the church and its easy blending with the more modest, turn of the century domestic architecture make it part of the fabric of the community while also paradoxically making the building less unique in terms of its preservation value. 3. The social and economic character of the building and its congregations. For this observation, I credit Chris Price who observed that the wood-framed churches in Grand Forks built around the turn of the century were predominantly immigrant churches. They typically served newly arrived Scandinavian congregations rather than the earlier Anglo settlers of the area. These congregations tended to have less access to community wealth and to meet in wood-framed structures at the time when many of the more established groups had begun to upgrade their churches to stone or brick (or at least stone or brick facing on wood frames). The modest parcel of land nestled amidst residential buildings and without much pretense for monumental presentation not only reflected the religious values of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauge_Synod">austere, low-church Hauge Synod Lutherans</a>, but also reflected the limited access to resources. Even today, the church stand amidst modest dwellings many of which are now rental properties and its appearance and location set it apart from the more monumental churches in the community. At the turn of the century, such "neighborhood style" churches served new congregations which eventually abandoned them for more monumental churches as these groups established themselves in the community. In many cases, the old wood-framed churches were turned over to new arrivals or Christian groups just as today. In fact, the oldest standing church in town was originally build to house the (apparently) well-to-do Christian Science congregation in Grand Forks, and today houses a substantial Pentecostal congregation (who, in turn, has out grown the building and will move on to a new building in the near future).

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<title>The Peirene Fountain</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/the-peirenefountain/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:40:43 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=930</guid> I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of Betsy Robinson's new book <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/histories-of-peirene-a-corinthian-fountain-in-threemillennia/oclc/693810990">Histories of Peirene: A <span style="font-weight:bold;fontstyle:normal;">Corinthian Fountain</span> in Three Millennia</a> . This was particularly exciting to me because I've been using <a href="http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3015360/">Betsy's 2001 University of Pennsylvania dissertation</a> for years as a detailed guide of the culture of water in the city of Corinth. With the publication of this book, her dissertation has received a fantastic complement. The new book explores the history of the Peirene fountain and its excavations. On a personal note, it evoked fantastic memories of my first trips to Corinth (as a bleary-eyed M.A. student) when I reveled in the fountain on a hot summer day and, later, explored various other ancient water channels around the Corinthia. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/newimage.png" alt="NewImage" width="215" height="260" border="0" /> Robinson's work stands atop the detailed documentation of Peirene produced in the published and unpublished manuscripts of Burt Hodge Hill. In fact, the detailed documentation produced in <a href="http://www.jstor.org/pss/4390647">Corinth I.6 by Hill </a>absolved Robinson of some of the incredibly tedious (but valuable) descriptions so often associated with the careful discussion of an archaeological site. Freed from these responsibilities, Robinson was able to examine the place of this important fountain not only in Corinthian history, but in the history of Hellenistic and Roman architecture and in the history of the Corinth. After a brief description of the spring and its springhouse, she reviewed the ancient (and some Medieval) testimonia and made a persuasive case for the importance of Peirene to both local and Mediterranean-wide understandings of Corinthian identity. More than just a list, this chapter contextualized her book by making it clear that Peirene was not just another ancient spring, but an especially important in art and text alike. This chapter satisfies critics who might have questions the significance of the Peirene fountain outside the narrow realm of Corinthian scholarship. The next two chapters, return Peirene to its Corinthian context by exploring the labors that contributed to the fountain's excavation and maintenance. In many ways, these chapters form an interesting pendant to Robinson's treatment of the testimonia. On the one hand, she is pains to argue that the fountain is significant because the ancient texts regard it as almost synonymous with the city of "well-watered Corinth". On the other hand, she presents the early excavators of the fountain in a clearly heroic light. Bert Hodge Hill, in particular, receives equal parts apologia for his lack of publications and praise for his tireless efforts to document the fountain and protect the drinking water of the village of Corinth. A maze of channels and pipes emanating from Peirene continued to provide the water supply for the village in the first half of the 20th century and it was particularly critical that archaeological work on the fountain did nothing to disrupt the flow of water to fields, homes, and fountains in the area. In an era where archaeologists are becoming increasingly aware of the colonialists nature of their work, this chapter serves as an interesting case-study for the kinds of symbiotic relationship that developed between the archaeologists and the communities in which they worked during the early days of American archaeology in Greece. The celebration of Hill's achievements took on a distinctly "American School" like cast to me. While

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these chapters are well argued and lack any element of encomium, they nevertheless fuse the archaeologist - in this case Hill - to the archaeological undertaking. Methods, research questions, objects and discursive concerns fade into the background before the overwhelming force of individual personalities. Negotiating a terrain strewn with larger than life figures - Hill, Blegen, Broneer, Williams, Shear, Robinson, et al. - means contending with their personalities, legacies, and place in the intricate history of American School politics. (And it is difficult not to hear echoes of contemporary discussions in Robinson's discussion of Hill.) While it may be similar in other parts of the world, the heroic stature of American excavators in Greece makes almost all work at long-established sites at least as much about the excavators as about the actual archaeological material itself. The second half of the book summarizes, clarifies, and expands the history of the Peirene fountain. As someone primarily interested in the later history of the city of Corinth, I was particularly gratified to see the Triconch Court moved to the 4th-5th century adding to the impressive quantity of Late Antique urban works in the city. Robinson's hint at parallels between the construction style of the Triconch court and the Hexamilion suggests a 5th century building boom that complemented the later 6th century renovation of the Corinthia's built environment. I was also excited to imagine the "outlooker screen", which Robinson dates to the later 5th or 6th century, as a component of the 6th century building boom in the city. One thing that I would have been interested in understanding is the relationship between the later modifications to Pierene and the work done at the "nymphaion" down on the Lechaion road near the great early Christian basilica. I wonder whether the outlooker screen which Robinson notes evoked the design of ionic impost capitals echoed the colonnaded aspect and ionic impost capitals used at the Lechaion nymphaion? The only disappointment from this second half of the book comes from the difficulty in linking the work of the heroic Hill with the specific archaeological and chronological issues studied in the second half of the book. In a number of places, Hill stalls the submission of his final manuscript to resolve specific problems with his understanding of Peirene. While Robinson takes on a number of the pressing issues in the study of the fountain, she does not necessarily connect these issues with Hill's labors. Perhaps the problems encountered by Hill were, indeed, unresolvable even after 80 additional years of thought or maybe Hill was simply stalling (as someone who struggles to complete long writing tasks, I can sympathize with Hill's struggle to complete and submit his manuscript). On the other hand, separating the story of the fountain's excavation from the story of the fountain as an archaeological artifact allows for the vague feeling that these two stories could somehow exist independently. Even at the very end of Robinson's section two, when the fountains creeps its way into the modern era the waters of the fountains feeding Ottoman fountains remains apart from the first modern excavators. The end of the story of Peirene appears before the heroic Hill and company arrive on the scene to exhume her remains. The book is the second in a new series, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=hotseries&amp;q=se%3A%22Ancient+art+and+architecture+ in+context%22">Ancient Art and Architecture in Context</a> , published by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Needless to say, it is lavishly produced with flawless editing. At the same time, it was interesting to reflect on the fate of Bert Hodge Hill's Peirene manuscript against the backdrop of the American School's publication process. Various directors of the American School pushed Hill relentlessly to release his manuscript for publication. In fact, the work stalled for over 20 years at the page proof stage. Today, the pressure almost certainly comes in the opposite direction with authors desperate to see their research come to light through the American School (and other presses as well). For many junior faculty the pressures to publish far outweigh the rewards of a well-produced and "scientifically accurate" text.

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-8/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:26:14 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=934</guid> It's another beautiful Friday morning here in North Dakotaland, so a great time for another set of quick hits and varia. <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Michael_S._Hart">An obituary for project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart</a>. Some good recent pieces on syllabi <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library_babel_fish/the_syllabus_as_tos">here</a>, <a href="http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2011/09/08/a-slight-defense-of-syllabusbloat/">here</a>, and <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/creative-approaches-to-thesyllabus/35621">here</a>. Yesterday was <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>. <a href="http://www.digitalculture.org/hacking-the-academy/">Hacking the Academy </a> is pretty interesting on the conceptual level. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/sri-lanka-v-australia2011/engine/current/match/516213.html">Is Sri Lanka even trying?</a> The more I watch him over the last couple of years, the more I think Michael Hussey deserves the nickname Mr. Cricket. He's been a stud. For folks with a little office stereo system, <a href="http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Home/Speakers/Home+Theater+Speakers/SP-BS41LR">these little speakers from Pioneer</a> have been getting rave reviews. Mine arrive on Monday. <a href="http://www.caari.org/Newsletters.htm">CAARI (Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute) going all digital with their newsletters</a>. Way to go! A sneak peek at <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/67056328@N06/">the Library's 50th Anniversary photo stream</a>. What I'm reading: D. Cohen and T. Sheinfeldt, <a href="http://www.digitalculture.org/hacking-theacademy/">Hacking the Academy</a> . 2011. What I'm listening to: Yuya Uchida and the Flowers, Challenger! </ul> Finally, I have a better vehicle for my yet to be schedule, planned, or announced tour. (The New Archaeology of the Mediterranean Blog Tour!) Olde Skool. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="TourBus2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/tourbus2.jpg" border="0" alt="TourBus2" width="450" height="340" />

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<title>Hacking the Academy</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/hacking-theacademy/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:16:10 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=936</guid> This past week University of Michigan's Digital Culture Book imprint published the edited version of the Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt project <a href="http://www.digitalculture.org/hacking-the-academy/">Hacking the Academy</a> . For anyone interested in the fertile intersection of digital culture and university life, the book is a must-read. Moreover, its unique format and production process represents one of the best examples of an emerging model of academic writing. The content for the book prepared from contributions via blogs, twitter, email and other digital media in a single week. (<a href="http://longshotmag.com/about"> Longshot magazine </a>has followed a similar model to produce a complete magazine in 48 hours.) So as per my usual practice, I won't indulge in a full review but offer three largely unrelated comments: 1. As cool as the concept of aggregating a book over one week is, I struggle in some ways to understand why it is important for academic publishing and writing to engage in such an experiment. Cohen and Scheinfeldt suggest that having a single week to compose on a particular topic served "to better focus [contributors] attention and energy." I suppose this is a valid point. And I do know colleagues who continue to hold to undergraduate mantra of "working better under pressure". On the other hand, it seems like academia remains a bastion of the "slow food" type of writing. Unlike journalism or the even more rapid world of the blogosphere, the research, writing, and publication of academic writing tends to be a reflective and deliberate process. It's not that I don't think academia can benefit from the kind of instant gratification produced by such scholarly "fast food" (after all, I do blog!), but I do wonder whether this model of production should culminate in a print publication. In fact, most of the posts in this short book are thought-provoking, but light on references, hard evidence, and "next level" thinking. In other words, the book captures the kind of early stage thinking found in the academic blogosphere. Making research projects visible at an early stage is useful for innumerable reasons (it brands an idea, it makes it possible to get critique early in a project's life, the act of articulating an idea many times helps to refine it, et c.), but the difference between the initial articulation of ideas and the "final" product remains a distinct character of scholarly writing. If I were envisioning a project like Hacking the Academy , I might have asked the authors whose contributions were accepted to envelope their initial contribution in a more formal reflective essay that both takes into account the original context of the contribution, and also places it in a more refined context. 2. The essays offer well-worn, but still exciting ideas about using technology to change the way that the academic culture does things. The contributors attacks on traditional forms of scholarly publication (particularly the profit driven practices associated with some academic journals) were effective and wellreasoned. As they expanded their critique to academic culture more broadly, however, a certain kind of naivet seemed to creep into their writing. The contributors seemed reluctant to engage the elephant on campus: TRUTH. Many of my colleagues are reluctant to engage with the process driven and transparent practices of digital scholarship because they see anything short of peer-reviewed, formal, academic publications as being short on access to TRUTH. The contributors to Hacking the Academy attempt to make clear that the origins of academic publication in a world where print was an expensive and exclusive commodity created certain procedures like peer review designed to ensure the quality of material committed to print. Today, however, the peer review process for many of my colleagues represents the line between the proliferation of half-baked, ill-informed, unTRUE ideas and the glistening utopia of TRUE knowledge. Despite the powerful influence of the postmodern critique, attitudes that see the traditional scholarly process as the imprimatur of true knowledge continue to carry sway in the academy. So attacks on traditional scholarly publishing as profit-driven, slow, exclusive, and bastions of secret agendas and vested interests, overlook the most common rhetorical position occupied by its supporters.

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The contributors to Hacking the Academy might not buy this argument, but they still need to find a response to it. 3. While I remain largely sympathetic to the contributors to this volume, I was also disappointed not to see more considerations of the limits of digital tools to reform the academy. After all, scholars who insisted on double-blind peer review and the stodgy ways associated with traditional academic publishing, did so as part of a democratizing process that was remarkably similar to that advocated by today's digital scholars. There are, of course, issues confronting the "digital-turn". Preservation, archiving, and curation of digital objects remains problematic. It remains unclear whether the coming digital information utopia will be fully realized on a global scale. The skills necessary to navigate the flood of data, applications, and tools remain daunting even to scholars who keep their fingers on the digital pulse. Finally, the tools necessary to generate and distribute digital collections remain exclusive and - as anyone who has taught a digital history course knows - expensive. While electrons are free, the tools needed to organize them into useful patterns remain dear. ~~~~ These critiques, however, should not take away from the through-provoking character of this book. The contributions are short, pithy, and a fun to read. The contributors found interesting and effective ways to include comments generated via Twitter or email. And the book will likely stand as a testimony to a moment in time in the academy's confrontation with our digital future.

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<title>Teaching Tuesday: Digital Natives, Digital History, and the Public</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/teaching-tuesdaydigital-natives-digital-history-and-the-public/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:24:37 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=939</guid> This semester I am once again running a digital history practicum. The goal of these practica is to introduce graduate students to the digital tools available to produce a digital history "exhibition". The students who take this course mostly have a strong interest in public history and the exhibits we create tend to represent the public side of the historians' craft. In 2009, we curated a photography exhibit called <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/exhibits/show/toposchora">Topos/Chora which brought together Ryan Stander's photographs of our work at the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project with a series of essays</a>. In 2010, we created <a href="http://nodakhistory.omeka.net/">a online collection of early M.A. theses at the University of North Dakota</a>, many of which contributed to the earliest professional history of the state. This year, we're preparing an online collection to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Chester Fritz Library at the University of North Dakota. The group of students working on this project include from three Ph.D. students (of various ages and digital literacies from a retired chief petty officer in the US Navy to a student who came directly through our program from undergraduate), a M.A. student, and a senior History major. In terms of attitude and creativity, this group is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU94uJx7QfE">a dream team</a>. Moreover, many of them have had course work and real world experience in public history. In terms of experience with even the most basic digital tools, however, these students are far from digital natives. So, we've walked relatively slowly through the process of creating a Twitter feed, creating and uploading images to a Flickr account, and the technical aspects of the blogging and creating a collection in Omeka. The most striking thing about this group, however, is that they have no sense of the pace of the digital world. In short, the students are not digital natives. While technical aspects have required some basic remediation, the students have struggled (at least so far) to recognize how quickly the digital world can move. The pace of content production in the digital world is not quite the same as the pace of production of in the world of paper, interlibrary loans, archives, and polished editing. Blog posts, Twitter feeds, and transmedia spaces like Omeka allow the creation of history in "<a href="http://lifeinperpetualbeta.com/">perpetual beta</a>". <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ChesterFritzLibraryPasch.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/chesterfritzlibrarypasch.jpg" border="0" alt="ChesterFritzLibraryPasch" width="450" height="299" /> <p style="text-align:center;"> The Chester Fritz Library (photo: Tim Pasch) The idea of public history in a digital context goes from history created for a pubic audience or with a public patron or a public goal, to history as a process made public. The editing, compiling, writing, thinking of historians laid bare before the public eye and, in the best situations, opened to public participation (the idea of public remixing or even public creation of historical narratives as well as content). So with our project in very early beta, here are the component parts: <a href="http://fritzat50.wordpress.com/">The Fritz at 50 Blog</a>. <a href="http://twitter.com/fritzat50">The Fritz at 50 Twitter Feed</a>. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/67056328@N06/">The Fritz at 50 on Flickr</a>. <a href="http://fritzat50.omeka.net/">The Fritz at 50 on Omeka</a>. We'll have them together in one place soon, but in the meantime, follow us on Twitter and check out our blog and watch our digital immigrants construct a public history (in public) of one of the most important institutions on any campus the Library.

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<title>Workshops, Conferences, and Lectures</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/workshopsconferences-and-lectures/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:42:17 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=943</guid> The next few weeks will be busy ones here at the University of the Northern Plains. On Friday and Saturday, the University of North Dakota will host the International Anchoritic Society Conference at the Memorial Union on campus. I'll be giving a paper at 10:45 in the Badlands room titled "<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/62402931/Liminal-Time-and-Liminal-Space-in-theMiddle-Byzantine-Hagiography-of-Greece-and-the-Aegean">Liminal Time and Liminal Space in the Middle Byzantine Hagiography of Greece and the Aegean</a>". The title is rather more ambitious than the paper! <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="IASConference.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/iasconference.jpg" border="0" alt="IASConference" width="463" height="600" /> Next Friday, September 23rd, at noon in the Working Group in Digital and New Media Lab inimitable Tim Pasch and I are teaming up to produce a short workshop on Digitizing Your Workflow. (I really wanted to call it Digitizing Yo Workflo, but people might not get it.) The workshop will be particularly geared toward graduate students in the humanities and social sciences and introduce some useful digital tools that will help them streamline their workflow. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Digitize Your Workflow Sept 2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/digitize-your-workflow-sept2011.jpg" border="0" alt="Digitize Your Workflow Sept 2011" width="463" height="600" /> Finally, on September 28th, I'm giving <a href="http://olli.und.edu/grandforks/courses/course.cfm?course=OLLI.F12.0019">a lecture in the OLLI lecture series</a> here on campus that will provide an overview of the island of Cyprus and my work there. Unfortunately, as far as I understand it, this lecture will not be open to the public, which is a bit of a bummer, but maybe there will be a way to stream it live or record it.

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<title>Teaching Thursday: Five Teaching Strategies</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/teaching-thursday-fiveteaching-strategies/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:53:39 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=947</guid> In this week's <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/09/15/tips-for-newteachers/">Teaching Thursday blog post</a>, my colleague Cindy Prescott offers 7 tips for new teachers. These are things that she wished she knew when she started teaching. I'm offering an alternate list of 5 things that I've learned to do since I started teaching. Unlike Cindy's list, these are strategies that include a whole range of classroom behaviors and individual acts. No one strategy can carry a class, of course, but a robust group of strategic options has helped me negotiate the fine art of teaching. And, yes, some of these strategies should be regarded in a light hearted way. 1. Improvise One of the first things I do is attempt to establish rapport with students. Usually I show up to class early and attempt the famous "Caraher Banter". 98% of the time this fails, but the students tend to notice the effort and eventually (after about 4 weeks) decide that engaging in a conversation with me is easier than watching be desperately chat to a silent room. This effort to establish rapport comes in handy when you realize that you only printed out the first two pages of your lecture for the day or somehow get things done too early. Having a bit of rapport with students also opens the door to productive conversations about both their performance in the class and my performance as a teacher. So, improvising a conversation with your students for 10 minutes before class starts forms the foundation for rapport and gives you a safety net if your plan (and back up plan) fail. 2. Own up to your weaknesses. When I first started teaching, I tried to correct every weakness, that I couldn't disguise. Over the last 10 years, I've gradually moved to take the opposite tact. I come right out and tell the students my weaknesses. I talk too quickly. I can be disorganized, and if people give me things late, there is a better than even chance that I'll loose it. Moreover, when things go poorly in class, I take part of the blame. While this strategy doesn't always work (and can be really counter productive in a class that is skeptical of your abilities), I've found that selectively admitting that my plans (or lack there of) were unsuccessful paradoxically builds an expectation that my course design is successful. In other words, if I tell them from time to time that a particular approach or assignment was a failure, students will come to expect other course design decisions as successful unless otherwise informed. Again, this doesn't work all the time, but it is a strategy that forges that important bond of trust between me and my students (even if it ultimately involves some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategery">strategery </a>on my part!). 3. Let students authorize themselves. I have found that my personality can, if improperly deployed, create a particularly passive classroom. I like my own voice, I talk fast, and (generally speaking) I'm always right (see strategy 2 above - even when I'm wrong, you can't be sure that I'm still not right). To counteract this tendency, I look for opportunities to authorize student participation in many aspects of course design. For example, I regularly ask students whether they want a particular assignment or not and to help me set deadlines or dates for assignments and tests. I've found that students can think quite strategically about their own academic progress and can, with just a tiny bit of prompting, contribute to a course schedule and design that gives them better opportunities to succeed than my less unilateral scheduling imperative. Sometimes letting students decide how many tests and when they will happen or whether they want a longer assignment over a holiday weekend can catch the students off guard, but after a few prompts students catch on that I am genuinely willing to listen to their perspective on course organization. Again, this doesn't always work and sometimes student priorities can be too divergent from my own course goals to move forward productive, but when it does work it can give students a greater sense of ownership over their classroom experiences. 4. Let Students Fail. One of the most important thing my advisor taught me was that you have to give students enough

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room to be unsuccessful. I've contended that my dissertation was a bit of a disaster, but I learned more from my (relatively) failed dissertation project than many of my successful projects. Some of my best students in my classes are students who have failed the class once and are coming through for a second try. Every semester, I've gotten better and better at shaking off the feeling of rejection when a student does not attend my class regularly, blows off a major assignment, or appears distracted and uninterested. When I first started teaching, I treated each offense as an opportunity to swoop in teaching wings aglitter and gather up the fallen angel to show them that they too can fly! Now, I am far more willing to present the students with the tools they need to succeed in my class, remind them gently, and let them take their own path. Watching a student fail is still hard, but I also know that being unsuccessful sometimes is the best way to reinforce the value of good research design, study skills, attendance, or the sometimes elusive idea that faculty actually do know what they are talking about. Sometimes. 5. Fight <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/category/resistance/">Resistance</a>. When I first started teaching, I tended to see problematic students behaviors like poor classroom performance, lack of interest, late or incomplete assignments, or even disruptive behaviors, as isolated character flaws, my own unsuccessful communication strategies, or even poorly designed assignment or activities. While these reasons can hold for some isolated incidents, I have become increasingly convinced that students behave as they do consistently, across numerous classrooms and disciplines, in a systematic effort to resist the institutional expectations of the university. As the university has come to commodify learning (and the student experience) and the students (much less faculty) have felt increasingly like parts of an assessment machine, there is a growing culture of resistance among the student population that manifests itself political as a strain of age-old anti-intellectualism and on campus as student apathy. Student behavior ranging from the veneration of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Monday">Saint Monday</a>, to legalistic readings of syllabi and assignments, to "lazy like a fox" attitudes toward unstructured learning environments, are all part and parcel of the kind of low-level (low-grid?) resistance strategies that are common in highly asymmetrical power relationships. Fortunately, centuries of these practices have given faculty a robust toolkit for breaking student resistance. Some strategies involve (tactical and metaphorical) violence, some strategies involve collusion with the students (both apparent and real) and some strategies involve fighting the root causes of student resistance. Again, it's not the only strategy in my teacherly tool kit, but recognizing resistance for what it is, can be an important step in negotiating the inevitable rough spots in the faculty-student relationship.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/friday-varia-and-quickhits-19/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:24:50 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=949</guid> Good morning on a grey, brisk, fall like morning in North Dakotaland. Some odds and ends on an otherwise <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/workshopsconferences-and-lectures/">anchoritical</a> Friday morning. For people interested in the massive and important Soda versus Pop debate, <a href="http://popvssoda.com/">this map might make things more clear</a>. More evidence that <a href="http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3710/3035">the spatial turn is upon us</a>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y0Yo3yZrPA">This is crazy</a>. <a href="http://www.researchsupportservices.net/?page_id=8">This kind of study</a> could really articulate the growing disjunction between our methods and the priorities for allocating resources for historical research. I love <a href="http://dornob.com/shotgun-style-historic-small-plan-homes-have-no-hallways/">these shotgun style houses</a>. <a href="http://www.emorywheel.com/detail.php?n=30030">Using Twitter in (and out of) the classroom at Emory</a>. Does anyone out there use <a href="http://projects.gnome.org/tomboy/index.html">Tomboy for note taking</a>? I'm trying to find a PC version of <a href="http://brettterpstra.com/project/nvalt/">nvALT</a>. <a href="http://www.dontfeartheinternet.com/">Don't Fear the Internet</a>. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/sri-lanka-v-australia2011/engine/current/match/516214.html">Shawn Marsh brought it today </a>and I never really appreciated Michael Hussey (and I am bit jarred to see that he was moved the to 6 as a result of Marsh's promotion to the 3), but lately, I'm a convert. Banner day at <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday yesterday</a>. It's the first time in years that Teaching Thursday had more page views that my blog. <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/15/autos/last_crown_victoria/index.htm">The last Crown Victoria</a>. What I'm reading: P. Hutchings, M. T. Huber, and A. Ciccone, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/scholarship-of-teaching-and-learning-reconsidered-institutionalintegration-and-impact/oclc/70724800">Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered</a> . (2011) What I am listening to: Culture, Two Sevens Clash ; Buju Banton, Inna Heights . </ul> Have a great weekend.

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<title>Byzantine Time and American Wilderness</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/byzantine-time-andamerican-wilderness/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:35:08 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=951</guid> After my paper on Friday, I kept thinking about time and Byzantium. In particular, I spent part of the weekend mulling over the idea of the wilderness as space of hybridized time where past and present (and in some cases the future) combine in strange and wondrous ways. At the same time, I was alerted to a recent article by Glenn Peers: "Utopia and Heterotopia: Byzantine Modernisms in America" in K. Fugelso ed. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/definingneomedievalisms/oclc/643250146">Defining Neomedivalism. Studies in Medievalism </a> 19 (2010), 77-113. Peers uses Foucault's idea of the Heterotopia to help to describe the engagement with Byzantium by the 20th century art world. While I will not even attempt to get all "<a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>" on this topic (and my knowledge of 20th century art is effectively non-existent), I did find Peers use of Foucault's notion of the heterotopia as a "counter-site" to the idealized utopian vision. Heterotopias, for Foucault and Peers, are inverted utopias inscribed into real space and governed by real time constraints. Like the wilderness in our saints' lives, heterotopic space is hybridized through its allusions to (and dependence on) a utopian vision of reality. Utopian space is effectively timeless whereas the heterotopia is embedded within our lived experience. One of the examples that Peers uses for a heterotopic space is the <a href="http://www.menil.org/visit/byzantine.php">Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum</a> in Houston. The museum was built to hold a series of frescos from a small Byzantine chapel in the village of Lysi which the Menil family foundation rescued on the art market and restored after they were looted from the chapel which lies in occupied northern part of the island. The Menil museum displays the frescoes in an elegant and innovative architectural outline of the church building that represents their original architectural setting with translucent walls. The liturgical use of the reconstructed chapel has "consecrated" the space and the entrance to the space reinforces the sacred nature of objects and the setting. Thus, the heterotopic nature of Byzantine religious space where the heavenly utopia finds expression in the earthly realm, becomes the centerpiece of another heterotopic vision as articulated by the display of the disembodied, but very present church in the Menil collection. Making the experience of the Lysi church (which I have not seen or visited) even more poignant for someone who has worked in Cyprus and, in particular, around Larnaka is the very real presence of refugees from Lysi. We have worked closely with individuals from the Lysi community who resettled in Larnaka and their village and its famous church is source of tremendous, melancholic pride. In fact, another model of the famous Lysi chapel has been built near Stavrovouni. Thus, this twice reconstructed church has become a symbol for the community of Lysi in exile and the plight of looted antiquities in northern Cyprus. As a symbol, the idealized character of the chapel became a perfect symbol for a series of political realities. As an object it could exist in both in ancient context and in a modern context with distinct, if dependent meanings. The past and the present intersect in the wildness of Byzantine saints' lives as visions, dreams, abandoned buildings, sacred objects, and real places overlap to create a space that is between a sacred reality and imagined everyday life. The hybridized sense of time contributes to a heterotopic vision where the real and the ideal conflate to create the disturbing, terrifying sense of the uncanny.

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<title>Fragments of an Introduction</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/fragments-of-anintroduction/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:51:08 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=954</guid> Over the past few weeks, I've been working with Amy Papalexandrou to write up a short essay for the an exhibit at the <a href="http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/exhibitions/upcoming/">Princeton University Art Museum titled: City of Gold: The Archaeology of Polis Chrysochous, Cyprus</a>. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="CityofGold.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/cityofgold.jpg" border="0" alt="CityofGold" width="450" height="195" /> Amy and I have been negotiating the introduction to our essay. For some reason, we have latched onto the idea of introducing our short essay with two inscriptions: one from the 3rd century BC and one from the 5th century (?) AD. We juxtapose these texts to open a conversation about continuity and change in civic identity over 7 centuries. In a poetic flourish (that may not make the final cut of the essay), I proposed adding a third text from a Greek ecclesiastical court of the (let's say) 12th or 13th century. This text also captures some of the civic organization of the city. The bishop of Arsinoe, the president of the village, and a representative of Paphos (presumably the bishop there) all have representation in the ecclesiastical court that adjudicates on marriages. The symmetry of three texts separated by 7 centuries each appealed to me, but it might not quite work on context. In any event, here's our draft intro: The few, fragmentary texts that do survive provide only scant context for the once vibrant community in the Chrysochous valley, but they do offer us a place to begin our story. A 3rd century BC statue base celebrated a gift from The City of the Arsinoeans, and it is possible to hear the echoes of this text some seven centuries later in very different terms. Found at Polis tis Chrysochou in 1960 and displayed today in the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia, this modest limestone block captures an important moment in the history of the Late Antique city (fig. 1). Dated to the midfifth century CE, it records the presence, whether real and literal or spiritual and implied (or both), of two high officials who co-sponsored the construction of an important building at Arsinoe: (sic) <span style="white-space:pre;"> <br /></span> <span style="white-space:pre;"> <br /></span> ( ) + <br /> + In the 36th year when Sabinos was Archbishop, when Photinos was Bishop (this was erected) at their own expense. Some seven centuries later still, the bishop continues to represent the community in a legal document associated with the ecclesiastical court at Arsinoe. This is only surviving example of the records from a Greek ecclesiastical court in Cyprus. The main focus of the text is on the tangle of complex laws surrounding marriage and engagement. Periodically throughout the text a simple formula appears which establishes the "all loving and God-honored Bishop of Arsinoe, the president of the city, and the enorias of Paphos" as the presiding officials of the court. These modest texts resonate with the more impressive material remains of the city itself. The texts confirm the central place of the Bishop among the leaders of the community, the persistent civic identity of Arsinoe, the influence of the church in almost all aspects of daily life, and the close ties of the city to other regional centers. These are themes that frame the impressive material remains of the Late Antique and Medieval city of Arsinoe and underscore the continued importance of this dynamic, monumental, Christian center in southwestern Cyprus.

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<title>More on a Grand Forks Church</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/more-on-a-grandforks-church/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:53:27 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=961</guid> Readers of this blog know of my effort to preserve the old Trinity Lutheran Church at 3rd and Walnut Street in Grand Forks. The church is slated for mitigation later this fall. So my top priority was to get proper architectural elevations prepared. (For more on the church see <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/a-neighborhood-church/">here</a> and <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/more-on-the-neighhorhoodchurch/">here</a> and <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/why-no-onesaved-an-old-church/">here</a>.) A local architect <a href="http://hepperolson.com/">Bobbi Hepper Olson</a> with a passion for historic preservation and the a generous contribution from the <a href="http://www.gfclt.org/">Grand Forks Community Land Trust </a>made this illustrations possible. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="TrinityElevations_Page_2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/trinityelevations_page_2.jpg" border="0" alt="TrinityElevations Page 2" width="451" height="600" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="TrinityElevations_Page_3.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/trinityelevations_page_3.jpg" border="0" alt="TrinityElevations Page 3" width="451" height="600" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="TrinityElevations_Page_1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/trinityelevations_page_1.jpg" border="0" alt="TrinityElevations Page 1" width="453" height="600" /> So the physical fabric of the church will not be preserved, at least the building will be formally documented. (It's nice to sometimes post something on the blog that proves that I do more than just blog)

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<title>Five Easy Tools to Digitize Your Workflow</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/five-easy-tools-todigitize-your-workflow/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:59:38 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=963</guid> On Friday, I'm joining a colleague, <a href="http://timpasch.com/">Tim Pasch</a>, to give a short talk to help graduate students and advanced undergraduates in the humanities to digitize their research work flow. The talk is at 12 at the Digital and New Media Lab (O'Kelly 207). Our goals will be to (1) encourage students to understand that incorporating digital tools into their research is not some kind of new hassle, but actually part of being a careful and systematic researcher. We also (2) hope to show the students that they don't necessarily have to do learn new and complicated skills to digitize their workflow, but that there might be simple and better ways to do what they already do. Finally, (3) we want to introduce students to the idea that digital tools can help them make their work more transparent to the public and this can often facilitate the move from disorganized fragments of ideas to completed thoughts. I'm going to introduce 5 simple tools that I feel can complement almost any workflow and can help us do what we do better. 1. <a href="http://brettterpstra.com/project/nvalt/">NValt </a>(or <a href="http://notational.net/">Notational Velocity</a>) for note taking (in plain text!). I write almost exclusively in plain text these days and only work in a full blown word processors when I have to add citations, format for publication, or use track changes in a collaborative environment. There are a ton of slick little, light weight text editor applications that are just too good not to use and use often (Omwriter is another favorite). As long as they save in plain text format, the documents can be read in any word processor and take up almost no disk space making them super portable. More importantly, many of these programs have features like full screen views designed to make writing more pleasurable and to cut out a bunch of the distractions that make using a full blown word processor such a chore. 2. <a href="http://www.zotero.org/">Zotero</a> for citation management. Most of us collect citations almost continuously, so it is important to have software that allows you organize and retrieve these citations. For the past 5 years, I've been absolutely dependent on Zotero to manage my academic citations. Developed by the Center for History and the New Media at George Mason University Zotero is free and was developed with the needs of researchers in the humanities in mind. Originally Zotero was a Firefox add on, but recent versions of it - including Zotero 3.0 Standalone - has made it compatible with the Chrome browser and Word for both PC and Windows. It is easily sync-ed across multiple computers, multiple platforms, and on the web, so you're never far from your bibliography. 3. <a href="http://www.evernote.com/">Evernote</a> for various notes, images, documents, webpages, and other varia. As more and more of us get smartphones, applications are being developed to make them part of our research workflow. Evernote is perhaps the best of a group of applications for organizing notes, images, documents, and webpages both across computers and between your computer and your smart phone. With Evernote, I now use my smart phone for research all the time. I click an image of a page of a book, article, or document and upload it to Evernote where Evernote use OCR (optical character recognition) to make it searchable. I've recently started using Evernote to take voice memos and even to associate them with a particular document when I'm walking home (directly from my phone). I also use Evernote to clip whole webpages, organize them into folders, and look at them when I get a chance. With the various Evernote plug-ins available, it is possible to clip an entire webpage right from your browser with one click. Once the page is clipped, Evernote has a great search engine that makes it easy to find the page without having to venture out once again into the wilds of the web. It's a nice piece of software. 4. Blogging and <a href="http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/">Mars Edit</a> / <a href="http://explore.live.com/windows-live-writer">Windows Live Writer</a>. I want to encourage graduate students to include a public, digital component in their workflow. I love the recent emphasis in the UK on <a href="http://www.historybloggingproject.org/">graduate students blogging </a>as they

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work on their thesis. It makes their research public, helps them to develop their online presence (which is really important when they go on the job market), and helps them learn to write every day (or at least regularly). Two pieces of software MarsEdit for Mac and Windows Live Writer (for PC) make it easy to blog offline and to upload content to a blog. The interfaces are like a standard word processor and it makes it even easier to blog. 5. Embrace the Cloud. Most of us already rely on the cloud for email and maybe for our music files, but it has also becoming a simple way to sync documents between computers and to share files. Everyone (perhaps in the world) with a computer should have a <a href="http://www.dropbox.com/">Dropbox</a> account. This application creates a folder on your computer that automatically syncs with the cloud making it available wherever you have an internet connection. While I wouldn't put your credit card numbers in it, it is secure enough for everyday research documents. <a href="http://docs.google.com/">Google Docs</a> is a cloud based word processor that is getting better with every passing month. It's a great platform for writing and for collaborating. And like any cloud based application, the documents that you produce or upload to Google docs are available anywhere you have a computer and an internet connection.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/friday-varia-and-quickhits-20/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:21:56 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=967</guid> A beautiful North Dakota early fall day is an ideal time for some varia and and quick hits. <a href="http://mediterraneanpalimpsest.wordpress.com/about/about-the-blog/">Mediterranean Palimpsest</a>: A new blog on "Greek history, archaeology, and culture from antiquity to the present" by long-time PKAP collaborator and colleague (and fellow Richmond Spider) Dallas Deforest. All Road lead to Rome. A digital mock up of the <a href="http://omnesviae.org/">Tabula Peutingeriana</a> (h/t <a href="http://sebastianheath.com/">Sebastian Heath</a>). <a href="http://invisibleaustralians.org/">Invisible Australians</a> is an amazing digital history project. It is blogged at <a href="http://discontents.com.au/">discontents</a>. An the <a href="http://invisibleaustralians.org/faces/">real face of White Australia </a>is really cool. <a href="http://ancientlives.org/tutorial/transcribe">Ancient Lives</a>. Crowd sourced papyrus transcription. <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2011/09/23/histories-of-peirene/">More on Peirene from David Pettegrew</a> (<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/the-peirenefountain/">here's my review</a>). <a href="http://athensville.blogspot.com/2011/09/athens-graffiti-collection-0911.html">Amazing Athenian graffiti</a> (h/t <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>). <a href="http://fuckyeahanthropologymajorfox.tumblr.com/">I am not sure that I understand this tumblr</a>, but it also could be pretty awesome. <a href="http://freq.uenci.es/about/">More experimental digital humanities</a> (h/t <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>). <a href="http://gummysoul.bandcamp.com/releases">Fela Soul</a>. I am not sure that this doesn't work. <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZiBEV3UIrU">You need to digitize your workflow</a>. Noon. Today. O'Kelly 207. </ul> Some images: <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Cass_Gilbert_GFK.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/cass_gilbert_gfk.jpg" border="0" alt="Cass Gilbert GFK" width="450" height="347" /> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Gilbert">Cass Gilbert</a> designed Great Northern Railroad depot in Grand Forks (1892) . <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Mavailable.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/mavailable.jpg" border="0" alt="Mavailable" width="450" height="305" /> Mavailable space, indeed. <p style="text-align:left;">What I'm listening to (more reggae): Peter Tosh, Equal Rights ; Bob Marley African Herbman and some non-reggae Amon Tobin. <p style="text-align:left;">What I'm reading: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI">Reading? Reading? We're talking about READING?</a>

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<title>A Byzantine Body</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/a-byzantinebody/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:11:47 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/abyzantine-body/</guid> Ive been working in a stop/start way on developing our GIS for the Polis project. My main goal this winter is to prepare a basic GIS plan for the entire EF2 area and to add various burials to this plan. In general, this is a tedious task that involves many hours of tracing stones and georeferencing poorly prepared field drawings. Every now and then, however, there is a little discovery that provides some motivation.&nbsp; For example, over the course of preparing an essay for the upcoming City of Gold: The Archaeology of Polis Chrysochous, Cyprus exhibition, I checked the location of a burial that I georeferenced this summer. The burial was excavated at a fairly high elevation in 1984.&nbsp; In fact, it appears to be the highest burial in the large cemetery to the south of the church at the site of EF2.&nbsp; The notebook description of this burials excavation was predictably short: <blockquote> Burial 10 was removed and burial 11 uncovered. With burial 11 was found Find #4, a green stone crucifix (see drawing p. 42). Glass fragments were also unearthed around burial 11. </blockquote> More interesting, however, is its location. The head of the body appears to intersect with the east wall of the south portico. In the original publication of this site, the excavators and architects assumed that the south portico was a rather late edition. We have since suggested that it was added rather early in the history of the church perhaps at the same time as the similarly articulated western narthex. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/burial11.jpg"><img style="backgroundimage:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:block;float:none;margin-left:auto;marginright:auto;padding-top:0;border-width:0;" title="Burial11" border="0" alt="Burial11" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/burial11_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="433"></a> With the discovery (so to speak) of this burial, we can add to the history of this portico by suggesting that its destruction perhaps predated the complete abandonment of the church.&nbsp; Since the head of Burial 11 crossed the line of the foundation of the east wall of the south portico, it is difficult to imagine that this wall was still standing to an substantial height.&nbsp; In other words, the body in Burial 11 was probably interred after the east wall of the south portico had collapsed.&nbsp; Our current assumptions regarding the collapse of the south part of the church (and this is exceedingly tentative) is that the southwestern part of the narthex collapsed by the 11th century AD.&nbsp; This collapse almost certainly compromised the western wall of the south portico and it might have marked the collapse of the south wall of the south aisle (although this is not clear). So it might be that Burial 11 dates to after the 11th c. AD. Making this burial even more interesting was the presence of Find #4, a small pectoral cross, illustrated and described in the notebook. This cross I think is going to appear in the City of Gold exhibition. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/polisnbburial11.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:block;float:none;marginleft:auto;margin-right:auto;padding-top:0;border-width:0;" title="PolisNBBurial11" border="0" alt="PolisNBBurial11" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/polisnbburial11_thumb.jpg" width="450" height="259"></a> There were not enough other finds from Burial 11 (or we havent analyzed them yet) to draw any firm conclusions in the date of the burial, but it does hint at the continued use of the site for burial perhaps even after the south portico was structurally compromised and perhaps after the church itself went out of use.&nbsp; These little discoveries keep me motivated to continue the tedious work of digitizing plans.

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<title>Teaching Tuesday: Digital History and The Fritz at 50</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/teaching-tuesdaydigital-history-and-the-fritz-at-50/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:08:29 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=977</guid> The Fritz at 50 digital history project has gone live. The Fritz, of course, is the <a href="http://library.und.edu/">Chester Fritz Library</a> on the beautiful University of North Dakota's campus and the 50 is the library's 50th anniversary. For more (and you know that you want more), you should rush over and <a href="http://library.und.edu/fritz-at-50/">check out our website</a>. A link to our website is also featured on the fantastic Fritz at 50 posters produced by my colleague in the Working Group in Digital and New Media's Joel Jonietz. Just follow the handy QR code. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="fritz50_4 final.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/fritz50_4-final.jpg" border="0" alt="Fritz50 4 final" width="449" height="600" /> As I have noted in previous posts, the effort to digitize various objects related to the history of the library has been an interesting challenge. The student team that is doing this is pretty eager and dedicated, but it's clear that they are struggling to wrap their head around the creation of a digital collection. Some of the struggle comes from having to adapt their workflow around unfamiliar tools and processes - camera stands, scanners, digital recorders, and the like. Yesterday, for example, they interviewed the Director of Libraries and dutifully placed the small Olympus digital recorder on his desk, but neglected to hit the record button. Fortunately, they also captured the interview on a small video camera. The occasional difficulties associated with collecting digital objects, however, has made it difficult, right now, for the students to analyze the digital objects and place them within a larger narrative. The hope is that they begin to interweave the narrative of creating the collection with the narrative history of the library on campus. So far, we've started this discussion <a href="http://fritzat50.wordpress.com/">on our blog</a>, but it hasn't gone very far yet. The core of the digital collection lives in <a href="http://fritzat50.omeka.net/">an Omeka archive</a>. Again, I think we're on the downward slope of the learning curve here and the content of the archive continues to expand and improve. As the students begin to analyze and think historically about the objects they have produced, the Omeka archive should allow a reader to "drill down" into the underlying evidence and metadata. (Check out this <a href="http://teachinghistory.org/digitalclassroom/tech-for-teachers/25115">recent blog post on using Omeka to teach history from Teaching History</a>.)

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<title>Barbarians</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/barbarians/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:29:30 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=979</guid> This post is a bit overdue, but I couldn't resist the urge to comment on Norman Etherington's article, "<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/ahr.116.1.31">Barbarians Ancient and Modern</a>" in the February volume of The American Historical Review (116 (2011), 31-57). Etherington compares debates over the role of migrations called the mfecane in southern Africa to the invasions of Rome's northern borders in the 4th to 6th centuries. Etherington is particularly interested in considering how scholars of southern Africa could use Walter Goffart's theory of accommodation in the Late Roman West to reflect on the controversial invasions of that region in the early 19th century. Goffart's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/barbarians-andromans-ad-418-584-the-techniques-of-accommodation/oclc/6378358">Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418-584: The Techniques of Accommodation</a> argued that the so-called invaders of the Late Roman state were, in fact, groups who had enjoyed a long period of cultural, social, and political interaction with the Roman state and were nearly as Roman as the Romans themselves. Moreover, he undermined various longstanding efforts to identify these groups as belonging to particular identifiable ethnicities, claims that these groups represented vast quantities of displaced people, and arguments for the role of so-called "barbarians" for the destruction of the Late Roman state. While not all scholars have accepted Goffart's arguments, they have continued to be a significant point of contention in arguments for the collapse of the Roman empire in the West. The significance of these debates for scholars studying southern Africa stems from the value judgments associated with scholarly views of "barbarians" and arguments for ethnogenesis which tend to see migrations as being based upon or leading to the formation of identfiable (typically modern) ethnic groups. Apparently the practice of using oral accounts to identify (and ultimately vilify) groups as the Zulu, for example, during the period of the mfecane movements in southern Africa has clear parallels with Roman and modern practices of identifying the Goths, the Vandals, and even the Huns on the basis of problematic ancient literary accounts. Modern scholars steeped in 19th century ideas of ethnicity, nationalism, and colonialism read ancient texts and oral histories as confirming their own views of ethnogensis in both Africa and antiquity. These views, then, served to justify colonialist practices in southern Africa just the same way that modern (and ancient) readings of ethnicity in the Late Roman West served as foundation myths for modern nation states. While reading this article, I couldn't help but think of the controversies involving the so-called "Slavic invasions" of Greece in the 6th and 7th centuries which have played such a key role in the construction of periodization schemes for the Late Roman East and arguments for the persistence of a Greek ethnic identity through time. The parallels between this narrative and the better known narratives involving the "fall of Rome" in the western part of the Late Roman Empire are obvious. I wonder what role periodization played in the reading of the mfecane in South Africa? Historical periodization often depends, particularly in a colonial context, on identifying the arrival of one group and the displacement of another. In other words, ethnicity, ethnogenesis and periodization have a clear points of interdependence which are all the more striking in the context of the colonial encounter. This article also provided me with food for thought when I realized how influential arguments for the end of antiquity have been for the genesis of modern nation-states in Europe, for the architects of the colonial encounter abroad, and for more recent scholars who have sought to understand the colonialization process. In the 19th century, administrators and scholars attempting to understand the migrations and bloodshed associated with the mfecane in South Africa looked to the Late Roman invasions for points of comparison. The flurry of relatively recent activity in the fields associated with Late Antiquity has called into question not only the foundations for the "modern" West, but also the basic interpretative paradigms used by contemporary Western scholars (or in fields indebted to Western epistemologies) to understand the past in a colonial context.

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<title>Polis-Chrysochous: City of Gold in Late Antique and Medieval Times</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/polis-chrysochous-cityof-gold-in-late-antique-and-medieval-times/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:57:03 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=982</guid> Busy week! But I do have something new for my dedicated readers to peruse. This is a working draft of an essay that will appear in the exhibit volume associated with an upcoming show at the Princeton University Museum called City of Gold: The Archeology of Polis Chrysochous, Cyprus. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/newimage1.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="88" /> The essay is a nice summary of the Late Antique and Medieval remains at the city and a short synthetic section that places the site of Polis (called Arsinoe in our period) into the context of the island and the Mediterranean. It's rough around the edges still, but I actually had a blast working with Amy Papalexandrou and finding an accessible way to describe the site. Check it out here: [scribd id=66803387 key=key-1fbwcpipuezlgv3b21wx mode=list]

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<title>A Slightly Delayed Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/a-slightly-delayedquick-hits-and-varia/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:01:16 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=987</guid> A tiny gaggle of quick hits for a nice Friday morning. It's supposed to be a beautiful weekend here in the North Dakotaland and my lovely wife and I can enjoy it in our new home. <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/111901425213768112631/albums/5654055509127305937"> Some great images from the early web</a>. <a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/09/itunes-music-and-book-stores-launch-acrosseurope/">Cyprus finally gets the iTunes store</a>! I know I should, but I can't quite get myself to buy a copy of<a href="http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/"> Papers</a> to organize my PDF situation and streamline my research queries. <a href="http://mediterraneanpalimpsest.wordpress.com/">I want Dallas DeForest </a>to talk a bit about how the financial situation in Greece is effecting his little corner of Athens. <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis </a>is offering some nice little tributes to Fred Cooper who passed away this week. I only met Fred a few times, but he never failed to blow my mind. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/arts/design/menil-collection-is-to-return-frescoes-tocyprus.html?_r=4&amp;ref=arts">The Menil collection of Cypriot frescoes from Lysi is going home to Cyprus</a>. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/byzantine-time-andamerican-wilderness/">I blogged about these frescoes here</a>. <a href="http://imhereandthere.com/">This is a cool example of web transparency</a>. <a href="http://hermeneuti.ca/voyeur">This looks like a pretty cool tool for text analysis</a>. <a href="http://www.beetle.de/full/">A cool VW ad</a>. What I'm reading: <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/friday-varia-andquick-hits-20/">See last week</a>. What I'm listening to: Wilco, The Whole Love. </ul> For my nephew Sam: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="PlayTrains.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/playtrains.jpg" border="0" alt="PlayTrains" width="358" height="600" />

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<title>Metadata Monday</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/metadata-monday2/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 03 Oct 2011 12:17:31 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/metadata-monday2/</guid> On Thursday, I made my 200th post on the New Archaeology of the Mediterranean blog. So, I thought it would be a good time for a metadata Monday post. Over those 200 posts, Ive enjoyed approximately 56 page views per day. This is up from the 50 or so page views of day recorded <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/ametadata-monday/">through May of this year</a>. My new blog still is far behind my old blog in terms of number of page views per day, but I suspect some of that is related to different tools used to measure page views on the two different platforms. I do wish that Wordpress.com offered a more robust set of Metadata or could sync with Google Analytics. In any event, here are some specifics: The 20 most popular post in overall page views are: <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/archaeology-and-man-camps-inwestern-north-dakota/">Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota</a> (531)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/teaching-graduate-historiography-a-finalsyllabus/">Teaching Graduate Historiography: A Final Syllabus</a> (362)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/pompeii-in-the-21st-centuryreplay/">Pompeii in the 21st Century Replay</a> (326)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/lists-and-ranking-of-archaeologyjournals/">Lists and Ranking of Archaeology Journals</a> (281)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/the-future-of-the-computer-lab/">The Future of the Computer Lab</a> (203)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/the-fortifications-of-athens/">The Fortifications of Athens</a> (128)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/simplicity-minimalism-and-the-ancientascetic/">Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic</a> (113)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/christianization-and-churches-in-thepeloponnese/">Christianization and Churches in the Peloponnese</a> (106)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/job-in-classics-at-university-of-northdakota/">Job in Classics at University of North Dakota</a> (81)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/890/">Methods, Questions, and Digital Archaeology</a> (75)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/pots-topeople-in-late-roman-cyprus/">Pots to People in Late Roman Cyprus</a> (75)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/more-than-four-reasons-to-teach-morethan-four-classes-sometimes/">More than four reasons to teach more than four classes (sometimes)</a> (71)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/modern-abandonmentsquatters-and-late-antiquity/">Modern Abandonment, Squatters, and Late Antiquity</a> (68)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/digital-humanities-and-craft/">Digital Humanities and Craft</a> (67)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/teaching-thursday-trifecta/">Teaching Thursday Trifecta</a> (62)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/postcolonial-archaeology/">Postcolonial Archaeology</a> (61)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/theoryand-medieval-archaeology/">Theory and Medieval Archaeology</a> (60)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/digital-history-practicum-spring2011/">Digitizing Theses on North Dakota</a> (59)<br /><a

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href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/the-poor-little-sherd/">The Poor Little Sherd</a> (58)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/blogging-andpeer-review/">Blogging and Peer Review</a> (58) In terms of hits per day, the list is pretty similar: <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/pompeii-in-the-21st-centuryreplay/">Pompeii in the 21st Century Replay</a> (2.17)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/archaeology-and-man-camps-in-westernnorth-dakota/">Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota</a> (2.01)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/lists-and-ranking-of-archaeologyjournals/">Lists and Ranking of Archaeology Journals</a> (1.97)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/teaching-graduate-historiography-a-finalsyllabus/">Teaching Graduate Historiography: A Final Syllabus</a> (1.38)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/the-future-of-the-computer-lab/">The Future of the Computer Lab</a> (.95)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/the-fortifications-of-athens/">The Fortifications of Athens</a> (.80)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/thesis-defense-neoplantonism-andmonotheism-in-late-antique-rome/">Thesis Defense: Neoplantonism and Monotheism in Late Antique Rome</a> (.70)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/job-inclassics-at-university-of-north-dakota/">Job in Classics at University of North Dakota</a> (.70)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/simplicity-minimalism-and-theancient-ascetic/">Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic</a> (.49)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/the-poor-little-sherd/">The Poor Little Sherd</a> (.47)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/postcolonialarchaeology/">Postcolonial Archaeology</a> (.44)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/christianization-and-churches-in-thepeloponnese/">Christianization and Churches in the Peloponnese</a> (.39)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/blogging-and-peer-review/">Blogging and Peer Review</a> (.35)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/potsto-people-in-late-roman-cyprus/">Pots to People in Late Roman Cyprus</a> (.32)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/more-than-four-reasons-to-teach-morethan-four-classes-sometimes/">More than four reasons to teach more than four classes (sometimes)</a> (.31)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/theory-and-medievalarchaeology/">Theory and Medieval Archaeology</a> (.30)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/modern-abandonment-squatters-andlate-antiquity/">Modern Abandonment, Squatters, and Late Antiquity</a> (.30)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/three-observations-about-publishingand-the-blog/">Three Observations about Publishing and the Blog</a> (.30)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/teaching-thursday-trifecta/">Teaching Thursday Trifecta</a> (.26)<br /><a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/digital-humanities-and-craft/">Digital Humanities and Craft</a> (.26) The most visited posts tend to be those linked to specifically from elsewhere (which is hardly a shock). Lists and Rankings of Archaeology Journals was linked to from the Chronicle of Higher Education as was More than Four Reasons to Teach More than Four Classes (sometimes). Blogging and Peer Review and Three Observations about Publishing and the Blog were part of <a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/">Colleen Morgan</a>s Blogging Archaeology project. Pompeii in the 21st Century benefitted links from various <a href="http://bloggingpompeii.blogspot.com/">Pompeii related blogs</a>. Simplicity, Minimalism, and the Ancient Ascetic was noted on a popular blog for contemporary minimalists. In contrast, Archaeology and Man-camps in Western North Dakota captures views from search engine queries on this popular and controversial topic. Despite the occasional boost that a high-profile site can give to an individual post, the most consistent referrers to my blog are blogs penned by colleagues:

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<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.typepad.com/">Archaeology of the Mediterranean World</a> (my old blog) (953) <br /><a href="http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/">Surprised by Time</a> (430)<br /><a href="http://paperlessarchaeology.com/">Paperless Archaeology</a> (358)<br /><a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Objects, Buildings, Situations</a> (306)<br /><a href="http://researchnewsinla.blogspot.com/">Research in Late Antiquity</a> (253)<br />Google (219)<br />Twitter (various) (197)<br />Google Reader (163)<br />Facebook (104)<br /><a href="http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/">Middle Savagery</a> (95)<br /><a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Corinthian Matters</a> (55) I hope I drive as much traffic to their blogs as they drive to mine! One of the great things about blogging, is that I know far more about who reads my blog (and how it is discovered) than who reads my contributions to traditional scholarship. Metadata captures the contours of the social, intellection, and professional networks in which my blog posts circulate. In other words, if you like my blog, you should check out the blogs that refer to it. And if you read my blog, thanks!

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<title>The Diolkos of David Pettegrew</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/the-diolkos-of-davidpettegrew/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:24:25 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=993</guid> It was pretty exciting to see David Pettegrew's long-previewed work on the diolkos of Corinth appear this weekend in the American Journal of Archaeology (<a href="http://www.ajaonline.org/article/1023">"The Diolkos of Corinth," AJA 115 (2011), 549574</a>). I was fortunate enough to hear versions of his argument both here at the University of North Dakota and at a conference on Corinth at the University of Texas in the early autumn. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Isthmus.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/isthmus.jpg" border="0" alt="Isthmus" width="450" height="337" /> Pettegrew argues that our long-held idea of the diolkos as a major thoroughfare across the Corinthian Isthmus is mistaken. Since the 19th century, the diolkos has stood as a stone paved road that allowed enterprising Corinthians to move ships and their cargos across the isthmus from the Corinthian to the Saronic Gulf. Pettegrew showed that the literary accounts of the efforts to move vessels across the Isthmus mostly described heroic events rather than everyday occurrences. Moreover, he noted that the effort and risk required to move even modest sized vessels across the Isthmus would have made the practice economically unfeasible. Finally, he showed that there was little evidence for regular traffic in ceramics across the Isthmus. The assemblages produced at sites to the west and east of the Isthmus corridor appear be rather different particularly in the Roman period with eastern wares (like Eastern Sigillata A and B) appearing far more frequently in the East and Western Sigillatas appearing far more frequently to the west of the Isthmus. I do wonder, however, whether the idea of moving ships across the Isthmus as a way to move goods is somewhat a red herring. It occurred to me that for a coasting merchant (or caboteur) the ship itself might always exceed the value of an individual cargo. In fact, if the way a caboteur made a living is by constantly moving many small cargos along the coast. If we follow recent thinking on the ancient economy which emphasized the highly fragmented nature of local production (dictated by microclimates and micro-regions), there might be times when it was advantageous to move a smaller coasting vessel from one gulf to the other across the Isthmus in order to take advantage of shifts in production or markets. A merchant in Corinth could have maintained familiarity with both markets and their regional nature (as Pettegrew demonstrated in his discussion of the different distribution of fine wares and transport vessels) might have allowed them to function quite autonomously from one another. For example, a disaster, like an earthquake in the Gulf of Corinth might have disrupted economic activities there to such an extent that an enterprising merchant might take his vessel and move to the Saronic until the regional economy equalized again. For this kind of flexibility to economically viable, all we need to do is imagine that moving a ship across the Isthmus was less expensive than purchasing a new vessel in the opposite Gulf (and that a coasting merchant would have the capital to take advantage of such an opportunity). Furthermore, seeing the occasional movement of small vessels from one Gulf to the other would not undermine Pettegrew's main point that the massive movement of large military vessels from one gulf to the other was a heroic stratagem based on the scale of the portage alone. Pettegrew's article represents more than just a dismantling of the Diolkos myth. He strikes another blow against our heroic view of the past where remarkable feats of engineering were everyday occurrences. In fact, Pettegrew points out that something as accepted as moving ships across the Isthmus would have been a tremendously expensive, taxing, and dangerous operation. The amount of manpower required to move vessels on a regular basis would have been mind boggling (or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWkNPrXkvRA">mind-bottling</a>). It is interesting that the archaeologists who perpetuated this idea in the 19th century (and I am painting with broad brushstrokes here) hailed themselves from age of heroic industry. In some ways, they represented the same world and nation building fantasies that produced the Corinth Canal (1881-1893)

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(as well as the Transcontinental Railroad, the Panama Railroad (and eventually the Panama Canal), et c.). Picturing the ancient world through such heroic eyes would have aligned the ancient and the modern in a way that confirmed the place of ancient Greece as the foundation of the contemporary age. It goes without saying that archaeology not only perpetuated imperialism and globalization, but worked to normalize these views of the world through the study of the past. As the economic foundations of our own age receive increasingly vigorous critique (see: Occupy Wall Street), it makes sense that we critique views of the past grounded in the same imperialist and capitalist expectations.

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<title>More Ambivalent Landscapes of Early Christian Corinth</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/more-ambivalentlandscapes-of-early-christian-corinth/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:47:17 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=995</guid> I have finally finished the edits on my paper "The Ambivalent Landscape of Early Christian Corinth: The Archaeology of Place, Theology, and Politics in a Late Antique City." The editors of the volume in which it will appear made some excellent suggestions on how I could improve the paper that went far beyond rounding some jagged corners. As a happy result, this draft is improved over earlier drafts of the paper. In particular, I cut out some of the more overtly theoretical posturing in my introduction and embedded (buried?) that in footnotes throughout the text. I have a tendency in my introductions to spend too much time positioning myself amidst the theoretical literature. This tends to delay the start of my argument and dilute my efforts to establish the relationship between my specific arguments and those by other scholars in my field. I have also added a slightly more substantive discussion of Justinian's theological work - particularly his treatise on the Three Chapters which E. Schwartz suggested might have appeared in the context of a virtually unknown synod of Eastern Illyricum in the mid-540s. This synod, apparently, may have served to articulate the concern among bishops in the previously loyal sees of Eastern Illyricum (i.e. Greek speaking sees) to Justinian's efforts to establish a compromise with the Monophysite bishops of the East. Finally, I revised how I used the word "landscape" throughout this draft. Writing mainly for archaeologists these-a-days, I have become accustomed to a certain amount of ambiguity surrounding the word landscape which typically refers to the place of human experience. As a result, landscapes can be vast (as some human experiences are best understood on the regional level) or incredibly small. Historians, theologians, and others, however, are not quite forgiving of this ambiguous - and jargony definition. Fair enough. I found I could eliminate about 70% of my uses of the word in this paper and replace it with the word "region" or equivalents. Otherwise, my changes were mostly cosmetic including tightening up parts of my argument and making the entire paper flow more logically. Enjoy: [scribd id=47591826 key=key-1ev3j122ay69f8paw86q mode=list]

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<title>Steve Jobs</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:54:03 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=998</guid> The amazing thing about Steve Jobs' passing is how many people seem to care. In my memory, there are only a handful of billionaire corporate leaders who could generate this response. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="MacBookProJobs.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/macbookprojobs.jpg" border="0" alt="MacBookProJobs" width="450" height="327" /> The main reason, I suppose, is that his company's products created an explicit link between his genius and our bodies. In the past, creative types have infused rather impersonal tools with their spirit, e.g. Hemmingway's typewriters or Churchill's fountain pen. Apple inverted that process, by selling a totemic product. The Macintosh computer was an extension of its creator, Steve Jobs. In other words, people who purchased a Mac (above almost any Apple product) sought to capture a tiny bit of Jobs' creativity. As a vessel for Jobs' demanding and innovative approach to technology, the Macintosh became <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=uq8TAAAAYAAJ&amp;dq=Totem%20and%20Taboo&amp ;pg=PR1#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">the totem</a> of the self-styled "creative class".

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-9/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:44:42 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1003</guid> It's a windy and warm Friday here in North Dakotaland. So it is a good day for a bluster quick hits and varia. <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2011/10/05/putin-s-diving-discovery-was-setup.html">This is the way to do archaeology</a>. <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.9362034.0001.001">Some more food for thought for digital humanists</a>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyZx4lDUtIE">This is pretty cool</a> (even though it's Hellenistic) (HT to <a href="http://sebastianheath.com/">Sebastian Heath</a>). <a href="http://thewalters.org/news/releases/pressdetail.aspx?e_id=298">This is great news from the Walters Art Museum</a> (HT to <a href="http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/2011/10/waltersart-museum-and-creative-commons.html">Chuck Jones</a>). <a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/ff_uvb76/">For some reason I find stuff like this exceedingly creepy</a>. <a href="http://uvb-76.net/">You can listen to the station here</a>. Along similar lines, more <a href="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/teufelsberg/">abandonment porn</a>. <a href="http://resoph.com/ResophNotes/Welcome.html">I'm thinking of trying to use ResophNotes on my PC</a>. <a href="http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2011/1110/1110pre1.cfm">I sort of want to blog on this</a>, but I also don't want to come off sounding like I earned my job (rather than the luck that goes into getting an academic career these days). <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/greece_financial_crisis_an_elegy?page=full">Another analysis of the situation in Greece</a>, but this one is via Williston, North Dakota. <a href="http://musicmachinery.com/">This is a pretty cool music blog</a> (even if it's not updated too regularly). What I'm listening to: The Mekons, Fear and Whiskey. What I'm reading: Lester Bangs, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/mainlines-blood-feasts-andbad-taste-a-lester-bangs-reader/oclc/51559147">Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader</a> . (Anchor Books 2003). A Local Saint St. Vincent of Grand Forks: </ul> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="LocalSaints.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/localsaints.jpg" border="0" alt="LocalSaints" width="443" height="600" />

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<title>Other Byzantine Bodies</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/other-byzantinebodies/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:11:47 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1010</guid> When most of us think of the Byzantine body today, we image the ethereal bodies that grace the walls of painted churches, the emaciated bodies of the Byzantine ascetic, or even the body of the emperor or bishop. At the same time, there has been valued work in the last few years focusing on the bodies of ordinary individuals. Buried bodies have come to dot the landscape and new works on the poor, travel, labor, and domestic space in the Byzantine centuries have come to locate the body outside of the theoretically fertile ground of the church and crown and return it to the dirt and dust of everyday life. Recently, I've made an effort to reflect on the role of the Byzantine body in the architecture of domination and everyday forms of resistance. In short, the body continues to find a place in almost all parts of the study of Byzantine society. This past month, C. Bourbou,B.T. Fuller, S. J. Garvie-Lok, and M. P. Richards, have continued this trend by offering some important observations on the diet of Greek Byzantine populations from the 6th-15th centuries (<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.21601/suppinfo">"Reconstructing the Diets of Greek Byzantine Populations (6th-15th centuries AD) Using Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotope Ratios," American Journal of Physical Anthropology , preprint</a>). While I won't pretend for a moment that I understand the science involved in analyzing carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the body, I do grasp that the ratio between these two isotopes in human remains can reveal significant information regarding local diets. Bourbou et al. have analyzed the remains of Byzantine bodies from all across Greece including the Corinthia (Nemea, Corinth, and Isthmia), Crete, Northern Greece, and the Peloponnesus. Many of the bodies that this team studied came from burials around churches making the parallel between the Byzantine body in art and <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2010/04/fleshing-out-byzantine-house.html">the Byzantine body in the flesh</a> all the more obvious. The work of this team complements recent efforts to determine the diet of Byzantium through the study of ceramic vessels, and this represents another effort to move from the sublime bodies of Byzantine art and texts to the mundane bodies of everyday life. <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="FishFarms.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/fishfarms.jpg" border="0" alt="FishFarms" width="450" height="301" /> Fish farms near Vayia in the Corinthia The work of Bourbou et al. confirms many of the standard reading of the Byzantine diet. They find ample evidence for the prominence of the Mediterranean triad of grain, olive oil, and grapes in wine. At the same time, their studies suggested the importance of dairy products or perhaps meat in the Byzantine diet. While it is not possible at present to distinguish between animal products like milk and cheese and meat itself, the evidence from stable isotope analysis leaves open he possibility that meat appeared consistently in Medieval cuisine . The most interesting aspect of their study, however, involves the presence of fish on the Byzantine table. In Medieval Western Europe, scholars have long noted an increase in the consumption of fish in the 11th and 12th centuries. Some have associated this increase with the promotion of fasting and other dietary restriction by the Church in these centuries. In the east, however, the presence of fish in the diet of ancient and Medieval Greeks has been less conclusive. Bourbou et al., however, have suggested in their study that Byzantine (and Late Antique) Greeks may have consumed a good bit of fish. It is particularly interesting to note that bodies from Kenchreai dating to the 1st - 3rd centuries and the fortress at Isthmia from the 4th-8th centuries in the Corinthia showed the ratio of isotopes related to the consumption of fish. These sites must have taken advantage of the long coastline of the Corinthia to harvest fish on a significant scale (just as they do today). Elsewhere in Greece, however, these scholars argue that the consumption of fish during the Byzantine centuries likely relates to religious restrictions

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on diets that prohibited the consumption of meat on particular feast days and over important stretches of Orthodox religious calendar (as well as improved fishing techniques). With this study, then, the Byzantine body comes full circle. The body of the emaciated saint and the august body of the bishop represent just another form of the fish-fueled bodies found in Byzantine burials. Just as the routine of the liturgical year would have shaped the movement of individuals through the landscape of the village, countryside, and town, so the diets of the religious calendar left its traces in the very bones of the Byzantine.

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<title>On Corinthian Matters</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/on-corinthianmatters/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:06:21 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1012</guid> I want to send a special congratulations to David Pettegrew on the one year anniversary of his blog Corinthian Matters. David's blog regular features interesting and timely pieces, good documentary photography, and, often, original translations of works important (or overlooked) in the study of the Early Christian and Late Antique Corinthia. <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2011/10/10/corinthianmatters-turns-one/">In his most recent post</a>, he looks ahead to the next phase of life for his blog. He has not only invited scholars interested in the Corinthia to contribute to his blogging efforts, but also articulated a set of objectives for his effort. These objectives seek to promote the study of Corinth and the dissemination of Corinth related scholarship. This is a perfect example of the utility that an academic blog can provide for the scholarly and "lay" community. On of the most inspiring thing about David's blogging effort is its explicitly external focus. In other words, his blog is not a reflection of his own scholarly interests (per se), but meant to be a contribution to the scholarly, educational, and even religious or spiritual interests of others. This puts this blog is rather stark contrast to many web based initiatives which tend to focus on the idiosyncratic interests of the authors and are grounded in the assumption that these interests will coincide with a group of readers among the almost infinite audiences available on the web. David's blog seems far more intent on tapping into and contributing to an existing conversation that extends far beyond the hyperfragmented audiences of the internet. The range of popular and scholarly audiences interested in the Corinthia makes it an ideal match for a thoughtful blog. The decision to focus his blog on a specific external audience, of course, has made it possible for David to open the doors to external contributors. I've been invited to add content from time to time - in fact, as I write this <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2011/10/11/other-byzantine-bodies/">I'm crossposting my blog post from yesterday to Corinthian Matters</a> and I'll probably make it a point to cross-post any Corinthian related content to David's blog. If other bloggers take advantage of David's interest in collaborating, Corinthian Matters has a chance to succeed where other group focusing on various aspects of the ancient world blog have fallen short. In fact, David's blog hints at the increasingly blurry line between a self-published blog and a collectively published magazine or journal. The potential is there. My blog, in contrast, remains a far more selfish endeavor. In fact, part of my blog's purpose is to attempt to find the links between my various, disparate research interests. If my blog ever does succeed in finding these links, the interest to anyone other than the author will likely be voyeuristic rather than scholarly. In this way, my blog follows on a long tradition of early blogs (think: Justin Hall's Links from the Underground or Jorn Barger's Robot Wisdom ) which were idiosyncratic collections of links or live, public journals. Perhaps David's blog is the future of the internet publications as the forms and practices of the traditional media have come to colonize more and more fully the world of instant self-publishing. The resulting form is a hybrid situated at the explicit intersection of authorial interests and public demand.

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<title>Corinths Byzantine Countryside</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/corinths-byzantinecountryside/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:30:57 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/corinths-byzantinecountryside/</guid> The distribution of Byzantine sites in Corinths immediate hinterland is poorly known. No Byzantine monuments exist in the Isthmia valley immediately to the east of the City of Corinth in contrast to the numerous Byzantine churches discovered during the early phases of excavation of the city center or the cluster of standing churches around the village of Sophiko to the south. The absence of any standing Byzantine remains might be an accident of preservation. It could also suggest that the immediate hinterland of Corinth had few nucleated settlements like monasteries and villages. It seems possible that Byzantine Corinthians lived in the city of Corinth, the village of Kenchreai, and perhaps a settlement centered on the eastern part of the Hexamilion wall near the longabandoned Panhellenic sanctuary at Isthmia. Over the past week or so, Ive been working on analyzing the distribution of Byzantine pottery discovered during the work of the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey. In the chronological scheme used by the survey, material from the Byzantine period was divided into two periods: Early Medieval (700-1200) and Late Medieval (1200-1500). In the map below, the red triangles are the Early Medieval artifacts and the green are Late Medieval. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/byzantine-pottery.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border:0;" title="Byzantine Pottery" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/byzantinepottery_thumb.jpg" border="0" alt="Byzantine Pottery" width="450" height="326" /></a> There are four main areas in the fertile plain east of the city of Corinth that show Early and Late Medieval ceramic material. One area may be associated with a now-destroyed church dedicated to Ag. Paraskevi. In a series of fields disturbed by plowing and recent construction, there is a complex and extensive assemblage of Early and Late Medieval material as well as a significant assemblage of Late Roman material. The assemblage included relatively common glazed finewares from the Early and Middle Byzantine period as well as table wares and utility wares. Some 2 km northwest of the Ay. Paraskevi assemblage, appears another cluster of pottery perhaps associated with ecclesiastical architecture. In a 100 square meter amidst architecture fragments suggesting monumental Christian architecture appear another similar scatter of Byzantine material which featured fineware, kitchen wares, utility vessels from both the Early and Late Medieval periods. As similar small assemblage appears on the steep slopes to the northwest of the Late Roman harbor of Kenchreai. In these units, another 200 square meter area produced a small scatter of Medieval material including finewares and utility wares. Finally, a deeply ploughed field at the base of Mt. Oneion measuring about 350 square meters produced an assembalge of Early Medieval and Late Medieval fine and ultility wares as well as a few sherds from the Venentian and Ottoman periods. Like the other scatters, this assemblage shows both Early and Late Medieval pottery with both table ware and utility wares. The remarkable thing about these four little clusters of Byzantine pottery is how different the distribution was from period of earlier and later periods. This is the same map showing Late Roman pottery. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/late-roman.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border:0;" title="Late Roman" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/lateroman_thumb.jpg" border="0" alt="Late Roman" width="450" height="326" /></a> This is a textbook example of a continuous carpet of artifacts and is typical of the Late Roman period throughout Greece. (For some critical comments on this see <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/25068042">David Pettegrews The Busy Countryside of Late

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Roman Corinth, Hesperia 76 (2007), 743-784</a> for a <a href="http://corinthianmatters.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/pettegrewoffprint.pdf">PDF go here</a>). What is also remarkable is how different the distribution is from that of later periods. The distribution of material from the Ottoman/Venetian period (1500-1800) for example does not overlap entirely with material from the Byzantine period. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/ottomanvenpottery.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border:0;" title="OttomanVenPottery" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/ottomanvenpottery_thumb.jpg" border="0" alt="OttomanVenPottery" width="450" height="326" /></a> It is only in the Early Modern period (1800-1960) where later material becomes an important component of the Byzantine sites, but this seems to be associated with a general expansion of activity in the Corinthian countryside. (For a more extensive discussion of this see <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/20066771">T. E. Gregory, Contrasting Impressions of Land Use in Early Modern Greece: The Eastern Corinthia and Kythera, Hesperia Supplement 40 (2007), 173198</a>.) <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/early-modern-pottery.jpg"><img style="background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;padding-top:0;border:0;" title="Early Modern Pottery" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/earlymodern-pottery_thumb.jpg" border="0" alt="Early Modern Pottery" width="450" height="326" /></a> This very preliminary analysis of the Byzantine material from EKAS resonates with recent studies of the Byzantine countryside in the Nemea Valley immediately to the south. (For this see <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/w47320467mhj3815/">E. Athanassopoulos, Landscape Archaeology in the Medieval Countryside: Settlement and Abandonment in the Nemea Region, IJHA 14 (2010), 255-270</a>.) Athanassopoulos suggested that the 12th and 13th century landscape of the Nemea valley clustered on arable land or on the lower slopes of valley sides (258). Moreover, the sites tended to represent small and medium scale agricultural production (261). It is also important to realize that my brief analysis here is preliminary. Sanders has established the basic unreliability of most existing typologies and chronologies for pottery of this period as well as difficulties identifying artifacts datable to the Medieval period in general. A the same time, it is nevertheless striking that such pronounced clusters of Byzantine material would appear in the Corinthian landscape. More importantly, these clusters appear largely independent of the continuous carpet of Late Roman finds and the clusters of post-Byzantine material published by Gregory and, earlier, analyzed by Caraher. <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Cross-posted to Corinthian Matters </a>.

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<title>Cyprus Research Fund Lecture 2011: Kostis Kourelis&#039; Byzantium and the Avant Garde</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/cyprus-research-fundlecture-2011-kostis-kourelis-byzantium-and-the-avant-garde/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:56:38 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1029</guid> This marks the 5th Year Anniversary of the Cyprus Research Fund and the 3rd Anniversary of the Cyprus Research Fund Lecture Series. So, I am happy to announce that this year's speaker will be colleague and collaborator Kostis Kourelis. Kostis will speak on "Byzantium and the Avant Garde: American Excavations at Corinth, ca. 1930". His talk will tell the unlikely story of how the excavation of Byzantine remains at Corinth, Greece influenced avant garde movements in mid-20th century America. The talk will be in the elegant East Asia Room at the Chester Fritz Library on November 14 at 4 pm. There will be a reception sponsored by the Department of History immediately following the talk. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Kourelis_The Cyprus Research Fund.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/kourelis_the-cyprus-researchfund.jpg" border="0" alt="Kourelis The Cyprus Research Fund" width="482" height="600" /> So if you are in the area, please come to this talk! Kostis is one of the most accomplished and dynamic of a new generation of polymaths who can speak with confidence and expertise on topics from modern art to ancient archaeology. (<a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">And a fellow blogger</a>.)

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-10/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:55:30 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1033</guid> Its crisp fall day here in North Dakotaland, so a perfect time to offer up some quick hits are varia. I've been working my way through <a href="http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/">the public peer-review of J. Dougherty and K. Nawrotski's (eds.) Writing History in the Digital Age </a>. So far, it's more interesting as a survey than thought provoking. Who knew that the Nigerian film industry was capable of <a href="http://www.robertpopper.com/2011/10/10/the-trailer-to-end-all-trailers-official/">this kind of thing</a> Do you ever really need clipart of North Dakota birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians? If so, <a href="http://learningaloud.com/clipart/">I have a site for you</a> So after a week of using <a href="http://resoph.com/ResophNotes/Welcome.html">ResophNotes</a>, I don't like as much as <a href="http://resoph.com/ResophNotes/Welcome.html">nvALT</a>, but I still like it a bunch. And by saving the .txt files created by both programs in the same dropbox folder, I can share between them almost seamlessly. <a href="http://library.und.edu/fritz-at-50/">My most recent digital history practicum</a>, focusing on the 50th Anniversary of the Chester Fritz Library at UND, <a href="http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/218194/">got some love from the local paper, the Grand Forks Herald .</a> After a pleasant chat with a potential blogger graduate student, <a href="http://thecotone.wordpress.com/">this appeared from the same graduate student</a>. It looks like it's just getting started, but the photo itself is worth the click. Yesterday was <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>! Rebecca Rozelle-Stone offered some great thoughts on advising student organizations. The Athens News (Greece), Greece on Media page has been linking to my New Archaeology of the Mediterranean World page lately. <a href="http://www.athensnews.gr/greece_on_media">Everyone should click through to their page from here to show them how much we appreciate the attention</a>. I have a digital book project brewing in the near future and I was wondering whether I should try to use <a href="http://code.google.com/p/sigil/">Sigil</a> to create the ebook for it. <a href="http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/12/find-my-friends">Daring Fireball, one of my favorite Mac blogs, borrowed my Corinthian Leather joke</a> (and link!). What I'm reading: <a href="http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/">J. Dougherty and K. Nawrotski eds. Writing History in the Digital Age </a>. What I'm listening to: The Mekons, Rock 'n' Roll (How is this not available in iTunes or through Amazon's mp3 store?) </ul> <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="BeetsareRollin.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/beetsarerollin.jpg" border="0" alt="BeetsareRollin" width="450" height="531" /> It's beet time again.

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<title>Fifty Years of the Chester Fritz Library</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/fifty-years-of-thechester-fritz-library/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:58:00 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1036</guid> This week is a big week for the Chester Fritz library. Fifty years ago this month, the cornerstone of this building was set. Some three years earlier, Chester Fritz, a North Dakota native who had attended the University of North Dakota for a mere 3 semesters, offered to donate $1,000,000 to the University for the construction of a new library. His argument in <a href="http://fritzat50.omeka.net/items/show/97">his letter to UND's President George W. Starcher</a> was direct: <blockquote> It has been my observation that an adequate library tends to raise the level of the total scholarship of a university, and that it adds immeasurably to the greatness of the university. For the students, it induces more mature and disciplined thinking; for the faculty. it attracts outstanding scholars and helps to hold outstanding teachers and for the people of the State beyond the UniversIty campus, it serves as an educational and cultural center. These major functions of anadequate university are all necessary. I believe. for any university that aspires to greatness in scholarship and service. </blockquote> Fritz made his fortune financing the mining tungsten and other metals in China in the 1920 as the representative of the American Metal Company. This experience led him to finance and investment and in 1929 he founded the firm of Swan, Cubertson, and Fritz. In the 1930s, this firm became the first Chinese firm on the New York Stock Exchange and among the largest foreign companies listed there. The disruptions to international markets brought about by World War II more or less ended his work in China, but by then his firm had expanded into insurance brokerage apparently in South America. The firms office in Montevideo, Uruguay held the funds for the library. (<a href="http://webapp.und.edu/dept/library/Collections/og410.html">For a short bio on Fritz check out the library's collection of his papers</a>.) To celebrate the Fritz donation and the impressive facility that the Chester Fritz Library has become, the library will host a series of events this week. On Wednesday evening at 7 pm, Dan Rylance, Fritz's biographer, will speak on "Reflections on the Life and Legacy of Chester Fritz" in the Main Reading Room of the library. Then on Friday from 3-5 pm, there will be an all campus reception in the Main Reading Room of the library. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="fritz50_4 final (1).jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/fritz50_4-final-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Fritz50 4 final 1" width="449" height="600" /> For more on events and the history of the library, check out <a href="http://library.und.edu/fritz-at50/">the Fritz at 50 webpage and explore all the associated content</a>.

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<title>Placing Our New Old House</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/placing-our-new-oldhouse/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:21:49 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1042</guid> We have finally settled into our new old house and have begun to think about it as a place of archaeology (rather than simply a receptacle for our stuff). Fortunately, my wife visited the previous owners of the house in South Dakota this past week and was able to glean some interesting documentation of the house's history including a copy of the North Dakota Cultural Resource Survey form (NDCRS). The house is listed as a contributing property to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Forks_Near_Southside_Historic_District">Near South Side Historic District here in Grand Forks</a>. The house itself is in the Gabled Front style typical of many homes dating to the last decades of the 19th and first decades of the 20th century in town. According to the NDCRS form the house dates to 1882 with an addition just after the turn of the century. If this early date is right, it is likely the first house south of 8th Av. on Reeves Dr. and among the earliest homes in town. (It would date to a mere 2 years after the railroad came through town and amidst the "Dakota Boom of 1882"). My feeling is that this date is rather early for this house. Various decorations inside the house and on the front facade of the house when it was purchased by its previous owners preserve a data of 1889 which would perhaps be more keeping with construction in the area. Whatever the case, the house is almost certainly late 19th century in date and is likely one of the first houses built south of 8th Av. on Reeves. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="GFin1880s.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/gfin1880s.jpg" border="0" alt="GFin1880s" width="418" height="555" /> The location of the house is significant because south of 8th Avenue, Reeves Dr. takes a pronounced jog to the west separating the monumental houses of the local elite set on large lots from the more ordinary homes. We can look out of our front window and see the houses of the wealthy, influential, and powerful, but we'll never confuse our address with theirs. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="804ReevesJog.jpg.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/804reevesjog.jpg" border="0" alt="804ReevesJog jpg" width="445" height="305" /> The house itself appears to have had a significant addition around the turn of the century, and this photograph, dating perhaps to around 1900, shows a one story addition in the back of the house. In other homes of this date, this addition typically accommodates a larger kitchen. In our home, the kitchen remains part of the original house and the original purpose of the addition (storage?) remains unclear. At some later date, a second story was put on the addition. It was probably a sleeping porch originally, but it now has glass-paned windows and is connected to the radiator system of the house. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="OurHouseca1900.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/ourhouseca1900.jpg" border="0" alt="OurHouseca1900" width="450" height="338" /> This is what our house looks like today clad in new siding and with a more elaborate garden. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="OurHouseToday.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/ourhousetoday.jpg" border="0" alt="OurHouseToday" width="450" height="337" />

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<title>Sampling the Byzantine Landscape</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/sampling-thebyzantine-landscape/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:11:04 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1045</guid> Over the past couple of weeks, <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/corinths-byzantine-countryside/">I've been working with David Pettegrew on a short paper</a> that considers the role of intensive pedestrian survey in documenting and creating Byzantine landscapes in the countryside of Corinth. One of the challenges of this analysis is our scatters of Byzantine pottery tend to be rather small and sometimes amount to only four or five sherds. The small quantity of Byzantine material present at any one place in the landscape makes it difficult to discuss the function of places in the countryside, to determine the relationship between survey assemblages and more robust samples of material from excavated settings, and to understand the extent, duration and intensity of activities in the landscape. As a result, survey projects have had to consider ways to evaluate periods that manifest in small assemblages of pottery. A whole series of issues likely contribute to certain periods appearing mainly as small, low-density assemblages. It is almost certain that we have failed to recognize certain types of diagnostic material on the surface or even during pottery study and as a result certain types of pottery are not associated with particular periods. Certain periods also enjoyed problematic natural and cultural site formation processes. For example, sites occupied for a short time or seasonally from particular period could produce less ceramic material. Later activities could obscure the presence of particular periods in the countryside as well. Periods where groups settled on the In <a href="http://www.equinoxjournals.com/JMA/article/view/2435">a 2006 Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology article</a>, David Pettegrew, Dimitri Nakassis, and I argued that survey units that produced small, but highly diverse assemblages of pottery because of with low surface visibility might actually contain higher density, very diverse assemblages lurking beneath their obscured surfaces. We suggested in these situations that it might be wise to increase our sampling intensity from the typical 2-meter wide swaths through the unit spaced at 10 m intervals to compensate for the effect of the obscured surface on the overall sample size in the unit. In other words, as densities fell because of poor visibility, we just increase our intensity. In 2005, David Pettegrew and I concocted a series of experiments at our survey site in Cyprus to determine whether increasing the intensity of our collection strategy actually produced more robust assemblages. In these experiments - documented in <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/69428827/W-Caraher-R-S-Moore-J-S-Noller-D-K-PettegrewThe-Pyla-Koutsopetria-Archaeological-Project-Second-Preliminary-Report-2005-2006-Seasons">an article in the Report of the Department of Antiquity of Cyprus in 2007</a> - we determined that grubbing around on the ground and collecting all artifacts from a 5% sample of the units surface produced interesting results. First, our hands-and-knees 5% samples produced far more pottery than our 20% sample (where were walked across the unit counting sherds) predicted. Second, and more importantly, the assemblages produced by these 5% total collection areas were more diverse than those produced by our effort to sample the artifacts present in our 20% samples of the unit. On the one hand, we discovered that our smaller total collection areas did not produce significantly more chronological information. In other words, we were not seeing periods in our super intensive 5% sample that did not appear in our less intensive 20% sample. On the other hand, our 5% hands-andknees collection strategy did produce more diversity than our typical survey and sampling strategy. Our samples of 20% of the surface produced 11.2 chronotypes (or distinct types of pottery recognized by our ceramicist) per unit, whereas our more intensive (if smaller) sample produced 15.6 chronotypes per unit.

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Our sample sizes remains extremely small, but they are nevertheless suggestive. I looked at the least diagnostic types of pottery (coarse, medium coarse, and kitchen/cooking wares) in each of our experimental units and compared the total number of chronotypes present in each of these classes with the number of chronotypes present in the larger 20% sample. I discovered that for coarse ware, there was a 5% increase in the number of chronotypes, for medium coarse a 35% increase, and for kitchen/cooking wares a 33% increase. There was a 50% increase in the diversity of the fine ware assemblages produced by a more rigorous effort to collect pottery from the surface of the ground. What this all suggests is that small quantities of pottery based on our typical sampling and collection strategies might represent the tip of an iceberg hidden by collection strategies that ill-suited to documenting hidden landscapes. Of course, one upshot of the need to increase the intensity of surface collection is that it makes it difficult to conduct data collection on the regional level from problematic or less visible periods. This contributes to what Blanton has called "<a href="http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/075/Ant0750627.htm">Mediterranean Myopia</a>" or a tendency for Mediterranean survey archaeologists to focus on smaller and smaller areas while still attempting to address regional level survey questions.

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<title>Thinking about Collaboration and Digital History in Practice</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/thinking-aboutcollaboration-and-digital-history-in-practice/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:46:46 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1047</guid> Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota Over the past half semester I've been working with a dedicated group of graduate students on public and digital history practicum. The practicum focused on the creation of <a href="http://library.und.edu/fritz-at-50/">a digital history collection and exhibit celebrating the Chester Fritz Library's 50th Birthday</a>. This project has had its ups and downs and we're only half way through the experiment, but I felt like we had gone far enough along to reflect on some of the things that I've learned coordinating a class in an intensively collaborative, digital environment. The class was designed, at least in theory, around the needs of our "client" the <a href="http://library.und.edu/">Chester Fritz Library</a> and through several meeting with various stakeholders in the process - the Director of Libraries and the heads of various divisions - and sitting in on a town hall like meeting of library staff, we developed an overall strategy on how to approach the library's 50th Birthday as a digital, public history event. The library helped us set some deadlines and shape some expectations for how this project would fit within the festivities that they had already planned in the fall of this year. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Fritzat50.jpg" src="http://teachingthursday.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/fritzat50.jpg" border="0" alt="Fritzat50" width="450" height="538" /> <p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://library.und.edu/fritz-at-50/"> Check out the page here </a> The class itself consists of a five student dream team (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNoTIgDrizk">as an Eagles fan I can say that</a>): 3 Ph.D. students and an M.A. and a B.A. student. At the midpoint of the semester, I asked the students to reflect upon their experiences in the class and my observations below derive in part from these reflections. I not only received their generous permission to reflect on their reflection papers, but I've also asked them to check out this post and comment on my efforts to summarize their thoughts. So here they are: 1. Structure and Room to Fail. When I initially imagined the class, I had figured that our conversations with the library would help us shape our project, its deadlines, and goals. So I did not create a formal syllabus, but rather created a list of suggested deadlines for various aspects of the project. In other words, the course lacked much in the way of formal structure, in part, because I hoped that our stakeholders and the students would set deadlines and goals. They did move in this direction, but I overlooked one small issue in the planning of our public, digital history collection: the time to struggle and even fail. Some of the students initiatives which seemed quite reasonable involved far more time than any of us expected. The combination of unexpected delays, problems with workflow, and even plans or projects that didn't work out, slowed the project down and the lack of a firm class structure gradually eroded a sense of urgency. Only a firm intervention set the class back on track, but by then, I think that the class was behind where we all hoped we would be as the public festivities started around homecoming week. In the future, I think a firm structure would have provided some context for the kind of risks/reward analysis that my team considered when embarking on a more difficult or ambitious component of the project. In other words, we might have been more conscious of delays and other risks of ambitious plans, if there were checks on he system throughout the process. 2. Digital Immigrants. The digital learning curve was steeper than expected even for the most committed digital immigrants (i.e. students who were committed to learning digital tools but not "natively" familiar with them. I dislike the term "digital native" and "digital immigrant", but in this case it seems particularly useful). In particular, I found that the students struggled to keep <a

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href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/teaching-tuesday-digital-natives-digitalhistory-and-the-public/">pace with the expectations of the digital world</a>, where content has to appear continuously or at least at regular intervals to attract attention in the din of the internet. Student work patterns tended to encourage episodic writing usually toward the end of the term when papers become due. Asking them to produce content continuously throughout the semester and to write it directly into the digital stream (via <a href="http://fritzat50.wordpress.com/">a blog</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/fritzat50">a Twitter feed</a>, and <a href="http://fritzat50.omeka.net/">a digital collection</a>) clearly created issues for our students who felt more at home with crafted final papers that emerged from long(ish) gestation periods and were refined over multiple drafts. History is rather unique in that it tends to privilege to final product over the process. Historians tend not to dilate long on methods. The importance of the final product over the various intermediate steps that a scholar would take along the way, contributed to my students' reluctance to expose their creative process to the world. So not only was the pace disruptive to their workflow patters, but they had few examples of pre-publication, public work to look to for guidance (and they do not read <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/">my blog</a> or any other academic blogs.) 3. Collecting vs. Interpreting. One of the most interesting challenges of the process of producing web content on the fly is that my students initially insisted on a rather rigid division between the process of building a digital collection and the process of interpreting it. This divide, of course, is grounded in traditional models of historical research which imagines the first step to be data collection which forms the foundation for the analysis and interpretation. This approach relies on a view of historical artifact as objects that exist outside of the interpretative process. In fact, historians are still something bothered by the idea that our research questions can and do shape the kinds of evidence we look for in our sources and collections. The dichotomy between collecting and analyzing is not grounded in reality, of course, (as any graduate student in the field could tell you): historical evidence and collection are the product of conscious decisions and selection processes. In other words, the collection itself - with its limits and character - is the product of historical thinking in the same way that more formal, written analysis and interpretation is. Understanding these two processes as separate created a rift in their workflow and contributed to their difficulty in creating content continuously for the collection 4. Collaboration. In working with a group of students, I somehow expected a magic moment of collaboration to occur as individual's found complementary interests, abilities, and schedules. So far, this has not happened. In fact, most of the year it was a challenge to get the entire group together at one time (we did not have a scheduled class time because I anticipated having to meet in different venues and with different stakeholders; this oversight is related to my point 1) much less having them work together as a cohesive unit. The lack of collaboration between the students led them to be concerned that they were working on the same projects at the same time. Moreover, it became difficult for the students to synchronize content production, analysis, and interpretation across multiple sites and across different forms of content. The result is a series of fine semi-independent projects that are attractive, intriguing, and almost exciting, but not nearly as good as they could have been. I've learned the collaboration requires a certain amount of leadership on my part as the instructor. On the other hand, understanding how collaboration worked and didn't work brought to the fore the challenges of public and digital history as a process. While collaboration always seems like a way to make a project easier, it also requires that all participants have a commitment to a particular approach to documenting and understanding the past. Finding this middle ground for all the collaborators likely requires more effort from everyone involved that simply letting team members go out and work on related, but ultimately independent projects. Of course, this is the genius of promoting collaborative work at the University. It forces collaborators and supervisors to not only articulate a (frequently shifting) final product, but also forces everyone involved to focus on process. As so much of what we do in the humanities is refining our processes (methods, procedures), I have come to appreciate the value of collaboration not as a means of getting students to work together, but rather as a means of unpacking the process of creating the knowledge. 5. Final Projects. As the semester crosses the half-way point, I've begun to think about what I can expect of this group for a final project. To some extent the work itself - with all its flaws and strengths -

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represents a final product. On the other hand, it seems like a public work should represent more than just an exercise in process. To manage a final product, we have to have consensus on what would make our efforts to collect and analyze a digital collection successful. (This does not mean that the process has to be closed or the final results definitive.) At the same time, we need to have some kind of reflective component to the class so that we can all consider the academic, intellectual, and practical lessons of our work. My hope is that this blog post is a first step toward that. Crossposted to <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>.

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/friday-varia-and-quickhits-21/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:08:05 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1050</guid> It's a lovely and crisp fall day here in North Dakotaland. The stars were twinkling away in the firmament on the brisk walk from my little car to the my office. It feels like a great day for some varia and quick hits. One of my new favorite bloggers, Dallas DeForest, continues to keep us informed on the events in Athens. His posts <a href="http://mediterraneanpalimpsest.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/day-one-of-thegeneral-strike-in-greece-october-19-links-and-photos/">here</a> and <a href="http://mediterraneanpalimpsest.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/day-two-of-the-general-strike-ingreece-october-20-notes-and-photos/">here </a>on the two day general strike are among his best. <a href="http://bleeps.gr/main/manifest/">Some more cool Greek graffiti</a>. A number of people have sent me links to <a href="http://designyoutrust.com/2011/10/12/villagesabandoned-near-europe%E2%80%99s-worst-climate-polluting-power-plant/">this little article on an abandoned village in the Ptolemais valley near Kozani in Northern Greece</a>. <a href="http://mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/google_gravity/">This is pretty cool</a>, but utterly pointless. The great thing about it is that the Googles still works. <a href="http://annyas.com/handlettered-logos-department-stores/">These hand-lettered department store logos</a> bring back so many mostly fond memories of shopping at <a href="http://annyas.com/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/department-store-logo-strawbridgeclothier-1960s.jpg">Strawbridge and Clothier</a> and, especially, the freestanding <a href="http://annyas.com/htdocs/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/department-store-logo-johnwanamaker.jpg">John Wanamaker's</a> store in Wilmington, Delaware at the holidays.. <a href="http://materialitas.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/thessaloniki-metro-and-rescue-excavations/">I guess the Late Antiques and Byzantines are conspiring against the Thessaloniki Metro</a> (ht to Dimitri Nakassis). <a href="http://www.itap.purdue.edu/studio/jetpack/">This seems like an interesting way to expand onto course content onto mobile platforms</a>. <a href="http://typewritten.doormouse.org/">You can typewrite on your iPhone</a>. I've thought a good bit about <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/five-easytools-to-digitize-your-workflow/">my digital workflow</a>, but <a href="http://william.gibson.usesthis.com/">William Gibson's might be among the best</a>. <a href="http://uncrate.com/stuff/mcintosh-50th-anniversary-mc275-tube-amplifier/">I am coveting this</a>. If you haven't already check out our <a href="http://library.und.edu/fritz-at-50/">Fritz at 50 page</a> celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Chester Fritz Library here on UND's campus. What I'm reading: Z. Bauman, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/liquid-times-living-in-an-ageof-uncertainty/oclc/85853074">Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty</a> . ( 2007). What I'm listening too: Frightened Rabbit, The Winter of Mixed Drinks , We Were Promised Jetpacks, These Four Walls . </ul> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="ChurchandWires.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/churchandwires.jpg" border="0" alt="ChurchandWires" width="450" height="523" />

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<title>A Cool, Busy Week</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/a-cool-busyweek/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:34:14 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1056</guid> This is the time of the semester when my calendar fills up with events, meetings, and activities. In some years, this has been a relentless drag from meeting to meeting. This year, however, there are some really cool things going on. So, here's a inducement to check out the activities this week. First, the Department of Art and Design (and others!) are hosting their <a href="http://und.edu/calendar/index.php/view/event/detail/6907/2011-arts-and-cultureconference">Arts and Culture Conference</a> on campus. The theme is: Politics and the Graphic Image. The headliners of this conference are the members of the WW3 collective. The group, founded by Peter Kuper and Sethe Tobocman, has produced a politically charged comic World War 3 Illustrated since 1978. The conference includes discussions with these two artists as well as fellow contributor Sabrina Jones. They have gallery shows at both the Hughes Fine Arts center and at the Third Street Gallery (downtown). The WW3 folks will talk about their work in a round table format Tuesday at 3 in the Ballroom of the Union! <p style="text-align:center;"><img title="WW3.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/ww31.jpg" border="0" alt="WW3" width="225" height="334" /><img title="Arts_Culture2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/arts_culture20111.jpg" border="0" alt="Arts Culture2011" width="216" height="334" /> <p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Tuesday, October 25 <br /> Seth Tobocman - Artist's Lecture<br /> 9:30am, Hughes Fine Arts Center Room 227<br /> <br /> Sabrina Jones - Artist's Lecture<br /> 12:30pm, Gillette Hall Room 303<br /> <br /> WW3 Panel featuring Peter Kuper, Seth Tobocman and Sabrina Jones<br /> 3:00pm, UND Memorial Union, River Valley Room <p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Wednesday, October 26 <br /> Peter Kuper - Artist Lecture<br /> 11:30am - Hughes Fine Arts Center Room 227 <p style="text-align:center;">2002 Pulitzer Prize Winning Cartoonist Clay Bennet In Conversation,<br /> 3:00pm, Hughes Fine Arts Center<br /> Josephine Campbell Recital Hall <p style="text-align:left;">This Wednesday at noon, the Working Group in Digital and New will host working group member, Mike Wittgraf, who will talk about Music and Computer/Human Interaction: Interface and Improvisation in the Working Group lab. Mike is an international master of computer mediated music of all kinds. He's going to present some of his work on our fabulous sound system and talk about the technology and theory behind the next wave of music and computer/human interaction. <p style="text-align:left;">Be sure to check out the Music Department's trumpet recital on Thursday night where Mike will premier his work Gold Digger (for four trumpets and a computer). <p style="text-align:left;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Wittgraf_Lecture_Oct2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/wittgraf_lecture_oct2011.jpg" border="0" alt="Wittgraf Lecture Oct2011" width="463" height="600" /> <p style="text-align:center;">

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<title>Some Comments on Writing History in the Digital Age</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/some-comments-onwriting-digital-history/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:02:25 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1066</guid> I've really enjoyed cruising through the Jack Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki <a href="http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/">open peer-review volume called Writing History in the Digital Age </a> which is slated to be published by University of Michigan Press's new Digital Humanities Series in their <a href="http://www.digitalculture.org/">digitalculturebooks</a> imprint. I commented on many of the contributions and mined them all for references and ideas. I'd encourage anyone interested or invested in the future of history in the digital age to check out the volume and to contribute to its open peer review. Since I have read all the articles in the volume and have been thinking a bit about history in the digital era myself lately, I thought I might offer some overarching comments on the volume (as is my wont). 1. Coherence. One of the first things I noticed about the book is the wide range of contributions. These range from two recent Ph.D.s discussing how they used email to keep themselves motivated and sane while writing their dissertations to discussions on databases, GIS, visualization, and even nonlinear digital editing. Articles on the use of Wikipedia and Social media in the classroom stand alongside more theoretical or research oriented papers. While such scope is commendable (and must reflect the "big tent" approach to digital humanities, in general), it caused me to wonder about the limits of a specific sub-field called "digital history" and how we plan to organize and reflect on the intersection of digital tools and history as the discipline becomes invested in digital technologies. For example, there were no articles celebrating the contribution of the so-called "personal computer" or "word processor" in the volume. These basic technologies clearly fell outside of what the authors and editors regarded as the discourse of digital history (although one can argue that these technologies had as big an impact on our field as Wikipedia or Facebook). Edited volumes always have ragged edges where the definitions and ideas of the contributors fail to line up precisely across the entire book or clash with those of the editors. This is part of the charm of the edited volume; it captures a snapshot of a particular topic in the minds of a group of scholars (as opposed to the carefully composed portrait that is a monograph). At the same time, recent discussions on the definition of the digital humanities might feature more prominently in a volume like this. Is there really enough theoretical, methodological, and topical coherence between all the papers here to justify their appearance in the same book? 2. Institutions. One of the more interesting aspect of the volume was the subtle but (almost) ubiquitous mention of institutional support for the various initiative detailed. In some cases, the support came from powerful national organizations like National Endowment for the Humanities. In other cases, on campus labs or centers like <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/eresearch/">Arts eResearch at the University of Sydney</a> or <a href="http://www2.matrix.msu.edu/">MATRIX at Michigan State</a>, provided the infrastructure necessary for a project's development. Some initiatives were far more modest in scope and extended only slightly beyond the classroom's walls or an immediate community. Few of the articles in this volume, however, problematized their work in terms of a formal research question framed in response to a pre-existing body of scholarship. (Few began with the ubiquitous phrases: "Scholars have argued") It appears, then, that the impetus for working in digital history derives as much from institutional pressures (and opportunities) as traditional appeals to the scholarly conversation. While this is hardly surprising for a recent development in the discipline, it may foreshadow an interesting shift in the structure of humanities scholarship. The pressure to collaborate and innovate is pushing scholars in the humanities away from well-trod arguments and to the brink of a kind of rupture in the discourse (in a Foucauldian sense). The external pressure and resources deployed by on campus and national institutions have insisted that historians (and other scholars in the humanities) shift their arguments

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from the small-picture debates that have long shaped these disciplines, to big picture, transdisciplinary, collaborative thinking. This is manifest in (some, but not all of) the scholarship that these projects produced: Writing History in the Digital Age recognizes a different audience and a different set of discursive rules than writing traditional history. 3. Methods and Techniques. Traditional historical practice has been short on method. The so-called historical method is, in fact, a set of practices cobbled together from various other fields and epistemological systems. With the rise in digital history, however, a new interest in methods and practices has come to the fore and a number of the articles in Writing History in the Digital Age reflect this development. Digital historians are more willing to experiment with methods grounded in geography, the social sciences, media studies, and, even, computer programing and game studies. At the same time, this methodological growth requires critical attention to new techniques. Archaeology for example, has developed a robust methodological discourse over the past 40 years as the disciple embraced a "methodological turn" that sought to critically examine the tools, practices, and assumptions that shaped archaeological knowledge. The essays in this volume, in contrast, showed very little in the way of genuine methodology. Of course, some of the essays with a pedagogical bent, showed an awareness of and willingness to contribute to recent pedagogical developments, but few of the more research oriented pieces considered explicitly and critically the methodological assumptions of their use of digital tools. The absence of methodology extends to some extent to the techniques (for lack of a better word) used to generate the kind of digital analysis that their contributions celebrate. While software, programing and markup languages, and hardware appeared regularly in the pages, we were rarely invited to look behind the curtain to see how these aspects of digital history influenced the ways in which history could be written. (The notable exceptions to this were the several essays that discussed Wikipedia, but even these essays focused on the social, rather than technological aspects of this forum. For example, several of the essays mention the automated "bots" that crawl Wikipedia and can change entries systematically, but few essays explain how these bots work and why historian-trained bots couldn't do the same things.) My feeling is that the next step in the study of digital history will involve a much more critical approach to the methods and tools used by digital historians to produce new knowledge. 4. The Future. One of the most significant gaps in this small book were essays with an eye toward the future. Writing the future is always a risky game, especially for historians who are so accustomed to "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward">looking backward</a>". At the same time, part of the writing digital history game is positioning history in a place not only to take advantage of digital tools created by other people, but also to shape how new technologies develop. I would have loved to hear how folks invested in digital history, as the contributors to this book clearly are, see the future of technology impacting our work as historians. Developments like the massive growth of computing power available to mobile devices, enhanced and augmented reality, MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), an endless stream of cloud services, the chaining notion of curation and the personal web, and the rapid mutation of social media communities, all offer new venues for presenting history, but also new spaces and tools for the analysis and interpretation of past events. Writing History in the Digital Age represents a moment in time in the discipline's embrace of digital tools. At once it is possible to see ragged edge of the profession's handling of digital media to communicate and interpret the past, as well as its growing confidence in embracing (if not fully engaging) new technologies.

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<title>Phonographs and Potsherds</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/phonographs-andpotsherds/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:41:17 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1070</guid> A reference <a href="http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/evidence/everyone-is-aneditor-faltesek/">in Daniel Faltesek's contributio</a>n to Dougherty and Nawrotzki's <a href="http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/">Writing History in the Digital Age</a> caught my interest. Faltesek discusses the rise of non-linear editing particularly in film, but <a href="http://writinghistory.trincoll.edu/evidence/everyone-is-an-editor-faltesek/#fn-799-8">he refers</a> <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/25110210">to an article by Thomas Edison from 1878</a> which celebrated the potential of the phonograph for both recording and playing back sounds. In this article, Edison imagines the phonograph function: "For the purpose of preserving the sayings, the voices, and the last words of the dying member of the family - as of great men - the phonograph will unquestionably outrank the photograph. In the field of multiplication of original matrices, and the indefinite repetition of one and the same thing, the successful electrotyping of the original record is an essential." (pp. 533-534). This passage immediately reminded me of the end of St. Theodoros of Kythera's life. According to his Vitae , Theodoros' recorded on a pot sherd the following phrase: "I, Theodore, humble deacon, laid down in sickness on April 7th, and I died on the 12th of May, on the day of the Holy Epiphany." <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=U2KXRCJ3gq8C&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;source=gb s_ge_summary_r&amp;cad=0#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">In a short article on this life</a>, I argue that by knowing the time of his death and inscribing a potsherd to this effect, Os. Theodoros demonstrates his sanctity. The modest, inscribed sherd demonstrates that Theodoros knew his future and had attained access to timeless knowledge of God. The use of a potsherd to inscribe his revelation takes an archaeological twist by the embedding a revelation that warps time on an object that is both modest and likely to endure. Edison's phonograph, likewise, sought to disrupt the predictable flow of time by making the last words of individuals remain alive after death. The immediacy of the spoken word and enduring <a href="http://punkarchaeology.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/punk-rock-materiality-and-time/">the materiality</a> of phonograph gave it a particular power as medium for last words. Like St. Theodore's potsherd, the phonograph record became a way to warp time.

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<title>Byzantium in Transition at the University of Cyprus</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/byzantium-intransition-at-the-university-of-cyprus/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:51:49 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1077</guid> This is a pretty interesting conference being held this weekend at the University of Cyprus. Apparently, it will be the first in a trilogy of conferences designed "to shed more light on the 'invisible' eras or period of major transformations in economy, society, and culture after the end of Late Antiquity by (re)evaluating old and new archaeological data, namely dated to (a) the Byzantine Early Middle Ages, middle 7th-8th centuries, (b) the Middle to Late Byzantine or Early Frankish era, Late 12th - early 13th centuries, and (c) the Late Byzantine/Frankish to Early Ottoman period, middle 14th - late 15th centuries." The schedule of speakers looks pretty impressive (although a bit light on people doing active field research in Cyprus) with most of the usual suspects represented. The poster is snazzy. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Workshop_Poster.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/workshop_poster.jpg" border="0" alt="Workshop Poster" width="424" height="600" /> It's always useful to notice the way in which these kinds of conferences organize sessions because they both capture the areas of specialty among the participants and the questions central to research in the field. Sessions on urban and rural space suggest, at least, that tradition ways of viewing ancient settlement with the conceptual divide between town and country continues to persist (although it is possible that the papers could critique the title of the session). The next session on "trade networks and the economy" suggests more fluid and integrated view of economic relationships that might offer a counterpoint to the seeming rigid city/countryside divide. The final session bring the term "material culture" to the conference and opens up the potential to consider how objects both embody and communicate cultural expectations. It remains to be seen how fully the participant embrace the complex concept of material culture or just use it as a synonym for architecture and small-finds. The program is as follows: Byzantium in Transition Introductory Session: Setting the Scene <br /><br />Islam and its relations with ByzantiumAlexander Beihammer (University of Cyprus)<br /><br />Latin Christendom and its relations with Byzantium, c. 700-900 AD<br />Richard Hodges (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology, USA)<br />keynote speaker (hospitality sponsored by the Cyprus Tourism Organisation) Approaches to Early Medieval Byzantium<br />John Haldon (Princeton University, USA)<br /><br /><strong>Session I: Urban and Rural Space <br /><br />Urban and rural space: surface survey and its problematics<br />John Bintliff (University of Leiden, The Netherlands)<br /><br />City and countryside in Greece<br />Guy Sanders (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece)<br /><br />Island and coastal landscapes in Greece and Cyprus<br />Timothy Gregory (Ohio State University, USA)<br /><br />City and countryside in Asia Minor: Amorium as model or misfit?<br />Christopher Lightfoot (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA)<br /><br />City and countryside in the western fringes<br />Paul Arthur (University of Salento, Italy)<br /><br /><strong>Session II: Trade Networks and Economy<br /> <br />A ceramic koine as evidence for continuity and economy<br />Athanasios Vionis (University of Cyprus)<br /><br />Amphorae and trade networks<br />Stella Demesticha (University of Cyprus)<br /><br />Pottery in seventh-century Cyprus: ceramic economies in a Sea of change<br />Marcus Rautman (University of Missouri, USA)<br /><br />Towards a new definition of Mission Creep: trade with the western peripheries<br />Pamela Armstrong (University of Oxford, Wolfson College, UK)<br /><br />Coins, exchanges and the transformation of the Byzantine economy (7th-10th c.)<br />Cecile Morrisson (CNRS, France)<br /><br /><strong>Session III: Artistic Testimonies and Material Culture <br /><br />The culture of Iconoclasm<br />Leslie Brubaker

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(University of Birmingham, UK)<br /><br />Church planning and sculpture in Late Antique Cyprus: their connections with the regional environment<br />Jean-Pierre Sodini (Universite de Paris- I, Sorbonne, France)<br /><br />Early Christian basilicas: changes or continuities in post-Justinianic Cyprus?<br />Doria Nicolaou (Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, Italy)<br /><br />The art of metalwork in Byzantium<br />Marlia Mango (University of Oxford, St John's College, UK)<br /><br />Early Medieval archaeological evidence from central Greece<br />Olga Karagiorgou (Academy of Athens, Greece) Cross-posted to <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Corinthian Matters</a>.

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<title>A Late Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/a-late-quick-hits-andvaria/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:21:50 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1082</guid> This has been <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/acool-busy-week/">a busy week in North Dakotaland</a>, so my quick hits and varia are inevitably delayed and less robust than usual. But on a beautiful fall day, you should be outside enjoying the mottled light filtered through the changing leaves rather than reading blogs anyway. <a href="http://www.whitewashedtomb.com/">Rothaus on overachieving and preservation endruns</a>. <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/content/lifestyle-redefined">McIntosh as lifestyle brand</a>. <a href="http://www.targetlogistics.net/mobile/gallery.php">Need a mancamp? Call Target Logistics</a>. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_smith">Patti Smith and shoplifting</a>. Want to watch Indiana University of Pennsylvania versus California University of Pennsylvania play football this weekend? <a href="http://pennatlantic.com/main.php?module=eventdetail&amp;eventId=19043">Well, you can</a>. <a href="http://vimeo.com/30300114">Android Dreams (Tokyo by timelapse)</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohi_Day">Today is Oxi Day in Greece</a>. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/south-africa-v-australia2011/engine/current/match/514027.html">The Australia v. South Africa ODI</a>. <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/10/the_byzantine_tax_code_ho w_complicated_was_byzantium_anyway_.html">Is our Byzantine tax code actually Byzantine?</a> What I'm reading: L. Brubaker and J. Haldon, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/byzantium-inthe-iconoclast-era-c-680-850-a-history/oclc/650827358">Byzantium in the iconoclast era. c. 680-850: a history</a> . Cambridge 2011. What I'm listening to: Youth Lagoon, Year of Hibernation ; M83, Hurry up we're Dreaming . </ul> For those of you who don't have fall: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="MottledLight.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/mottledlight.jpg" border="0" alt="MottledLight" width="416" height="600" />

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<title>A Big Book and the Byzantine Economy</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/a-big-book-and-thebyzantine-economy/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:02:58 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1084</guid> This weekend I began the almost overwhelming task of negotiating L. Brubaker and J. Haldon's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/byzantium-in-the-iconoclast-era-c-680-850-ahistory/oclc/650827358">Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 680-850: A History</a> (Cambridge 2011). The runs to just shy of 800 pages of text and with an addition 100 pages of bibliography. It continues in the trend of Byzantinists writing big books; M. McCormick's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/origins-of-the-european-economy-communications-andcommerce-ad-300-900/oclc/44860892">Origins of the European Economy</a> (Cambridge 2002) and C. Wickham's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/framing-the-early-middle-ages-europe-andthe-mediterranean-400-800/oclc/58998790">Framing the Early Middle Ages</a> (Oxford 2005) come to mind as similar tomes. Considering the massive size of Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era , I could imagine no way of reviewing it or even reading it in over a coherent block of time. (It really deserve the kind of treatment typically reserved for books like James' Ulysses or Proust's Remembrance of Things Past , where readers read the book as an event.). So, I decided to dip into the book not exactly at random, but to fish out the topics of interest to me, and I'll offer my thoughts here, from time to time as I work my way through the book hopefully before my interlibrary loan period runs out. I've been thinking a bit about settlement in the Byzantine period, the relationship between Byzantine and earlier Late Roman urban space, and, to a lesser extent the Late Roman and Byzantine economy. So chapters 6 and 7 which focused on the economy and settlement attracted my attention immediately. As one would expect, these chapters laid out the basic issues facing the Byzantine economy in the 7th to 9th centuries, with a focus on the role of the state and the distribution of coins and ceramic material as evidence for economic activity. The first part of the chapter focused on coinage and, inevitably with this kind of evidence, the role of the state as the engine for economic activity both in the capital (and its immediate hinterland) and in the provinces. Coinage entered the market as pay for soldiers and returned to the state as taxes. The further a community was from areas of military activity, the fewer coins appeared. For ceramics, the authors pulled together the diverse and fragmented body of evidence for ceramic production and distribution to argue that from the 7th to the 9th century, the distribution of ceramics became increasingly region in character and long distance trade declined. Even as the authors accept the gradual lengthening of Late Antique patterns of production and exchange into the 8th century, the evidence for the long-life of certain types of pottery, like Cypriot Red Slip, does little to challenge the overall impression that the transregional character of exchange in the Later Roman Empire was giving way to far more circumscribed economic zones largely dependent on local needs of the state, the military, or an local ecclesiastical or market center. Thus, both trade and the circulation of coinage took on a regional character during these centuries and contributed to the regional character of the Middle Byzantine provincial elite. The authors treatment of settlement patterns followed from their understanding of the regionalized economy. As demographic decline, urban contraction, and the decline of interregional trade occurred over the course of the 7th and 8th centuries, settlement patterns within within the Byzantine world took on increasingly regional character. Asia Minor, for example, represented a different development trajectory than the Balkans owing to different levels of state activity, security, economic opportunities, natural resources, and demographic decline. So while general pattern, did emerge - particular for settlements like the fortified kastron that features so prominently in discussion of rural settlement these were either motivated by state, provincial, or military elite, or certain ubiquitous economic opportunities - like harbors.

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One heartening aspect of the chapter dedicated the patterns of settlement, is that the authors begin to take into the account the results of intensive pedestrian survey. The limited scope of projects employing this method made it difficult for the authors to apply its findings on a scale fitting their own sweeping survey, but they clearly recognized that it had to potential to expand how scholars understand the character of Byzantine settlement and the various influences that shaped it on the local level. In general, these two chapters - read outside of the context of the book in general - provide a nice survey of the economy and settlement of the transition from Late Antiquity to the Middle Byzantine period. My main criticism of these chapters is the absence of any people in the text. The economy is a completely impersonal and state run affair devoid of individual laborers, their crafts, and the various persistent evidence to their work (other than pottery, of course). Fortifications, cities, monasteries, and port cities appear in these chapters without much discussion of the labor involved in constructing and maintaining them. Perhaps the sum total of this labor made just a minor dent in the Byzantine economy, or perhaps the evidence for building and the like cannot sustain the weight of sustained analysis. At the same time, the presence of individuals as participants in economic activity would ground the analysis of the economy and settlement in the bodies of actual Byzantine subjects. Trace evidence for practice could mediate between the systems proposed by the authors and the lived experiences of Byzantine individuals.

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<title>Teaching Tuesday: Writing Shorter</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/teaching-tuesdaywriting-shorter/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:19:55 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1086</guid> I had a bit of a convergent moment this week. I had been working on taking a draft of manuscript that has been submitted for publication into a conference paper. It involved taking the original 6000 word manuscript and cutting it down to around 2000 words. While I was doing this, I also participated in one of the history department's monthly workshops here at the University of North Dakota. This fall, we've been working with graduate students who are trying to turn parts of their M.A. theses into articles. One of the observations offered by a colleague, Jim Mochoruk, is that preparing a conference paper from a chapter can be a great way to figure out what you are trying to say and an important step in turning a chapter into a focused article. The basic idea is that a chapter might serve many purposes in the context of a broader thesis, but the best kind of articles are focused on one narrow argument. Using a conference paper as an intermediate step allows a writer to focus on one task at a time. Since the research and basic argument already exists, an author can turn his or her attention exclusively to the efficiency and economy of argument. The economy of a conference paper ensures that you cannot address every issue that might appear in a standard thesis chapter. As a result, it forces an author to lead with his or her strong suit and cut out extraneous detail as well as the dreaded "background". (I have banned the inclusion of "background" in papers assigned in my undergraduate classes.) In other words, it forces the author to focus the paper around a single, strong, central thesis and to pick the best cases studies (or bodies of evidence) to support that argument. More than that, compressing a paper can also encourage an economy of language. The first thing that gets striped from a longer paper is subheadings, solicitous or redundant transitions, and various other organizational crutches that are acceptable in a "length is no object environment" but a waste of space in a shorter paper. As I tell my students, the best papers will have an implicit organization. The pressure of writing a short, focused text, helps to develop the skills to create an efficient writing style. Authors also need to economize their historiography and consider the primary context for their work. This is an important step when moving a paper from a relatively broadly construed thesis to a more focused publication because specialized journals tend to emphasize a narrower range of historical debates, topics, and historiography. Beginning to winnowing process by preparing a short, highly focused conference paper encourages the author to select a precise audience for their work. There simply will not be room to unpack all the historical and historiographical possibilities present in a thesis chapter. For my case study (which does not necessarily capture all of these issues), check out <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/the-site-of-pyla-vigla-on-cyprus/">the long form of my paper on Vigla here</a>: The shorter conference version is here: [scribd id=71134094 key=key-27lnk8ghmuh8mpigjlx9 mode=list] Best read while listening to Wayne Shorter's Juju or Night Dreamer ...

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<title>More on Byzantine Settlement</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/more-on-byzantinesettlement/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:56:17 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1088</guid> I always get excited to discover a new scholar's work, but I get really happy when I find scholarship that cuts through my various interests and offers some useful insights. Over the past few days I've been reading three articles by Myrto Veikou on Byzantine settlement in the region of Epirus. One is a working paper titled "Byzantine Histories, Settlement Stories: Kastra, "Isles of Refuge," and "Unspecified Settlements" as In-between or Third Spaces". The other two have appeared in print: "Urban or Rural? Theoretical Remarks on the Settlement Patterns in Byzantine Epirus (7th-11th centuries)" BZ 103/1 (2010): 171-193 and "'Rural Towns' and 'In-Between' or 'Third' Spaces. Settlement Patterns in Byzantine Epirus (7th-11th c.) from an interdisciplinary approach." Archaeologia Medievale 36 (2009) 43-54. These papers are all available on <a href="http://eap.academia.edu/MyrtoVeikou/Papers">her Academia.edu site</a>. While it would be difficult to describe her work across three papers in a single post, I think I can point out some of the more useful elements of it (for me). First, and most importantly, she takes pains to point out the our concept of "rural" and "urban" do little to inform the archaeological evidence present for Byzantine settlement. She suggests that these division whether based on the Moses Finley's reading of Max Weber or views developed by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_(sociology)">"Chicago School" of urban planning</a> have produced developmental models that see cities as the inevitable products of rural settlement and an important landmark in the development of civilization. Thus, long-standing ideas like the re-emergence of cities in the early Middle Byzantine era echo modern realities or ideas that the re-birth of cities ushered Byzantine civilization back onto the track to civilization. She demonstrates that the various forms of Byzantine settlement (whether the problematic polis, the enigmatic kastron, or the diverse places designated as episcopal sees, villages, towns, or diverse settlements) barely coincide with modern ideas of settlement. In fact, she makes the persuasive case that many Byzantine settlement "types" (particularly the problematic kastron) occupy hybrid "third spaces" within the landscape. They are not transitional, or a point within a linear development toward a more recognizable space, but rather places that sit outside of our standard typologies of habitation and offer profoundly destabilizing features both in our understanding of the Byzantine landscape and perhaps the Byzantine landscape itself. The hybrid, third-space of Byzantine settlement represents perplexing combinations (mash-ups?) of places in the continuum between rural and urban. For example, she argues that the seat of the Byzantine Bishop of Acheloos might correspond to a region stretched along the river rather than particular "urbanized" or nucleated space. This actual cathedral of the bishop would have shifted through time and depending on various contingencies until it eventually became tied to a settlement with a sufficient economic and political investment to maintain the see. She also points out that so-called "islands of refuge" might also benefit from more open-ended interpretative models. Here her work parallels ideas offered by Tim Gregory when she noted that the function of an island of refuge might not be stable through time. In fact, at some times, these island settlements might have functioned as economic overflow whereas later - perhaps during the Byzantine period - the topography and location of the islands dictated their suitability for certain kinds of settlement practices that had little to do with immediate threats. She proposed that they represent a maritime response to the kind of topographic choices typical of inland settlements (hill tops, easily defended peninsulas, et c.). These choices emerged as part of new ideas of settlement space in the Byzantine era and were not tied exclusively to immediate dangers of invasions or general insecurity, but had aesthetic, demographic, economic, and even political motivations For the islands, this combination of explanations could explain the significant economic investment in these places - probably tied to

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their easy access to maritime routes through the area - as well as the signs of sustained habitation and monumental religious architecture despite the harsh environments and absence of natural resources on these slivers of land. Elsewhere in her work she notes that part of the difficulty in understanding Byzantine settlement is that in some cases the fabric of Byzantine settlement is not well preserved in the archaeological record. Putting aside persistent difficulties identifying locally produced Byzantine pottery in both excavated and surface conditions, Veikou ponders various other scenarios. In fact, she suggests that some Byzantine settlements might have been largely wooden (and we all know that tile roofs on wooden houses are the first things to be salvaged and could leave almost no trace). She hypothesized this to explain the presence of Early Christian churches with extensive burials made in the Byzantine period, but without any clear evidence of Byzantine settlement. She suggests that some kinds of Byzantine settlement could be quite ephemeral and leave little for a survey archaeologist to identify on the surface. These buildings then were far from being isolated, but rather stand as the permanent evidence for fleeting local settlements in a shifting and fluid Byzantine landscape. (I suspect, of course, that Early Christian churches remained as places in the landscape whether surrounded by local settlement or not. In fact, hagiography has shown that these buildings attracted local pilgrimages, hermits, and hunting parties looking for shelter in the "wilderness". Their suitability as places for burial may have, in this content, be tied to their permanence in the landscape and Byzantine desire the embed memory of the deceased in a sacred (and relatively unchanging) landscape.) My disagreements with particular interpretations aside, these three articles (and the apparently forthcoming book) offer some substantial food for thought. While none of her arguments diverge completely from prevailing trends in understanding Byzantine landscapes (and the influence of Archie Dunn's work is particular visible in some of her arguments and that is a good thing!), she does provide some vital tools for theorizing the Byzantine landscape outside of modern conceptions of settlement patterns and their "development" through time. And this is a timely and exceedingly useful thing.

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<title>The Substance of the Syllabus</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/528/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:47:32 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1092</guid> I've been <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/10/20/thinking-aboutcollaboration-and-digital-history-in-practice/">thinking about how I run a digital history practicum lately</a> and considering how my experiences in this laboratory course can inform how I teach in more traditional courses. Recently I received <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/thinking-about-collaboration-anddigital-history-in-practice/">a comment on a post</a> that I cross-posted with my own blog, regarding my decisions to go without a syllabus in my digital history practicum. The well-meaning commenter seemed appalled that I did not have a syllabus and went so far to insist that I "owed the students" a syllabus. This got me thinking.<br /><br />It's not that I didn't think about making a syllabus or couldn't be bothered to do it for this class. Instead, I decided that the course was not a traditional course and the goals associated with the course divided evenly between learning by practice and a well-defined goal independent of the learning process. The course had as a client the Chester Fritz Library and the success of the course dependent in part on the success in putting together a digital history collection and various online exhibits for the library. <br /><br />So at the start of the class, instead of circulating a syllabus, the class of four graduate students met and discussed the various expectations and deadlines for various parts of our project. As a result of this discussion, the class itself created an informal syllabus. Since then, we have mostly held to the various deadlines, although I am not convinced that we did as well with the various expectations that involved parties had for the class. <br /><br />I will admit that this course is a unique case, the students are almost all graduate students and advanced graduate students at that. We met informally and cultivated a flexible, collegial atmosphere rather than one informed by the traditional teacher - student dyad of authority. <br /><br />I had lunch last week with my fellow Teaching Thursday editor, Mick Beltz. Over some sandwiches we discussed <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/teaching-tuesday-syllabus-ascontract/">the tendency toward contractual understandings of syllabi</a> among students and the rise of the "student as customer" mentality. We speculated about a slippery slope where the student as customer arrives in our classroom expecting a precise definition of what it is that they will learn, how much better it will make them, and what the eventual value of this knowledge will be on future earnings and happiness. The quantitative and qualitative character of the imparted knowledge is girded about by a contractual syllabus and a series of rigid rubrics and standardized assessment methods that track the students' progress through a series of environments arranged like a decentralized assembly line designed to produce a perfected person, a qualified employee, and a happy customer. While we all agree that some parts of this model are inevitable or even intrinsic in how higher education has been conceptualized in the US, the reality of this increasingly commodified view of the educational experience is depressing and limits our ability to adapt to a dynamic classroom environment, disrupt the student-teach dyad, and challenge authority.<br /><br />In fact, as a result of our conversation, I began to wonder whether the syllabus does more to create the contractual and consumerist attitude by students toward their education than almost anything else. It immediately places the faculty member in the position of someone who owes the students something. I always imagine the syllabus as a document that basically tells the students that I have something distinct and material to impart and sets their expectations of my performance. Like a contract with a local company, the student is put in the position of making sure that I deliver on the goods that my syllabus/contract promised. <br /><br />It wasn't until my conversations with Mick, that I remembered my first experiment with unconventional syllabus writing. In my Latin 202 course last semester, I wrote a one page syllabus with some vague learning goals. (Something along the lines of "Learn Latin gooder" or "to engooden your knowledge of the Latin language.") I did this because I was not entirely confident with the level of preparation the

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students had or my own abilities to "engooden" their Latin. Over the course of the class, we discussed various possible assignments re-arranged the value of various successful and failed assessment activities, and established together expectations of weekly work. This was successful (mostly) because it created an environment where we could adapt the class continuously to our performance. I remember being encouraged by discovering that <a href="http://cgi.stanford.edu/~deptctl/tomprof/posting.php?ID=834">I am not the only one who approached my classes in this way</a>.<br /><br />For my digital history practicum, I anticipated that advanced graduate students might see the syllabus as redundant and perhaps condescending. The goals of the course came as much from our conversations with our "client" (the library) as from what the students wanted or what I expected them to learn. In other words, the syllabus became redundant in an environment where the students knew that they had to learn to complete a task.<br /><br />This kind of environment, of course, simulates life. As the students in the class look ahead to writing their dissertations, they will likely discover that this process does not come with a syllabus. Moreover, when they write their first scholarly articles, there are no deadlines, learning goals, assessments, or rubrics that constrain what they do or document what they learn. Even outside of the comfy confines of the academy, the students will inevitably discover that life does not offer syllabi. Success, happiness, and fulfillment, do not come by fulfilling the obligations set out on a sheet of paper. Do syllabi do more harm than good? <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Cross-posted to Teaching Thursday</a> .

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/friday-varia-and-quickhits-22/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:12:29 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1095</guid> It's a crisp Friday here in North Dakotaland, but a good day to hang out on the lap top and produce some varia and quick hits... I just wish there was some good news coming out of Greece these days, <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/164344/greece-spins-out-control?rel=emailNation">rather than stories like this</a> (via Dimitri Nakassis). <a href="http://und.edu/features/2011/10/cyprus-research.cfm">For those of you who don't know, check out the homepage love for this years Cyprus Research Fund lecture, Kostis Kourelis</a>. His talk is Monday, November 14th at 4 pm in the East Asia Room. <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2011/11/the_old_fashioned_a_complete_history_and_gui de_to_this_classic_c.html">The history of the Old-Fashioned</a>. I displayed my ignorance the other night not even knowing what an Old-Fashioned glass looked like. (via Matt Mazur). <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Teaching Thursday</a>. <a href="http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/charles-bukowski-william-burroughs-and-thecomputer/">Bukowski really liked his Macintosh</a>. <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/265363123/willard-asylum-suitcasedocumentation">This is a great Kickstarter project designed to document suitcases left behind at the Willard Psychiatric Center in upstate New York</a>. It is obviously archaeological. <a href="http://moneyland.time.com/2011/09/13/the-20-colleges-with-the-most-and-least-studentdebt/#1-university-of-north-dakota">There is more to this story than meets the eye</a>. UND students might have the most debt on graduation but this is not a product of UND's cost, but rules that make it more difficult for farming families to get financial aide and the high cost of fees associated with the College of Airplane Flying. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/gwar-guitarist-cory-smoot-founddead-on-tour-bus-as-band-prepared-to-cross-intocanada/2011/11/03/gIQAehzfjM_story.html">Gwar's Flattus Maximus R.I.P</a>. <a href="http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2011/10/15/otsego-studies-historic-wright-co-house/">How did I miss another 15 minutes of fame from Richard Rothaus</a>? This is how you have fun with an old house (living in one is less fun). For someone who purports to support conservative values, <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/11/01/deciphering_the_sad_sack_story_of_a_classical_ studies_scholar">ole Rush Limbaugh is pretty unsympathetic</a> to the study of Classics - the most traditional and conservative field in the academy. <a href="http://occupyarchive.org/">This is a nice effort to collect the story of the "Occupy" movement</a>. It would be interesting to know how they are archiving <a href="http://www.facebook.com/groups/264183200285110/">the social media component</a> of this movement. <a href="http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2011/10/jamestown-church-wherepocahontaswas.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Feed:+TheArchae ologyNewsNetwork+(The+Archaeology+News+Network)">An old church at Jamestown</a>. <a href="http://www.caravanmagazine.in/Story/1167/Mr-Tendulkar-s-Neighbourhood.html">Mr. Tendulkar's house</a>. <a href="http://firstrunfeatures.com/eames/">Documentary on Mr. and Mrs. Eames</a>.

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<a href="http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/requiem-lass/">More on Patti Smith</a>. What I'm reading: K. Fitzpatrick, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/planned-obsolescencepublishing-technology-and-the-future-of-the-academy/oclc/710019002">Planned Obsolescence: Publishing Technology and the Future of the Academy</a> . (New York 2011). What I'm listening to: Frightened Rabbit, The Midnight Organ Fight , Hunters and Collectors, Human Frailty . </ul> My latest tour vehicle: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="OnTour.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/ontour.jpg" border="0" alt="OnTour" width="450" height="353" />

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<title>Working Group in Digital and New Media Annual Report</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/working-group-indigital-and-new-media-annual-report/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:56:54 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1097</guid> People who read this blog know that I have a super abundance of ideas. In fact, I have a category for ideas (it's my idea box). <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/a-proposal/">My idea for offering massive open online courses here at the University of North Dakota </a> did not come to pass. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/a-proposal-for-a-low-cost-teachingfellows-program/">My scheme for a "teaching sabbatical" </a>where faculty are released from other responsibilities to just focus on teaching vanished into the ether. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/preserving-neighborhoods-throughdocumenting-their-history/">My plan for block-by-block local history</a> may be stillborn. There is <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/fragments-of-a-brief-a-new-mediaportal-for-archaeologists/">no new media portal</a> for archaeologists (yet). <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/archaeology-and-man-camps-inwestern-north-dakota/">Archaeology of North Dakota man-camps</a> is simmering (and the grant writing is underway), so it still has some life to it. Sometimes, everyone once-in-a-while, an idea that I helped to cultivate does come to fruition. This past week saw the publication of our Working Group in Digital and New Media 2011 Annual Report. The report documents the project undertaken by a group of faculty here at UND in conjunction with the Working Group in Digital and New Media. This is the second fully functioning year of the Working Group's existence. The Working Group received an initial infusion of cash based on <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/digital-humanities-white-paperat-the-university-of-north-dakota/">a White Paper</a> submitted to the University President in response to a call for new collaborative ideas on campus. Since that time, the Working Group has receive no additional funding from the University, but has continued to provide space for and to foster innovation and collaboration in the digital realm. So check out the report below. I prepared the text (based on small reports from the various contributing faculty) and <a href="http://joeljonientz.com/">Joel Jonientz</a> prepared the design: [scribd id=71916928 key=key-n46u0lss34w9cfe76v1 mode=list] For <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/40227454/WGDNM-Annual-Report">the 2010 annual report go here</a>.

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<title>Planned Obsolescence</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/plannedobsolescence/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:12:26 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1099</guid> This weekend, I read over Kathleen Fitzpatrick's <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/planned-obsolescence-publishing-technology-and-the-future-ofthe-academy/oclc/710019002">Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy</a> (NYU 2011). The book does pretty much what the title says. It explores the impact of technology on academic publishing and the role it plays in transforming academic discourse (and, potentially, university life). The book provides a nice overview of recent innovations in the area of peer review (including open peer review), challenges to the idea of authorship and texts, as well as some considerations of preservation in the digital age. A more speculative chapter considers the future of university presses in light of the changes outlines in the first four chapters. While the book does not necessarily say anything novel for people who are familiar with the basic structure of the debates on digital publishing and academic, the book is clear about the interdependence between professional standards and the health, vitality, and relevance of academic publishing. In general, Fitzpatrick views scholarly publishing as divided between producers and consumers, and this is clearly the case. Consumers represent the libraries, academic departments (hiring promotion, and tenure committees), and other scholars. Producers are the various scholars who rely upon academic work to promote their ideas and, ultimately, their careers. Of course, producer and consumer can switch positions throughout their careers as producers of academic works typically serve to evaluate the academic work of their peers. At the same time, in this model, the decisions (and perhaps even the responsibilities) to accommodate the transformations in the publishing world appear to rest squarely on the shoulders of the various consumers of academic texts. The reality is, of course, that some of the willingness to recognize the value of digital texts of various kinds - whether they are blogs, electronic journals (or books), or other more dynamic and interactive kinds of texts - has to come from scholars who are producing scholarly works as well. In other words, scholars have to recognize in a critical way the value of digital texts for their own work. To explore this idea a bit more deeply, I decided to look at Fitzpatrick's bibliography and reflect on how much of her book drew upon digital texts of various kinds. My study was pretty unscientific, but I tried to be consistent. I created a spreadsheet of the 350+ publications cited in her bibliography. Then, I separated works in her bibliography that were "primary sources" such as an "About" page for a web service, reports from publishers, or a general address for a blog. These represented about 18% of her bibliography. From the group of "secondary sources" (ranging from traditional books and articles, to blog posts, digital articles, ebooks, or even comments on blog posts), I also culled out "popular" sources - like articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education , Time , or the New York Times that mostly served as primary sources but also contributed to her arguments in various ways. These were almost entirely digital in form. So here are the digits from the academic works: 53% were cited in paper form, and 51% of these were books and 49% were articles. 47% of her academic citations were in digital form. 4.5% were digital books of various forms, 35.7% were articles published digitally, 38.4% were blog posts, and 21.4% were comments on blog posts or on manuscripts in <a href="http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/">CommentPress</a>. The average age of a paper citation was 12.2 years old; the average age of a digital citation was 4.5 years. The point of this little statistical exercise was to suggest that even scholars agnostic toward digital publishing will like come to accept the new forms and media as quality academic works come to engage and rely on digital publications. The producers of both traditional works and digital works are consumers of digital works as well.

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<title>A Little More on Some Byzantine Pottery from the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/a-little-more-on-somebyzantine-pottery-from-the-eastern-korinthia-archaeological-survey/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:17:40 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1101</guid> David Pettegrew and I continue to analyze the Byzantine pottery from the Eastern Corinthia Survey for a short discussion of intensive survey and Byzantine archaeology (see also: <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/sampling-the-byzantinelandscape/">Sampling the Byzantine Landscape</a> and <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/corinths-byzantinecountryside/">Corinth's Byzantine Countryside</a>). This past week, I did a RBHS (Rim, Base, Handle, Sherd) analysis of the Byzantine sherds from the survey assemblage. This amounts to looking at the number of rims, handles, bases, and body sherds in the assemblage collected from the survey area. In excavation RBHS analyses often contributes to determine how many complete vessels may have existed in a particular space. In survey, however, the purpose of this kind of analysis is more frequently to detect biases in a project's sampling strategy. If a project, for example, only collects rims or handles of certain types of vessels, it would suggest that they were not able to identify and collect body sherds effectively in survey units. The opposite can be true as well: vessels with easy to identify surface treatments are easier to identify as body sherds. Since there tend to be more body sherds than rims, bases, or handles, artifact types with easy to identify body sherds tend to be more visible in the landscape and this can, <a href="http://corinthianmatters.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/pettegrewoffprint.pdf">as Pettegrew has shown (pdf)</a>, create problematic perspectives on the function and chronology of human activity in the landscape. This analysis showed that 53% of the pottery of Byzantine date was body sherds. Rims, bases, and handles, accounted for between 18% and 13%. The large number of body sherds assigned Byzantine dates led me to look more closely at these artifacts to determine whether we were more effective in identifying particular types of pottery than others. The vast majority of these body sherds were fine and medium course wares. This complements the result that the vast majority of sherds were either fine or medium coarse wares. 40% of the finds were medium coarse "utility" wares and 45% of the artifacts were fine wares. Of the fine wares, almost all (88%) preserved some glaze, paint, or slip that would have appeared visually distinct both to field walkers and to our ceramicists. 43% of all the fine ware collected were glazed body sherds. Guy Sanders has suggested that the fragility of some slips on Byzantine wares, in fact, contributed to their invisibility in the landscape. The 40% of the Byzantine material identified as medium coarse ware from the survey. The most common types found were rather generic body sherds in assigned a Byzantine date on the basis of their fabrics (52%) or surface treatment. Half of the medium coarse ware body sherds had grooves, combing, or other distinctive surface treatments. The other medium coarse utility wares identified by the survey stood out because of diagnostic handles from vessels like Late Medieval Smyrna Jar Amphora, smaller water jars and the body and rim sherds of later glazed utility wares. Semi-fine wares, amphoras, and kitchen/cooking wares were unusual and coarse wares absent entirely. The absence of these types of pottery likely demonstrates the limits of our knowledge of Byzantine local wares rather than evidence for strangely depleted use assemblages in the Corinthian countryside. Coarse local utility and kitchen wares and undiagnostic amphora sherds are particularly difficult to identify without stratigraphy. What our analysis tells us is that we were successful in identifying fine and medium coarse wares on the basis of their surface treatments and to some extent the fabrics. This, of course does not tell us much about the artifacts that we did not identify in the landscape, but it indicates we were able to sample at least some artifacts on the basis of fabric alone rather than just as a result of shape, glaze, or surface

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treatments. Our ability to recognize diverse types of Byzantine pottery on the surface has created a landscape populated with a diverse assemblage of Byzantine pottery representing a wide range of past activities that took place in the Byzantine countryside. Cross-posted to <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Corinthian Matters</a> <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">.</a>

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<title>Monumentality in the Archaeological Record</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/monumentality-in-thearchaeological-record/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:49:57 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1106</guid> I've been invited to participate in the Institute for European and Monumental Archaeology's <a href="http://www.iema.buffalo.edu/conference/">Fifth Visiting Scholars Conference in May</a>. Its theme is Approaching Monumentality in the Archaeological Record. My tentative paper title is "Patronage and Reception in the Monumental Architecture of Early Christian Greece. Here's a rough abstract: The late 5th and 6th century AD saw a massive investment in Early Christian architecture throughout Greece. While these buildings are almost completely absent from the textual record of this time, there is nevertheless sufficient archaeological evidence to argue that this architecture adopted aspects of domestic and public buildings, absorbed significant resources from the community, and helped to fortify the position of a new, imperially-backed, ecclesiastical elite. In effect, Early Christian architecture in Greece presented a new medium for the articulation of social, religious, and economic power. To do this, basilica style Christian churches both cooped the traditional forms of "monumental" ancient architecture, while at the same time, subverting and transforming the expectation of this medium. The nature and novelty of Early Christian architecture in Greece represents an intriguing way both to understand the social transformations associated with the so-called end of antiquity and to critique monumental architecture more broadly. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="2012 Monumentality Conference Poster.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/2012-monumentalityconference-poster.jpg" border="0" alt="2012 Monumentality Conference Poster" width="450" height="695" />

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<title>Friday Varia and Quick Hits</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/friday-varia-and-quickhits-23/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:04:03 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1110</guid> It's a work from home Friday from in lovely North Dakotaland. I've set up my home office at long last and despite it being 40 degrees (F) this morning, I have managed to get it warm enough to write this mornings quick hits and varia. Some music to brighten your morning: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF5WYaoWXI4">Some kind of "bizarre Chinese old person choir" singing Lady Gaga</a>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLF46JKkCNg">An amazing Pakistani group playing Brubeck's Take 5.</a> <a href="http://beta.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/TO.042CD.html">El Tren Fantasma</a> - Sounds of a train trip across Mexico. </ul> <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/south-africa-v-australia2011/engine/current/match/514029.html">This was brutal</a>, but <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/540084.html">it's nice to see that people haven't lost their sense of humor over it</a>. More music related. <a href="http://www.stereostack.com/">A stack of stereo banners</a>. I want the New Archaeology of the Mediterranean World to broadcast in STEREO. Is taking attendance worth it? <a href="http://teachingthursday.org/">Think about it on Teaching Thursday</a>. <a href="http://und.edu/calendar/index.php/view/event/detail/6866/veterans-day-nationalremembrance-day-roll-call">One of our history majors coordinated the National Roll Call on UND's campus</a>. Why to go Mr. Pegg. <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/our-universities-why-are-theyfailing/">This is a vaguely depressing summary of recent scholarship on the state of American universities</a>. <a href="http://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/weekly_features/11_10_21_Bnai_Israel_Synagogue.htm">The Grand Forks B'nai Isreal Synagogue an the Montefiore Cemetery </a>earned a spot in the National Register of Historic Places. <a href="http://www.nd002.urj.net/history_of_the_synagogue.htm">For more on the history of the synagogue go here</a>. Along similar lines, <a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/st_essay_wikipediawonders/">people have nominated Wikipedia for a place on the UNESCO World Heritage list</a>. Remember the <a href="http://und.edu/features/2011/10/cyprus-research.cfm">2011 Cyprus Research Fund lecture </a>is Monday at 4 pm on the beautiful University of North Dakota's campus in the elegant East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz library. A reception kindly provided by the Department of History will follow. <a href="http://annyas.com/chevrolet-speedometer-design/">Some old speedometer designs from Chevrolets</a> (which made appearances in other GM cars). <a href="http://www.abandonedjourney.com/abandoned-skyscraper-sathorn-unique-fifty-levels-ofawesome">More abandonment porn</a>. This time it is an abandoned building in Bangkok. (via <a href="http://boingboing.net/2011/06/16/urban-infiltrators-e.html">Boing Boing</a>) Even more: <a href="http://gothamist.com/2011/11/07/photos.php">the abandoned train platform

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beneath the Waldorf-Astoria</a>. <a href="http://vimeo.com/31158841">A murmuration on video</a>. Pretty amazing. (via Richard Rothaus) Pretty cool thoughts on the McRib Sandwich. Some great stuff from <a href="http://www.whitewashedtomb.com/?p=77">Whitewashed Tomb</a> especially when <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/2011/11/10/did-a-tsunami-destroy-lechaionharbor/">Mr. Whitewash himself teamed up with Corinthian Matters to think about tsunamis and the harbor at Lechaion in the Corinthia</a>. <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Some amazing photographs and analysis at Objects-BuildingsSituations</a>. What I'm reading: James C. Scott, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/art-of-not-being-governedan-anarchist-history-of-upland-southeast-asia/oclc/301948134">The Art of Not Being Governed</a> . Yale 2009. What I'm listening to: Talk Talk, Laughing Stock; Suuns, Zeroes QC </ul> Snow: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="FirstSnow.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/firstsnow.jpg" border="0" alt="FirstSnow" width="450" height="269" /> My newest tour vehicle: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camper3.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/camper3.jpg" border="0" alt="Camper3" width="450" height="269" />

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<title>Byzantium and the Avant Garde Streamed LIVE on the Web</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/byzantium-and-theavant-garde-streamed-live-on-the-web/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:19:19 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1116</guid> As I am sure you all know, today is the 2011 Cyprus Research Fund Lecture. It will be delivered by Prof. Kostis Kourelis of Franklin and Marshall College at 4 pm (CST) on the beautiful University of North Dakotas campus in the elegant East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz library. His talk is on <a href="http://und.edu/features/2011/10/cyprus-research.cfm">Byzantium and the Avant Garde: American Excavations in Corinth, ca. 1930</a>. But, WAIT, you say you're not from the Grand Forks Metropolitan Area and can't make it to the Cyprus Research Fund in person? We have you covered, of course, with our very own live stream. <a href="https://conted.breeze.und.nodak.edu/cyprus/">To get access to the live stream by clicking here</a>.

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<title>Byzantium and the Avant Garde Wrap Up</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/byzantium-and-theavant-garde-wrap-up/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:13:32 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1118</guid> Just a quick post today as I continue my hosting duties for Kostis Kourelis. I did, however, want to provide a quick report on his talk. We had a great turn out for the talk yesterday with over 40 people from all across campus in attendance. We also have 15 people logged into the online feed which was pretty exciting. Special thanks go to our Center for Instructional and Learning Technologies who provided the live stream. For anyone who missed the talk, <a href="https://conted.breeze.und.nodak.edu/p48402462/">you can watch a recording of the live feed here</a>. For those of you who want to read more about Kostis' work, I encourage you to become a regular visitor to his blog <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Objects-Buildings-Situations</a>. If you'd like to check out some of his longer work in pre-publications, <a href="http://www.scribd.com/kkourelis">Kostis does post occasionally to a Scribd page here</a>. Finally, thank you to all the Phi Alpha Theta (History honor society) students who helped set up and break down the little reception after the talk. Thanks to the Department of History for providing the lovely reception and to the International Studies Program for helping with publicity. And, a very special thanks to all of our donors who have helped the Cyprus Research Fund And we're hard at work on our next event, hopefully this Spring!

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<title>A Mid-sized Site in Sicily</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/a-mid-sized-site-insicily/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:45:41 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1120</guid> This past week, I was all excited to get my annual copy of the <a href="http://www.journalofromanarch.com/">Journal of Roman Archaeology</a> . So far, the most exciting article in this year's volume is the brief report by K. Bowes, M. Ghisleni, G. Francesco La Torre, and E. Vaccaro on the site of Sofiana/ mansio Philosophiana in the hinterland of the Piazza Armerina. The report describes recent work by a combined American and Italian team on the site of Sofiana. The site is located some 10 km south of the famous 4th century Piazza Armerina, and scholars have generally understood it to be some kind of service village or statio for the larger villa and located on its estate. Excavation at the site in the 1980s and 1990s produced a domus, a bath, some cemeteries, and a later Christian basilica dating from the 1st to 4th centuries or so. The site extends for around 15 - 25 ha (at least according to the maps provided), and this would place it between the small sites like isolated farms and larger urbanized sites in the Mediterranean basin. Work at the site, however, identified at least two grid orientations suggesting that the site did have some features - like a planned road system - typically associated with urban sites. The Italian-American team sought, in part, to expand the scale of work at Sofiana to understand the exact nature of places which would appear to share features of both rural and urban settlements and attempt to determine its function in the Sicilian landscape. To do this they used both intensive pedestrian survey and magnetometry to document surface and subsurface remains. The relatively compact area of the site allowed the team to employ a rather intense form of pedestrian survey. The gridded the site into 10 x 10 squares in their GIS and then surveyed one of every three grid squares for a 30% sample. The teams collected all artifacts from the surveyed units to avoid biases associated with collecting diagnostic sherds (or chronotypes!). They then plotted period specific artifact densities in their GIS using Kernel Density Estimates (KDE) to smooth their results across the entire site. We followed similar methods of surveying a slightly larger site at Pyla- Koutsopetria on Cyprus; we opted for 20% sample based on 40 x 40 squares and collected chronotype samples from each grid square. Both surveys functioned at a similar resolution but my guess is that the Sofiana project produced far more pottery. The Sofiana project's use of KDE smoothing produced convincing and easy to understand maps for each period at their site. For a 2 km range beyond the core site, the Sofiana project conducted a more traditional, regional level intensive pedestrian survey over 280 ha. Field walkers were spaced 8 m apart except when visibility was particular poor then they spaced their walkers at 5 m spacing. We gently hinted at this technique in a <a href="http://www.equinoxjournals.com/JMA/article/view/2435">2006 article in the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology </a>and while they don't seem to know about our work, it was great to see this method implemented. They appeared to have sampled artifacts on the basis of "on-site" and "offsite" designations. As this is a preliminary report, they did not provide more information on their more regional survey, but I'd be curious to understand how they sampled for chronology and function. They complemented their work at Sofiana with a magnetometry survey and some 32 test pits. The magnetometry and test pits demonstrated that some basic grid orientation seemed to exist at the site and some production of building material (particularly kilns for tiles). They also provide a smoothed chronological profile for the site using Individual Weighted Means method which is a form of aoristic analysis (or vice versa, I'm not entirely sure). There is an obvious peak in activity at the site in the 4th through 6th centuries covering an area of 21 ha. The site continues substantially even later. This preliminary report provide only a hint as to what the authors think this site represents in the Late Roman countryside. On the one hand, the site is smaller than most of the small town on Sicily. On the other hand, the orientation and presence of at least some feature expected of urban areas (which tended to have administrative functions in the Roman world) place this site in the realm of the rural vicus ,

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which could have some urban features but lacked clearly defined administrative roles in the Late Roman state. Such vici are good examples of the kind of third spaces recently discussed by <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/more-on-byzantine-settlement/">Myrto Veikou for Byzantine settlement in Greece</a>. Large rural "agglomerations" like Sophiana with production, grid planning, and imported ceramics defy our understandings of the rural/urban distinction in the ancient world and interrupt any simple cultural, economic, or social model grounded in the simply in the administrative structure of the Late Roman state. Categories like statio - or road side settlements - add even more complexity to how we imagine the ancient world. These sites can be rural (in fact, they are typically situated between urban sites), but they also can enjoy urban features. The importance of Sicily to grain production toward the end of the Late Antiquity (especially after the fall of Egypt) might help us understand the continued prosperity of the site of Sophiana and its continued significance into the 7th century. While I look forward to the final report on the work at this site, the preliminary report highlights so many of the crucial issues facing our understanding of the Late Roman countryside and settlement more broadly. As intensive survey allows us to document rigorously more and more rural space the old distinction between urban and rural breaks down offering new perspectives on the production of culture and society in the Late Antique world.

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<title>The Process of Christianization in the Greek Islands</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/the-process-ofchristianization-in-the-greek-islands/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:20:45 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1124</guid> A number of people have sent along information regarding Georgios Deligiannakis' talk at Princeton tomorrow. It's titled: <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/hellenic/images/ScannedFlyers/Deligiannakis11-11.pdf">Process of Christianization: Pagans, Christians, and Jews in an Island Landscape (pdf)</a>. Deligianakis' work on the islands (particularly the Dodecanese) is fairly well-known and interesting, so it's a shame that I won't be able to hear his talk. I am particularly interested in his discussion (<a href="http://www.academia.edu/attachments/5111505/download_file"> Byzantion 78 (2008), 142157</a>) of a individual named Anastasios who dedicated a statue base to Heracles and a statue depicting (apparently) the sleeping Maron ( Od . 9.196-197) some time perhaps in the 5th century on the island of Rhodes. The former text received a graffiti of KE (an abbreviation for a short prayer: "Lord, help") and a crude cross. In contrast, the latter text featured a well-wrought cross at its start. Both texts are classicizing not only in their theme but in the language and meter. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="RhodesAnastasios1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/rhodesanastasios1.jpg" border="0" alt="RhodesAnastasios1" width="450" height="167" /> <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="RhodesAnastasios2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/rhodesanastasios2.jpg" border="0" alt="RhodesAnastasios2" width="450" height="114" /> While such classicizing inscriptions are not particularly rare in the Late Antique Greek world, these two texts make up a conspicuous pair. They obviously served to celebrate the dedication of statues with pagan themes. Moreover, the first text featured a sufficiently ambivalent Christianity to warrant a later intervention. The latter is Christianized more formally with the inclusion of the small cross, but nevertheless, escapes easy Christian interpretation. These two inscriptions, then, evidence the persistent importance of Classical themes in elite self-representation and complement texts like Nonnos Dionysiaca which tells the story of Dionysos journey to the East in Homeric meter and mosaic floors from across the Eastern Mediterranean that include scenes with conspicuously pagan pedigrees. These two inscriptions form a strange complement to an inscription from Ikaria which preserve the text of a late prophesy of Apollo apparently derived from a text known as the Tbingen Theosophy (<a href="http://ouc.academia.edu/GeorgiosDeligiannakis/Papers/877003/Late_paganism_on_the_Aegean_i slands_and_processes_of_Christianisation_in_L._Lavan_M._Mulryan_eds._The_Archaeology_of_Late_ Antique_Paganism_Late_Antique_Archaeology_7_-_2009_Leiden_2011_311-345">discussed here</a>). The inscription preserves the response to a question to an oracle about the conversion of a temple dedicated to Rhea. In the inscription, Apollo responds to the question by saying to do "whatever is conductive to virtue and order, a single triune Good ruling on high whose imperishable Logos will be conceived in a innocent Hers will be this house. Her name is Maria." The text appears to be associated with a church of the Virgin built on the site of an earlier temple. To my mind (and I perhaps differ from Deligiannakis on these points), both the Ikarian text and the texts from Rhodes demonstrate the blurry lines between pagan practices as a manifestation of culture life and those associated with religious life. While the separation between religion and culture (itself an ambiguous and problematic term) is perhaps best seen in our modern age, it is clear that the intersection of Christianity and traditional pagan learning (paideia) in Late Antiquity demanded non-religious understandings of certain aspects of pagan thought. This practice, of course, was evident in Greek

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philosophy (particular Neoplatonism) somewhat earlier, but in that context, it would never have been as problematic as it was in a Christian context especially when the dying embers of paganism continued to glow dimly in the Late Roman world. Part of the strategy designed to complete the transition of pagan knowledge from religion to "culture" (for lack of a better word) involved the cultivation of an ambivalent hybrid space between traditional expectations of paganism and paganism as part of a historical language designed to distinguish learned (pagan and Christian) elites from their less well-educated peers. Among Christian elites - like Anastasios - references to pagan culture provided them with a idiom that existed outside of the religious power of the church; in other words, paganism provided a "secular" outlet for self-expression that escaped the growing authority of Christianity and provided space to present power independent of the church's expanding grasp. In the case of the oracular inscription, we can see what may well be a response from the Christian church which likewise sought to appropriate the language of the pagan past to validate their own position within Late Antique society. By regarding paganism as complicit in its own demise, the church sought to occupy the territory of the receding pagan religiosity. In other words, the Late Antique discourse on paganism is less about actual pagan practices and more about establishing control over neglected discursive positions without the contested space of the Late Antique elite discourse. Like the abandoned spaces of the Classical city, the church and non-ecclesiastical elites sought to carve out space from the neglected remains of the pagan past. Christianization, in this context, was less about the suppression of threatening pagan practices and more about the limits of Christianity within a traditional elite society. The crude inscribing of a prayer on Anastasios' dedication to Herakles, then, stands as a subversive effort to project Christian power.

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/18/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-11/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:41:30 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1128</guid> Not only is it a grey and dreary (and coldish) Friday, but we overslept compliments of a little local power failure. So here's some out of sync quick hits and varia. If you missed Kostis Kourelis rock-star performance on Monday, fear not. <a href="https://conted.breeze.und.nodak.edu/p48402462/">You can get the recorded version here</a>. I was messing around with Googles new citation tracking application and stumbled across <a href="http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;vid=USPATAPP9975894&amp;id=CKyP AAAAEBAJ&amp;oi=fnd&amp;printsec=abstract#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">my dad's patent</a>. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/south-africa-v-australia2011/engine/current/match/514030.html">Sort of an ambivalent day for Australian cricket</a>. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/07/best-worst-jobs-2011-leadership-careers-employmentbest_slide_9.html">Forbes ranked historian as one of the top jobs for 2011</a>. I guess I knew that a few years back <a href="http://www.larrysbar.com/">Larry's Bar in Columbus, Ohio closed</a>, but it never really sunk in. As you know, I'm developing an interest in the Bakken Oil Fields of western North Dakota. <a href="http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2011/11/north_da kotas_boom_from_space.shtml">Here they are from space</a>. <a href="http://drinkify.org/">Drinkify matches drinks to music</a>. <a href="http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/wayman/poem5.htm">This is a classic poem about missing class</a> (h/t Dimitri Nakssis). <a href="http://www.hydroshare.tv/Gonjasufi_The-9th-Inning-EP.html">Newish Gonjasufi</a>. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/us/maryland-college-students-take-to-floatingdorm.html">St. Mary's College of Maryland has students living on a cruise ship</a>. Maybe this is a solution to the western North Dakota housing crisis! (h/t Linda Hall) Check out the two papers that I co-authored at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research this weekend (<a href="http://www.asor.org./am/documents/academic_program_11.8.11.pdf">program in pdf here</a>). As my students are approaching their final papers, I still send them to Strunk and White for basic points of style. So I find the <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-StupidGrammar/25497/">annual "why Strunk and White is stupid" article</a> annoying, but probably right. A cool map that has extended the New York City street grid across the entire globe. <a href="http://extendny.com/#1138.St.7949.Ave/12">I am sitting at 7,949th Av. and 1,138th St</a>. What I'm reading: A. T. Reyes, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/archaic-cyprus-a-study-of-thetextual-and-archaeological-evidence/oclc/28505689">Archaic Cyprus: A Study of Textual and Archaeological Evidence</a> . (Oxford 1994) What I'm listening to: Atlas Sounds, Parallax; Los Campesinos!, Hello Sadness. </ul> A survey marker on the Sorlie Bridge between Grand Forks, North Dakota and East Grand Forks, Minnesota: <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="SurveyonSorlie.jpg" src="http://teachingthursday.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/surveyonsorlie.jpg" border="0" alt="SurveyonSorlie" width="358" height="600" />

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<title>Problematizing Peasants in the Corinthian Countryside</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/problematizingpeasants-in-the-corinthian-countryside/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:45:19 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1135</guid> As readers of this blog know, David Pettegrew and I are working on a paper on peasants in the Corinthian countryside. We'll give the paper at the 113th AIA/APA Joint Annual Meeting in early January in Philadelphia (or at least David will!) in <a href="http://aia.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10300&amp;action=display&amp;sid=5J">a panel organized by Kim Bowes and Cam Grey</a>. I've been mulling ideas for the last few months and posting <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/category/peasants/">various bits and pieces here</a>. Today, I thought I'd post some fragments of an introduction and a case study. It is important to note that this is a very early draft and that once David makes his contribution it is impossible that the entire paper will look quite different. He gets the final say on content, organization, and problematique , since he is actually delivering the paper. Introduction: The term peasant presents a uniquely problematic opportunity for archaeologists. The concept of a peasant derives from an understandings of the premodern economy which assumes that there must be individuals whose primary role in society is to produce of agricultural surplus to support those who are not involved in food production. In this system, peasants rarely control or owned their own land, produced little capital, and tended to approach agricultural production through a series of highlylocalized, risk-adverse, subsistence practices. In this admittedly broad definition, the peasant is a highly local manifestation of an generalized abstract category. They appear throughout the world and are central to Maxian interpretations of pre-modern economic systems. The existence, then, of peasants as a diachronic, trans-national, ready-made analytical category has exerted an understandable attraction to archaeologists. The most sophisticated study of the ancient Greek peasant is <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/risk-and-survival-in-ancient-greecereconstructing-the-rural-domestic-economy/oclc/24088070">Thomas Gallant's book, Risk and Survival in ancient Greece </a>, where he unpacks the potential for applying the peasant as an analytical category to the material culture of ancient and medieval Mediterranean. As with any analytical category, however, applying the concept of the peasant to the ancient world involves some widely recognized risks, some of which are particularly problematic in the history of ancient and modern Greece. For example, the temptation to apply diachronic, comparisons between ancient and modern peasants is particularly fraught in Greece because such comparisons have played such an important role in arguments for a persistent Greek national identity. The Greek peasant stood both outside of time as the persistent locus of Greekness, or, in a more condescending view, the persistence of rural peasant in Greece marked it out as a nation unprepared for full integration into the modern global economy. In an effort to resolve the latter view, in particular, recent archaeological work in Greece has identified the peasant - (ironically) both ancient and modern - as the dynamic creator of a "contingent countryside" and challenged any view of peasants that regarded their economic position as isolated, static, or persistent. The challenge to understanding the presence of peasants in the Corinthian landscape, then, is as much a question of the value of the peasant as an analytical category (what exactly should a peasant look like?) as a question of understanding the material culture of Greek countryside. In short, we must determine what a peasant is at the same time as we identify the remains of a particular form of economic relationships and agricultural practices in the landscape. Case Studies: To make our assumptions clear, we might begin this challenge by looking at a rural settlement called <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.und.edu/collections/show/4">Lakka Skoutara </a>in the

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southeastern corner of the Corinthia. This settlement consists of over a dozen late 19th to early 20th century Balkan style long-houses scattered about a crossroad set in a mountain hollow some 7 km east of the major village of Sophiko and 5 km west of the small harbor at Korphos. By-passed by the modern roads in the area and filled with swarms of stinging bees and biting flies, this cluster of houses is neither historically significant nor unique in the region. The material signature of the late 19th and early 20th century activities at the site includes roof tiles, some fine wares, various utility and kitchen wares, as well as evidence for the primary production of agriculture such as large built alonia (or threshing floors), numerous cisterns, and terrace walls. The terrace walls and alonia, at least one of which appears to predate the remains of the earliest visible house in the area, indicate that the grain production was the central concern for region. A small, single aisled church stands amidst the fields anchoring the place within the sacred topography of the region. Today, the valley is filled with olive trees and the rapidly expansion of pine forests has taken over terraced fields and shows the scars of resin production. Today, some of the houses serve as storage during olive harvest, rural getaways for older villagers, or stopping places for shepherds and their diminishing herds of goats; others slowly collapse. Plastic containers, metal tools and drums, and fragments of ceramics occupy a complex landscape which straddles a practices that range from modern, subsidized cash farming to various levels of engagement with the local, regional, and even global economy. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;border:0 initial initial;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/newimage.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="337" /> Interviews with several individuals who lived and worked in Lakka Skoutara reveal the contingent character of the Lakka. During times of difficulty - like World War 2 - the valley saw year around occupation. In other times, residents in the village of Sophiko resided in the valley when they worked the fields but lived most of the year in the village. The assemblages associated with activities in the village provide offer little to distinguish between seasonal and full time habitation. The long houses themselves could appear in a village or alone in the countryside. Even today, the sagging wooden roofs and splaying mud mortar walls are protected by assorted roof tiles of various dates, fabrics, places of production, and shapes. In other words, the evidence for peasants in the countryside conflates a series of past practices and reveal little in terms of the economic structures that define the category. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/newimage1.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="301" /> The problematized peasants of the modern landscape can cast a revealing shadow back on the countryside of the central Isthmus. Using similar methods to the survey of Lakka Skoutara, the survey of the central Isthmus revealed a similar cluster of activity around the so-called site of Cromna. As we have argued elsewhere, this high density scatter of pottery across the central Isthmus represents a series of overlapping clusters of activity ranging in date from the Archaic to the Late Roman period... ******** So that's where we are at the moment. We have around 1000 more words to think about the ancient peasant using the problematized model that we created for Lakka Skoutara. We've been reading our <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/peasants/oclc/23157">Eric Wolf on peasants</a> (<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/more-on-peasants/">for proof</a>) and reveling in our reading of James C. Scott (especially his brilliant <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/moral-economy-of-the-peasant-rebellion-and-subsistence-insoutheast-asia/oclc/2565934">Moral Economy of the Peasant</a> and his <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/art-of-not-being-governed-an-anarchist-history-of-uplandsoutheast-asia/oclc/301948134">The Art of Not Being Governed</a> ). How did I miss this stuff in graduate school? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US0AsCuvfF8">It has blown my mind</a>.

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<title>Some Punk Archaeology</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/some-punkarchaeology/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:12:49 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1138</guid> Somehow the popular press noticed an article published on an assemblage of graffiti associated with the punk rock band the Sex Pistols (h/t <a href="http://www.whitewashedtomb.com/">Richard Rothaus</a>). The graffiti appeared on the walls of a London flat where the Pistols lived on and off during their heyday in the late 1970s. The graffiti received somewhat idiosyncratic study by Paul Graves-Brown and John Schofield in an article in an article titled <a href="http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/085/ant0851385.htm">"The filth and the fury: 6 Denmark Street (London) and the Sex Pistols", Antiquity 85 (2011), 1385-1401</a>. Despite the potentially edgy topic, the article follows a rather traditional trajectory. The first parts of the article call for a more careful and sophisticated study of material like graffiti and the contemporary urban landscape. The article then turns to a brief study of the architecture and history of the building on Denmark Street and finally, the graffiti itself. A Beazley-esque study of the style and hands involved allowed the authors to associate more of the work with John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten). They then historicize the graffiti through appeals to the master narrative of the Pistols tumultuous career as a band. In their analysis, the graffiti largely served to illustrate the chaotic and tragic story of the band including tensions between Lydon and John Ritchie (Sid Vicious) and manager Malcolm McLaren. Despite the suggestion that documenting the material culture associated with punk could serve as a kind of anti-heritage (presumably because of the anti-establishment themes in punk rock music), the article itself is conservative in methods and conclusions. The effort made to document the history of the 17th-century Denmark St. flat was traditional heritage management at its finest and completely at odds with the iconoclastic streak in the punk ethos. The reference to the traditions of squatting associated with the punk movement showed that the authors recognized the ephemeral character of "punk settlement pattern", but their study embraced a place bound approach to the history of the band. In fact, the effort to document the graffiti left behind by the various bands who stayed at the Denmark St. flat worked against the explicit purpose of the punks in creating the graffiti. According to the article, Rotten and company made the decision to draw on the walls of the interior of the flat so it would not appear "too posh". By making the flat part of a heritage landscape, Schofield and Graves-Brown used the practices of heritage to subvert the message of punk rock by bringing out some of its internal contradictions. For example, despite the association of punk rock with practices typically reserved to the lower classes or other marginal groups in society (squatting, petty theft, threats of revolt), punk rock appealed as much to the middle classes as to any imagined working class or lower class. In fact, many of the punk rock icons themselves used punk as a means of rejecting or questioning their own middle class origins. The decoration of the Denmark Street flat with graffiti speaks to this attitude toward the middle class and the performative nature of punk's rejection of middle class sensibilities. (Yep, punk rock embraced irony. How shocking is that?) Publishing the graffiti simply continued the long-standing practice among punks of laying bare their private lives as an important context for their music. The outrageous clothing, drug use, chaotic personal and professional relationships, and unpredictable behaviors, validated punk's authenticity. By documenting the graffiti at the Denmark Street flat, the authors have worked, on the one hand, to continue this practice of making the private, public. On the other hand, they've appropriated part of the public narrative of punk rock by embedding it within the larger discourse of heritage management which has roots in middle class (if not unapologetically elite) practices. In particular, heritage management seeks to ground history in particular spaces while the punks themselves eschewed (generally) such grounding (especially public property). A true anti-heritage would resist the temptation embed the transgressive practices of punk within a

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heritage management context.

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<title>Trade and Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/trade-and-exchange-inthe-eastern-mediterranean/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:10:03 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1143</guid> Sometime in the past couple of months a Special Edition of the Bolletino di Archeologia On Line appeared with a lightly edited copy of a paper we prepared for the International Congress of Classical Archaeology in 2008. The paper is titled "Trade and Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Model from Cyprus" and considers the relationship between trade and settlement on the island during Late Antiquity. In particular, we take aim on the lingering dichotomy between urban centers and a dependent countryside by showing how a non-urban and non-rural site like PylaKoutsopetria occupied a rather extensive stretch of the Late Roman coastline and possessed a distinctive assemblage of Late Roman material. The distinctive assemblage of ceramics is particularly important because it suggests that the site had a unique relationship with patterns of Mediterranean exchange. The unique pattern of engaging larger networks of trade and exchange undermines the now dubious model of urban centers representing hubs of trade in the Roman world while outlying communities availed themselves to goods that moved through larger, regional centers. This model has justified scholarly attention to urban area which represented the centers not only of a region's economic life, but also a region's cultural life. By showing that non-urban places like Pyla-Koutsopetria had distinct economic relationships with the wider Mediterranean world, we are justifying more recent attention in the countryside. In effect, we are noting that non-urban sites had as large a role in forging economic relationships and cultural production as urban ones. [scribd id=73566193 key=key-9wtiearx33edjjcrj29 mode=list]

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<title>A Black Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/a-black-friday-quickhits-and-varia/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:35:19 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1147</guid> After a relaxing Thanksgiving, it was a bit difficult to get up and put together this week's quick hits and varia, but the blog must go on... So without further fanfare here are this week's most fascinating tidbits from my personal web... My<a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/some-punk-archaeology/"> Punk Archaeology post</a> from earlier in the week got some nice attention in the Twittersphere. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/nov/22/preserving-sex-pistolsgraffiti">Jonathan Jones offers similar, if more biting sentiments</a>. One of the coolest (pun intended) things on the web lately: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15835017">a brinicle, ice finger of death</a>. (h/t to <a href="http://www.whitewashedtomb.com/">Richard Rothaus </a>and Dimitri Nakassis). <a href="http://dornob.com/small-space-surprise-flip-down-walls-reveal-writers-cabin/">How cool is this as a writers cabin?</a> <a href="http://prickly-paradigm.com/">I love that pamphleting isn't dead</a>. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia-v-new-zealand2011/content/story/541954.html">How can Watson, Cummins, Harris, Johnson, and Marsh all be injured</a>. Don't Australian cricket players stretch? I can't help getting depressed and frustrated by<a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2011/11/21/essay-why-graduate-students-ignorewarnings-about-job-market"> articles that fixate on the futility of graduate school</a>. While I admire the caring, practical, and professional spirit of these writers, I think that they should not be allowed near graduate students on graduate programs. <a href="http://www.kareprints.com/?p=691">Famous icons</a>. <a href="http://www.youthedesigner.com/2011/11/22/30-sleek-fonts-for-your-minimalistdesign/">Some nice, free, minimalist fonts</a>. What I'm reading: T. M. Van Bueren ed., <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/communitiesdefined-by-work-life-in-western-work-camps/oclc/148156010">Communities Defined by Work: Life in Western Work Camps.</a> Historical Archaeology 26 (2002). What I'm listening to: The Antlers, Burst Apart. </ul> It was the night before Thanksgiving<br />and all through the house<br />not a creature was stirring<br />except a bloody pie thief <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="pie_thief.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/pie_thief.jpg" border="0" alt="Pie thief" width="450" height="350" />

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<title>Borders, Ethnicity, and the State in Archaic Cyprus</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/borders-ethnicity-andthe-state-in-archaic-cyprus/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:31:26 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1154</guid> Over the past three weeks I've been working on pulling together the various threads of our fieldwork at the Pyla-Koutsopetria in Cyprus for a synthetic conclusion. This will be the final chapter of our survey volume and consider the site in the broader context of settlement, politics, and the economy of both Cyprus and the wider Mediterranean world. We've already made substantial headway in analyzing our site for the Hellenistic to Late Roman period, but we've done less with the Cypriot Iron Age. I want to offer some of our initial reflections on this complex period here, albeit in a brief and tentative way. The most interesting thing about our site is that there is a some evidence for activity as early as the Cypro-Geometric period which on Cyprus dates to from around 1050 BC to around 750 BC. Our scatter of material most likely dates to the latter half of this period. The small scatter of Geometric material appears on the coastal ridge and in a few units on the coastal plain. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/newimage2.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="450" /> Things really get interesting, however, in the Archaic period (750 BC to 475 BC). At this time, it is clear that activity on the site has increased in intensity and expanded in area. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="NewImage.png" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/newimage3.png" border="0" alt="NewImage" width="450" height="450" /> Contemporary with this expansion there appeared a crazy looking statue of with the head of the god Bes and a Phoenician inscription: "this which Eshmounhillec, the sculpture, made for this lord, Rshef Sh[ed]". The statue is now in the Louvre in Paris and dates to the 7th century. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Bes Head.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/bes-head.jpg" border="0" alt="Bes Head" width="370" height="596" /> This is probably enough evidence to suggest that we have a sanctuary at our site that perhaps emerged as early as the Geometric period and continued into the Archaic age. We have found some limestone votive-style figurines that may date to the end of the Classical period indicating that the site retained a religious function throughout the Iron Age. The statue of Bes with the Phoenician inscription coincides with a period of increased Phoenician influence at the nearby urban center of Kition. In fact, the site of Kition sees consistent expansion during the Archaic period and some scholars have sought to link that to the arrival of Phoenician settlers. By the 6th century, we know that a Phoenician dynasty ruled the city of Kition and the power of the city and the continued to expand throughout the Iron Age. In this context, then, the appearance of a statue with a Phoenician dedication probably indicates that our area - which stands about 10 km from the center of ancient Kition - saw some Phoenician immigrants. The presence of this kind of monument at our site and our site's general expansion during the Cypro-Archaic period indicates a parallel between our site's growth and the expansion of the city of Kition during the Archaic period. <a href="http://uwm.academia.edu/DerekBCounts/Papers/452538/Divine_Symbols_and_Royal_Aspiratio ns_The_Master_of_Animals_in_Iron_Age_Cypriote_Religion">Derek Counts has suggested</a> that images of Bes (particularly in his guise as the Master of Animals) in the Iron Age may have had an apotropaic function and been seen as particularly appropriate for sanctuaries located at the boundaries between state. He shows sites where these images have appeared on the map below.

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<img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Master of Animals Map.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/master-of-animals-map.jpg" border="0" alt="Master of Animals Map" width="450" height="276" /> Our site is not traditionally seen as being located at the borders of the city of Kition. In fact, there is tremendous ambiguity concerning the limits of any Iron Age polity in the Archaic period. At the same time, it is clear that the location of our site represents on the last substantial embayments along the east side of Larnaka Bay. Moreover, most scholars think that the major ancient road to Salamis - the major Iron Age city to the east of Kition - would turn inland at our site and proceed to the northeast. The combination of a major road and a harbor endowed our site with some liminal qualities by the Iron Age and made it a suitable location for a statue of Bes and a sanctuary. The presence of a Phoenician inscription and a substantial votive dedication at our site may hint that the growth of our site represented an effort of the expanding city of Kition to establish authority in this strategically useful micro-region by stamping their signature on an earlier sanctuary in the area.

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<title>Some More Cool Observations on Sanctuaries around Pyla</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/some-more-coolobservations-on-sanctuaries-around-pyla/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:22:36 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1158</guid> One of the reasons that I started this blog is to share cool little things from my research for which I don't really have another outlet (other than telling my wife and friends). So here are a few more little observations about the landscape around our site at Pyla- Koutsopetria . I've spent the last few weeks, going back through some important articles on the antiquities of the Pyla region in Cyprus. Certainly the most important is <a href="http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bch_00074217_1966_num_90_1_2229">O. Masson's 1966 article, "Kypriaka" in the Bulletin de correspondence hellnique </a>. A good part of this article was dedicated to locating and describing an assemblage of Cypro-Archaic to Cypro-Classical statues discovered at a sanctuary at a site called Pyla- Stavros . This is a site at the southern edge of the Pyla village and about 1.5 km from the coast. It so happened that Sir Robert Hamilton Lang had acquired a farm in this general area and describes his efforts at running a small commercial farm in his short book, <a href="http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=gC8OAAAAQAAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp; output=reader&amp;pg=GBS.PA357"> Cyprus: its history, its present resources, and future prospects (1878)</a>. Lang is famous not only for being an art collector (and looter) as well as being financier of some renown. Lang's farm was "about 6 miles from Larnaca. It consists of about 1,000 acres of arable land, of which only sixty were what are called livadia lands, that is lands capable of producing summer crops without artificial irrigation." Masson plausibly suggests that Lang's work on the farm led to his discovery of some antiquities there which <a href="http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=x9jSLit6YzUC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;outp ut=reader&amp;pg=GBS.PA635">he describes in a contribution to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine </a>. <blockquote> Shortly after my first excavations at the temple at Dali I stumbled upon the remains of another temple, at Pyla, six miles from Larnaca. Most of its stones had been carried away for building purposes; but it yielded me a few most interesting statues, some choice heads, and a Cypriote inscription. One colossal statue of an archaic type was in beautiful preservation. I removed it to my house in Larnaca; but, as it was of great weight, and about eight feet high, I was in despair when I thought of the impossibility of my getting it out of the country. The Turkish Museum would have been enriched by it except for a fortunate incident. In June of 1871 the Austrian frigate Habsburg, carrying the flag of Admiral Millosich, anchored for a few days in the roadstead of Larnaca. The Admiral was an enthusiastic antiquarian, and we soon became close friends. He was greatly interested in my collection, and I expressed to him my regret that I had no hope of being able to get the colossal statue from the temple at Pyla out of the country. "Sell it to me," he said, "and I shall try to take it away." I was delighted, and would have given it to him willingly. As he insisted, however, upon purchasing it, we easily came to terms. After sundown he brought his pinnace to the quay opposite my house, with a lot of stalwart sailors, and a strong wooden couch with handle-bars. The couch was brought into my courtyard, which was only a few yards from the pier. The statue was placed upon the couch and covered over with a cloth. Noiselessly the sailors carried off their load, laid it in the boat, and pulled off. A custom-house watchman was standingat the head of the pier, but he did not move thinking, probably, that underneath the oloth was a drunken sailor. Next morning the frigate left, carrying off my statue. I have not heard of it since; but I hope it is still an interesting object in the Admiral's collection, somewhere near Trieste.<br /><br />The temple at Pyla gave me also some fine heads of the best Greek epoch in sculpture. Some of them are now in the Cyprian room of the British Museum. Two beautiful female

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heads passed through a strange experience. About the beginning of 1870 I sent them to a German dealer in antiquities who resided in Paris. The FrancoGerman war broke out, and all Germans had to leave Paris, which was afterwards besieged. I heard nothing of Mr Hoffman nor of my heads. But when the war was over, I learned that Mr Hoffman had escaped to London, and, like a true lover of art, had taken myheads with him. Eventually they were sold in London by auction. The British Museum bought one of them for, if my memory servesme right, about 50; the other, and finer, was bid up to more than double that price, and fell to a Frenchman who, I was told at the time, bought it as a sculptor's model. </blockquote> The "colossal" statue from Pyla is now in the museum in Vienna. Masson goes on to track down the location of these objects in the British Museum, the Louvre and even through Lang's friend L. Palma de Cesnola in the United States, and offer some observations on the character of the sanctuary. Several inscriptions suggest that it was dedicated to Apollo and prospered during the Archaic period as the colossal statue's Archaic continence would indicate. A few later statue fragments suggest that the sanctuary remained active into the Hellenistic period. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Pyla Statue.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/pyla-statue.jpg" border="0" alt="Pyla Statue" width="308" height="600" /> It seems impossible that this sanctuary near Pyla village is the same as the sanctuary that we have suspect existed near the coast at Pyla- Vigla or Pyla- Koutsopetria . The two sanctuaries in relatively close proximity give us an interesting view of the religious landscape of the region of Pyla in the Iron Age. It seems almost certain that there were settlements at the site of Ormidhia, Pyla village, and along the coast near Pyla-Koutsopetria by the 7th century if not earlier. Over the course of our fieldwork on Cyprus, my colleagues and I have often remarked on the "busy countryside" associated with the Late Antique period on the island. It might now be appropriate to discuss the busy countryside of the Cypriot Iron Age at least in our little corner of Cyprus.

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<title>More Archaeology of Man Camps: Some methodological and historical perspectives</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/more-archaeology-ofman-camps-some-methodological-and-historical-perspectives/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:53:45 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1162</guid> In my occasional free time, I've continued to do research on the archaeology of work camps and other temporary settlements associated with construction, resource extraction, or manufacturing. In particular, I've drawn heavily on the contributions to a special issue of Historical Archaeology titled <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/i25617005"> Communities Defined by Work: Life in Western Work Camps </a>(36 (2002)). These articles have helped me to focus my ideas and approaches for my own project. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/archaeology-and-man-camps-in-westernnorth-dakota/">As I have mentioned here before</a>, I am interested in doing an archaeological survey of so-called man camps associated with the Bakken Oil Fields in Western North Dakota. Unlike the projects presented in the Historical Archaeology volume, which tended to date to turn of the 20th century, the camps that I plan to study are still very much in use. While the ephemeral nature of historical work camps has often made their study difficult, an approach that documents archaeologically the ongoing use of work camps will provide a useful corrective to this difficulty. Moreover, my work will be done in collaboration with a team of anthropologists, social workers, and "traditional" archaeologists allowing our research both to draw upon a range of methodologies (oral history, collaboration with social service providers, survey archaeology) and to provide analysis for a range of contemporary (and pressing) social, anthropological, and historical concerns. There are several key themes in the recent study of the archaeology of historical work camps that can easily be ported over to the study of contemporary camps. 1. Margins. The location of work camps in marginal landscapes is a consistent feature in their development. When camps appeared in areas with established settlement, they tended to be set apart from traditional, long-term housing. More frequently, however, camps tended to be established to support work in areas with few centers of settlement. The capital needed to establish the camps and to fund the work undertaken, tended to come from established and often distant economic, political, and demographic centers. As a result, camps tended to be marginalized economically, socially, and politically and can be profitably studied using core-periphery models for how established centers projected authority, capital, and power into the periphery. Work camps in Western North Dakota, traditionally a economically and politically marginal area, clearly fit the model for how the core seeks to exploit resources located in marginal territories. 2. Structured life. As a part of the projection of core interests to the periphery, camps tended attempted (in some cases) to reproduce the social structures characteristic of the center. The architecture and organization of camps often distinguished clearly between groups who controlled production and labor. Managers and specialists had better housing that often came close to what they might expect in the center and laborers tended to have more modest dwellings that were less rigidly organized and physically substantial. In some cases, squatters camps or other even more temporary settlements would appear on the periphery of camps where individuals with fluid or poorly defined relationships to the work at the camps would live. A colleague of mine who did professional cultural resource management work on the Bakken ranges described sleeping in his truck on the work site because housing was both expensive and scarce. 3. Resistance. As much as the core attempts to project certain relationships into the periphery, there remains ample space to resist. Resistance practices in historical work camps ranged from consuming alcohol in supposedly dry camps to refusing to live in the designated camps. The most dramatic forms of resistance, of course, involve outright revolts, strikes, and other forms of physical "unrest", but there were a range of less conspicuous forms of resistance to the structures imposed from the center (and

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imposed by capital). Interestingly, some forms of resistance - binge drinking, absenteeism, work slowdowns - follow closely the methods used by early and pre-modern workers confronting the reality of capital driven labor for the first time. 4. Reuse. One of the most interesting aspects of the man camps in Western North Dakota is the reuse of housing in new ways. Apparently parts of the Olympic village from Vancouver and trailers used for Katrina refugees have found there way to the Bakken range to house workers in the oils fields. Historical period camps likewise saw the reuse of housing, structural and architectural components, and other discarded materials to expand upon the limited resources available to camp residents. These four points, for now, provide a departure for hypothesis building and method making for my field work out in the Western part of North Dakota. We are in the grant writing stage and one of the most exciting possible outcomes is that "my" team will be able to rent an RV to conduct our research out west. In other words, we'll be living in our own academic work camp, in temporary housing, and experiencing some of the same challenges as the communities that we are studying while we are studying them. Stay tuned for more on this project in the next few months. Received wisdom has that these houses set diagonal across their blocks just south of the Corinth canal were built to house the managers of the canal construction project in the 1880s. We'd walk buy these houses nearly every day on our way from Isthmia to the beach near the canal's mouth in the Saronic Gulf. Does anyone know anything more about these houses? <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Corinth Canal Camp.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/corinth-canal-camp.jpg" border="0" alt="Corinth Canal Camp" width="450" height="506" />

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<title>Teaching Thursday: Teaching Writing</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/teaching-thursdayteaching-writing/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:30:39 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1169</guid> This past semester, I've begun to reflect a bit more consistently on not just how I taught over the past 15 years, but how my students have changed. While I guess I am vaguely aware of the difference between Generation X, "millennials", and "generation y" students, I am much more in tune with the small scale changes in student practices that I see week in and out in classroom. Most of these little changes have to do with how students write. So here are the six most profound changes that I've seen in student writing over the past decade or so. None of them are earth shattering or beyond what a reasonably conscientious teacher can repair, but they all appear distinct to the current group of students. 1. The Rise of the Semicolon. When I was in college and graduate school, the semicolon seems exotic, strange, and probably obsolete. If I was going to use a strange punctuation mark, I would tend toward the double-dash. It's been years since I've seen a double dash in my students' papers. On the other hand, their papers a littered with semicolons, and most of these are used incorrectly. I don't know when the semicolon stormed back into our students' writerly consciousness, but I've started to ban it in my classes. ;-) 2. The Slow Decline of the "Undergraduate Slash". It was once common for undergraduates to avoid difficult word choice issues by deploying the renowned/infamous undergraduate slash. This mark would allow/enable students to use two words when only one was really necessary/appropriate. Over the past 5 years of so, the undergraduate slash has all but vanished from student work. This is a good thing. 3. The Stubborn Passive. I blame advertising for the persistence of the passive voice in student work. While I no longer militate against the use of the passive voice as much as I once did, I find that it is still ubiquitous in student writing. In particular, students use the passive when confronted with something unsavory in their writing. For example, it is easier for the students to say that "African Americans were killed in the South during Reconstruction" or "Germans and Japanese civilian targets were bombed during World War II". 4. Capitalization. There was a time when I would read whole stacks of student papers with only an handful of capitalization (and all of them would be things like capitalizing the word "President" when referring to the President of the Unites States or the word "During" in a book title). Today, however, I regularly see papers with dozens of capitalization errors even from decent students. It is easy for me to blame "text message culture" or the informal style of emails, but it seems to be more than that. Somewhere along the way, students have forgotten how to capitalize. 5. Colloquial Writing. When I first started teaching, I had to constantly work to convince students not to use words like "whilst" or "amongst" in their writing. Obviously, students were erring on the side of very stilted diction. Recently, students have tended to err the other way. I have received a spate of incredibly informal papers even from upper level students. Perhaps this trend fits the conventional wisdom regarding "the millennials" who had embraced less formal ways of interaction supported by the so-called "internets". 6. The Growing Purview of "However" and "Yet". Students have increasingly used these words to create compound sentences. For example: The Emperor defeated the Gauls, however, he was not as successful with the Germans. While the use and abuse of "however" is a longstanding issue in student writing and I suspect the use of it to link complete sentences in the place of "but" comes from our growing willingness to use accept it at the start of sentences. I do recognize, of course, that "however" is a conjunction (e.g. You can write however you want to write), but I do not like it being used in the place of "but". I'm sure my readers have encountered some new tendencies in student writing and I'd be curious to

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hear about them!

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-12/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:14:41 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1172</guid> It's a chilly (but not outright cold) end-of-the-semester Friday and as good a time as any for some quick hits and varia. Since a million people have Facebooked, Tweeted, and blogged it: <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/santas-tomb-is-found-off-turkey-academics-claim-tohave-found-where-st-nicholas-was-buried-david-keys-reports-1467871.html">Santa's Tomb</a>. <a href="http://www.avclub.com/twincities/articles/big-zach-talks-about-his-new-book-headspinheadsho,65900/">Minnesota Hiphop</a>. <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/10-best-commercials-2011136663">The ten best commercials of 2011</a> (h/t Susie). Two conflicting views on the utility of academic blogging <a href="http://hastac.org/blogs/ernestopriego/2011/11/23/i-smell-smoke-blogging-endangered-species">here</a> and <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/11/15/world-bank-dissemination/">here</a> (h/t <a href="http://www.whitewashedtomb.com/">Richard Rothaus</a>). <a href="http://gigaom.com/2011/11/26/10-years-gigaom/">And here are some reflections on 10 years of blogging by a real professional</a>. Some weeks it would just make sense to have Rothaus do my quick hits and varia: <a href="http://dk.filmomania.pl/j/Scale_of_Universe_In93570.swf">The Scale of the Universe</a>. A pretty cool post at<a href="http://teachingthursday.org/2011/12/01/blink-grading/"> Teaching Thursday on Blink Grading</a>. <a href="http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7289592/urban-meyer-joins-ohio-statebuckeyes-coach-1-year-hiatus-sources-say">Urban Meyer</a>. <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia-v-new-zealand2011/engine/current/match/518947.html">I guess Ricky Ponting really really really wants to play on Boxing Day</a> (and some luck never hurt). <a href="http://fathom.info/dencity/">Population infographic</a>. <a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665509/digital-archaeology-hacker-gets-2011-mac-os-to-runon-1983-computer">The other digital archaeology</a>. <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/11/wordpress-founder/">There is a little movement over at Arranged Delirium these days</a>. <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/11/beirut-then-and-now-as-seen-through-thelens-of-jamal-saidi/">Photos of Beirut then and now</a>. <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/11/wordpress-founder/">Enterprise Software Sucks</a>. This conversation is played out a million times a day at every university that proudly runs some very expensive content management system that is worse than a free blogging platform. What I'm reading: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/ethnography-as-commentary-writing-fromthe-virtual-archive/oclc/209334028">J. Fabian, Ethnography as Commentary: Writing from the Virtual Archive </a>. (Duke 2008). What I'm listening to: Ty Segall, Goodbye Bread ; We Were Promised Jetpacks, In the Pit of the Stomach . </ul>

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<title>Guest Post: Using GIS to Document Archaeological Looting</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/guest-post-using-gisto-document-archaeological-looting/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:45:38 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1178</guid> Today, I was invited to host a guest blog post from a University of North Dakota and Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project alumnus Brandon Olson who is now a Ph.D. student in archaeology at Boston University. His post is on looting, an issue that anyone who does Mediterranean archaeology has experienced and has become an issue at our site on Cyprus and on numerous sites in the Corinthia. Brandon's post discusses the use of GIS and satellite imagery to track looting at a site of Carrhae, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harran">modern Harran</a>, in Turkey. Looting has been and continues to be a direct threat to our material past. Whatever its impetus (profiteering, subsistence digging, collecting, etc.), the nefarious act typically takes place under the cover of darkness, during periods of unrest, or in far-removed areas. As such, it is difficult for interested parties who seek to deter illicit digging to identify and document damage. Whether the goal is to develop a cultural management plan, to write in support of a Memorandum of Understanding (see <a href="http://exchanges.state.gov/heritage/culprop/cyfact.html">for example</a>), or simply to raise awareness and protect a particular archaeological site, there is a need to supplement narrative description accompanied by limited visual evidence with new methods that can make the point in a more dramatic, more complete, and more compelling manner. The continued development and accessibility of high resolution satellite imagery coupled with ArcGIS provides a powerful tool to document, measure, display, and analyze looting in a meaningful way. Focusing their efforts on large tel sites in war-torn regions of the Middle East, scholars such as <a href="http://www.stonybrook.edu/anthro/staff/estone.shtml">Elizabeth Stone</a> and <a href="http://www.anthro.psu.edu/faculty_staff/hritz.shtml">Carrie Hritz</a>, among others, have used a GIS platform and high resolution imagery of varying dates to document looting over time. Their studies clearly demonstrate that in areas experiencing civil unrest, unprotected archaeological sites often fall victim to illicit digging. Here I demonstrate their technique by focusing on the ancient site of Harran in southeastern Turkey. First occupied in the third millennium BCE, the site of Harran, ancient Carrhae, has a storied past. Of the archaeological material visible today, the classical and later periods are the most prevalent. During Romes First Triumphal period, the site served as a meeting ground for a Roman army led by Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of the three triumvirs, and the Parthians. At the Battle of Carrhae, the Parthians soundly defeated the Romans and Crassus lost his life. On a visit to the area in 217, Martialis, an imperial officer, assassinated the Roman emperor Caracalla. In the middle of the eighth century, a large mosque was constructed, the remains of which are still visible today. In visiting the site in the summer of 2010, I was, above all else, struck by the condition of the walled city. Three fenced off areas protect two excavation areas and the ruins of the mosque, but hundreds of looter holes littered with broken potsherds blanket the site (Picture 1). <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Picture 1.JPG" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/picture-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Picture 1" width="400" height="600" />Picture 1 Using GeoEye imagery provided free of charge by Google Earth, I first saved a series of JPEGs at multiple scales and imported the files into ArcMAP. After rectifying the images, I began digitizing all visible looter holes within the northern half of the site. Unfortunately, GeoEye does not provide highresolution coverage for the southern half. At half-meter resolution, the satellite imagery depicts looter holes as small as 1.5 meters in diameter. In all, I identified 1,003 distinct areas of illicit digging. Map 1 depicts the GeoEYE imagery before digitization, note the small circular holes indicative of illicit digging, while Map 2 includes the digitization. The maps help identify the scope, range, and scale of looting activities. The densest activity occurs just east of a small cluster of houses situated on the

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western edge of the site. <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Map 1.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/map-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Map 1" width="450" height="347" />Map 1 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Map 2.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/map-2.jpg" border="0" alt="Map 2" width="450" height="347" />Map 2 The utilization of ArcGIS and satellite imagery is a powerful tool to document looting. Examining spatial relationships, quantifying the damage, and providing meaningful visual representation are all strengths of such an approach. The damage depicted on the Harran maps, moreover, make a specific statement: Illicit diggers actively threaten the archaeological heritage of Harran and southeastern Turkey.<br />For those who would like to use such methods for their own purposes, I provide links below to free and moderately priced high-resolution imagery. <a href="http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/NewEarthExplorer/">http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/NewEarthExplorer/ </a><br /><a href="http://digitalglobe.com/products#imagery">http://digitalglobe.com/products#imagery</a><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/earth/index.html">http://www.google.com/earth/index.html</a><br /><a href="http://gaialab.asu.edu/Jordan/">http://gaialab.asu.edu/Jordan/</a><br /><a href="http://cast.uark.edu/home/research/geomatics/photogrammetry/corona-satellite-imagery-baseddigital-archaeological-atlas-of-the-neareast.html">http://cast.uark.edu/home/research/geomatics/photogrammetry/corona-satellite-imagerybased-digital-archaeological-atlas-of-the-near-east.html</a>

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<title>Even More on Peasants</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/even-more-onpeasants/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:51:29 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1181</guid> I finally got a copy of <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0068246211000067">"Excavating the Roman Peasant I: Excavations at Pievina (GR)"</a> by M Ghisleni, . Vaccaro, and Kim Bowes in the Papers of the British School at Rome (79 (2011), 91-145). I am co-authoring a paper on peasants on a panel this January co-chaired by Kim Bowes, so my co-author and I, David Pettegrew, thought that this article might give us valuable insight into the central questions that Mediterranean archaeologists are asking about peasants. This paper documents their preliminary excavations at a rural site represented on the surface by a low density scatter of pottery. This excavation was part of a larger project designed to document site that could be associated with peasants in the Italian countryside. Their argument is that survey archaeology has not produced particularly robust assemblages of material from rural sites making it difficult to make arguments for chronology or function at site potentially related to peasant producers. By excavating a sample of rural site identified through survey, this team hopes to establish a closer relationship between surface scatters and subsurface remains, a clearer picture of the smallest class of rural settlement (&lt; .5 ha), and an understanding of peasant life in the Mediterranean basin. This is a long and substantial article, so I am only going touch on some main points. The most interesting point from the perspective of a survey archaeologist is that their excavation of a low density ("off site") scatter did produce a rural activity area. While the excavators do not provide a figure for artifact density on the surface, they did note that the scatter was predominantly 1st century BC to 1st century AD. The confirmation that a low density, offsite scatter could produce a substantial rural site fits well with David Pettegrew's arguments from way back in 2001 where he argued that contingent practices associated with rural settlement are apt to produce only ephemeral traces in surface assemblages. He goes on to suggest that we should look beyond mono-causal arguments for off site scatters (like manuring) and recognize that the surface assemblage most likely represented a wide range of relatively short term activities, diverse depositional practices, and site life-cycles. The structures revealed at Pievina produced just that kind of site. They revealed a number of structures ranging from a kiln probably for tile production, a cistern, a possible granary, what might be the remains of a Late Antique house and a small "rubbish tip". The kiln, granary, and cistern were probably almost contemporary and they enjoyed a rather short period of use. The kiln, granary, and cistern appear to have been buried by a "localized, but significant colluvial event, probably a landslide". The site appears to have been abandoned between the 2nd and 3rd centuries only to see renewed activity in the 4th century A.D. At this time it seems to have been the site of a short lived Late Roman house. It is interesting that the same site sees renewed activity after two centuries of abandonment, and it speaks both to issues of historical memory and issues of persistent, productive places in the landscape. The relatively short periods of occupation at the site invite us to consider an ancient countryside made of short-lived, relatively low investment places that blink on and off when opportunity for gain present themselves. This fits will with recent interpretations of the peasant economy which have tended to see peasants as dynamic figures in the ancient countryside continuously modifying their practices to manage risk, take advantage of opportunities, and survive amidst the contingencies of history. On other thing to mention briefly about the methods and procedures used by this team in excavating these rural sites. They make it clear that they employed techniques derived from CRM (Cultural Resource Management) practices to expedite the excavation and documentation of their sites. This included the use of earthmoving equipment to remove topsoil, minimal use of hand drawn plans, kite photography (which presumably served as the basis for their digital plans), and other "short cuts" that allowed them to excavate quickly while documenting at a satisfactory level of detail for their research

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questions. They also backfilled at the end of the season. As someone who is planning to excavate a relatively uncomplicated site this summer, their compromise between professional and academic practices is thought provoking. Archaeologists focused on rural sites should maybe learn from the people whose remains they excavate: come in with flexible tools, make minimal permanent investment, and leave little trace after you complete the project.

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<title>More on Rural Change in Western North Dakota</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/more-on-rural-changein-western-north-dakota/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:14:55 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1204</guid> Over the past few weeks I've give over a little of my free time to exploring the area around Williston, North Dakota via Google Earth. My goal was to get a better, albeit cartographic, sense of rural change in the area as a result of the oil boom, and to look for possible changes in settlement with an eye toward identifying a range of different temporary housing areas. The images are so dramatic that I decided to post a bunch here without much commentary. The light colored areas are the lots that surround oil wells. <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Oil 3 2009.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/oil-3-2009.jpg" border="0" alt="Oil 3 2009" width="450" height="80" />2009 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Oil 3 2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/oil-3-2011.jpg" border="0" alt="Oil 3 2011" width="450" height="80" />2011 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Oil 2 2009.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/oil-2-2009.jpg" border="0" alt="Oil 2 2009" width="450" height="265" />2009 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Oil 2 2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/oil-2-2011.jpg" border="0" alt="Oil 2 2011" width="450" height="265" />2011 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Oil 1 2009.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/oil-1-2009.jpg" border="0" alt="Oil 1 2009" width="450" height="265" />2009 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Oil 1 2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/oil-1-2011.jpg" border="0" alt="Oil 1 2011" width="450" height="265" />2011 <p style="text-align:left;">Man camps have been a bit more difficult to identify. In my very preliminary search, I sought to identify any area with clusters of trailers. Of course, there are plenty of rural practices - including large scale farming - that requires the occasional assembly of trailers, and practices of provisional discard around farming (not to mention industrial) sites makes it difficult to always be sure what a man camp would look like as opposed to a lot of unused trailers. I've given it a try with these images, though. <p style="text-align:left;">The first lot speaks more to the change in the rural landscape, but the cluster of trailers that appeared in 2011 is suggestive particularly those with pitched roofs to the right of the image. <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 1 2006.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-1-2006.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 1 2006" width="450" height="265" />2006 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 1 2009.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-1-2009.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 1 2009" width="450" height="265" />2009 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 1 2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-1-2011.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 1 2011" width="450" height="265" />2011 <p style="text-align:left;">This next set show the re-use of an area that had been set aside from cultivation as early as 1995. It saw some development in the early 2000s before being used for residential purposes - it would seem - in 2011.

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<p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 4 1995.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-4-1995.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 4 1995" width="450" height="209" />1995 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 4 2003.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-4-2003.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 4 2003" width="450" height="209" />2003 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 4 2006.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-4-2006.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 4 2006" width="450" height="209" />2006 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 4 2009.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-4-2009.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 4 2009" width="450" height="209" />2009 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 4 2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-4-2011.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 4 2011" width="450" height="209" />2011 <p style="text-align:left;">I looked around a bit for smaller scale and more provisional camps than those suggested in images above. They are difficult to spot via Google Earth, but I think I have a few. For example, not the small cluster of trailers at the top of the images below: <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 2 2006.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-2-2006.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 2 2006" width="450" height="265" />2009 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 2 2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-2-2011.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 2 2011" width="450" height="265" />2011 <p style="text-align:left;">Or the cluster of trailers top center in the second image below. Note the new, isolated trailer set by itself in the second image as well. <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 5 2009.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-5-2009.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 5 2009" width="450" height="209" />2009 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 5 2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-5-2011.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 5 2011" width="450" height="209" />2011 <p style="text-align:left;">Another example of a small scale cluster of provisional housing. <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 3 2009.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-3-2009.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 3 2009" width="450" height="265" />2009 <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="Camp 3 2011.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/camp-3-2011.jpg" border="0" alt="Camp 3 2011" width="450" height="265" />2011 <p style="text-align:left;">These images, of course, represent only changes visible from space. The most dramatic changes are happening within the communities themselves.

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<title>Digital Humanities and Professional Advancement</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/digital-humanities-andprofessional-advancement/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:05:17 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1207</guid> This afternoon I'm getting together with some of my colleagues from the arts, social sciences, and humanities to discuss the place of digital humanities in professional advancement both on campus and in our disciplines more broadly. The meeting will occur under the auspices of the Working Group in Digital and New Media and be the first attempt to use the standing of our group on campus to address pressing concerns facing scholars working in digital and new media. The goal is to identify key issues that impact all of our positions on campus and to produce a white paper for administrators, the university senate, and colleagues over the winter months. We hope to pay particular attention to potential limitation in existing tenure, retention, and promotion policies that could discourage or inhibit the advancement of scholars active in the digital humanities. Since our group includes members from across campus our focus will naturally be broad. Assembling a sensible list of concerns facing scholars who work primary in the digital realm is difficult. The issues range from the very basic - like very limited understanding of the differences between digital and print projects - to the more complex: inconsistent infrastructural support, uncertain attitudes toward collaboration, and the lack of established metrics to evaluate scholars who work heavily in the digital realm. We do not have a plan or a list of priorities for the meeting (in part, the goal of the meeting is to establish a list of priorities as we move forward), but I'll offer my own list of things that should be on the agenda. 1. Institutional Support. The greatest problem facing digital humanities (and I include digital history and archaeology in this group) is the lack of institutional support. On the one hand, with any new approach to organizing and producing knowledge, a lag between institutional adaptation and the development of the field is to be expected. On the other hand, the humanities have traditionally received only modest funding for research. This has become particularly problematic for digital humanists since much of their work relies upon (relatively) expensive technologies (hardware and software), access to specialists, and resources for developing new collections of research material. In the hard and applied sciences, start up grants would help to defray these costs and these are often funded from "indirect costs" produced from grants awarded to more established scholars. There are fewer resources for such start up funds in the digital humanities (although they are not entirely absent), in part, because there are very few indirect costs produced from traditional humanities research. In order to generate a pool of funds to support digital humanities start-up costs, the institution must make the initial investment. And for the institution to make this investment, they must see the potential for a return. The primary problem with the lack of start up funding in the digital humanities is that it delays the production of scholarship by new faculty or faculty new to the digital humanities. As a result, new faculty in the digital humanities must spend time securing resources and building infrastructure for their own research and this delays the ability of faculty to be competitive for external grants, for example, and to produce material for their own internal advancement. To have a successful group of scholars in the digital humanities, a greater investment in sustaining infrastructure and in early career support for faculty with digital research needs. 2. Collaboration. Synergy is one of the newest watchwords at the University of North Dakota. From what I can gather, it refers to collaboration on campus that produces more energy than it expends. Fortunately, the digital humanities has long relied upon dynamic synergies to meld traditional concerns of scholars in literature, history, and archaeology with digital technology. This combination has then produced new approaches to long-standing problems and opened up new venues for scholarly and creative inquiry. Collaboration, however, has not always squared with traditional scholarly approaches in the humanities. Co-authored research, grants, and co-directed projects often stand at odds with

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traditions of solitary scholarly work, and this has challenged departments as they seek to evaluate new collaborative ventures in the humanities. As scholars engaged in collaborative synergies, we have a responsibility to educate our colleagues as to the nature and challenges of collaborative scholarship in the humanities. In doing this, we have the opportunity to create new paradigms of collaboration that are less dependent upon this generated in the hard and applied sciences. In particular, we can advocate approaches that downplay the key role of a single "primary investigator" and demonstrate how scholars can contribute to projects in ways that deserve equal credit. Moreover, we can advocate for policies on campus that both reward and facilitate collaboration in scholarship and teaching across departments, programs, and colleges, as well as on the national and international level. 3. Publishing Problems. Perhaps the most practical issue facing scholars in the digital humanities is the impact of digital scholarship on traditional modes of publishing. In a simplest sense,digital humanists regularly produce scholarly and creative works (video, databases, electronic texts, et c.) that are incompatible with or fall outside the traditional limits of print scholarship. More importantly, perhaps, they are often asked to develop their own means of dissemination, review, and preservation of these scholarly work (and at institutions that lack a substantial digital infrastructure the problems of dissemination and preservation of digital work are particularly acute). More importantly for individual scholars, the criteria for evaluating digital scholarship and creative work remains in the state of flux. Digital, peer-review journals are now sufficiently well regarded outlets for born digital and new and multimedia publications. Unfortunately these kinds of publications are only suitable for a tiny fraction of the output from digital scholars who increasingly work in media and genres that do not necessarily have a tradition of peer review or do not measure their impact through traditional methods of citation tracking. As with all emerging academic areas, scholars in the digital arts and humanities have a responsibility to educate their colleagues and institutions about the challenge they face and the opportunities that their work provides. Producing a 'white paper' from the Working Group in Digital and New Media will be a local step toward making the University of North Dakota a better home for scholars in these exciting new fields.

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<title>Friday Quick Hits and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/friday-quick-hits-andvaria-13/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:06:29 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1211</guid> Yesterday was the last day of classes and today I'm hunkered down in my home office and contemplation how long I can work here without feeling guilty about not going into my academic office. I think I can make it to 3 pm, maybe a bit later. It's also pretty chilly and clear out (although it's still dark). So a pretty good time to warm up with a particularly irreverent and whimsical group of varia and quick hits. So Will Ferrell apparently asked Old Milwaukee if he could make some ads for them. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/these-ads-will-ferrell-made-for-old-milwaukee-will-be-huge2011-12">And this is the result</a>. <a href="http://www.ctbuh.org/TallBuildings/HeightStatistics/BuildingsinNumbers/TheTallest20in2020/t abid/2926/language/en-US/Default.aspx">Really tall buildings</a>. Ice Cube on Eames <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=FRWatw_ZEQI#!">on the YouTubes </a>and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/garden/ice-cube-on-eameses-andhis-hometown-qa.html?_r=2">in the NYT</a>. <a href="http://vimeo.com/23608259">Cats in Tanks</a> (with some violent, but completely context appropriate language). <a href="http://westernfarmpress.com/cotton/preserved-1927-mississippi-cotton-field-uncovered2011-flood">Fields from 1927 uncovered by Mississippi floods</a> (h/t <a href="http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/">Diana Gilliland Wright</a>) <a href="http://www.redpepper.org.uk/greek-crisis-samos-chronicles/">A depressing story about the situation on the Greek island of Samos</a>. (h/t <a href="http://mediterraneanpalimpsest.wordpress.com/">Dallas DeForest</a>) <a href="http://mediterraneanpalimpsest.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/anastasioupolis-a-lost-byzantinecity-in-need-of-a-conservation-program/">Anastasioupolis</a>. <a href="http://isaw.nyu.edu/about/departments/digital-programs">A Digital Programs mission statement from the clever folks at ISAW</a>. <a href="http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wamc/news.newsmain?action=article&amp;ARTICLE_ID=1 877706&amp;fb_source=message">Adam Rabinowitz on Digital Archaeology</a>. <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2010/12/10/america-s-25-coldest-cities.html">Yes, Grand Forks is a really cold place to live</a>. (I am not sure that I understand the point of telling us that on March 30, the high was 66 in 2009. March 30th isn't technically or even conventionally during the wintertime, and it should be clear to any thinking person that Grand Forks gets hotter in the summer). I just bought a $25, lightly-used Playstation 1 <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/708play">for this reason</a>. <a href="http://individual.utoronto.ca/somody/quiz.html">Prof or Hobo</a> (because some people were asking about this last night). <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia-v-new-zealand2011/engine/current/match/518948.html">I'm excited about James Pattinson too</a>, but we should keep it in perspective: <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/zimbabwe-v-new-zealand2011/engine/match/527017.html">New Zealand had to work a bit to beat Zimbabwe</a>. <a href="http://robertvannicearchive.wordpress.com/">If you're into Byzantine stuff, this is cool all the way around</a>.

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What I'm reading: Paul Virilio, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/bunkerarchaeology/oclc/732955835">Bunker Archaeology</a> ; Charles Hailey, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/camps/oclc/690508494">Camps</a> . What I'm listening to: The Bats, Daddy's Highway and The Guilty Office; The Clean, Anthology. </ul>

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<title>Camps Ancient and Modern</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/1216/</link> <pubDate>Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:53:40 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1216</guid> I just finished <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/camps-a-guide-to-21stcentury-space/oclc/233813741">Charlie Hailey's book called Camps </a>. It's an architectural study of camps and consists of examples of camps from around the world and through history. The study divides camps into three types: camps of autonomy, camps of control, and camps of necessity. Camps of autonomy are camps that are characterized by the goal of autonomy and independence (as the name might suggest!), whereas camps of control and necessity are opposite sides of the same coin. The former rely on the form of the camp to control its occupants or to project control into a potentially dangerous situation; the latter are camps that emerge as responses to circumstances beyond the occupants control (refugee situations, survival camps, et c.). The line between these two types of camp tends to blur. I began to think about camps largely in the context of <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/category/work-camps/">man or work camps</a> in the western part of North Dakota. The camps typically consist of temporary trailers arranged very close to work sites (if not on the sites themselves). These temporary housing units were often brought from other places of temporary settlement like the Olympic village in Vancouver or in camps used to house people displaced from Hurricane Katrina. The trailers are a response to both the limited infrastructure existing in a peripheral area as well as the unwillingness to invest in substantial investment in an area by the companies that arrive looking to extract oil. These camps also reflect the global system not only for resource extraction, but also for managing temporary populations whether they are athletes, refugees from natural disasters, or groups looking to work in remote locations. The camps, their residents, and the natural resources that they work to extract combine to produce a low-investment, temporary pattern of settlement across the landscape. These camps cross the various categories proposed by Hailey and represent spaces of control (particularly when they are provided by local employers), spaces of autonomy as they function on the fringes of local utilities (water cisterns are sometimes visible in aerial photographs), infrastructure, and community, and spaces of necessity as the work population in the Western part of the state settled in camps owing to the lack of existing infrastructure in the area. The autonomy and necessity of the camps overlap when they provide housing for groups of individuals who live and work on the periphery of infrastructure, social bonds, and the economic systems. I also got to thinking about <a href="http://www.jstor.org/pss/25067991">a camp that I published in the Corinthia</a>. I argued that a fieldstone fortification on the height of Mt. Oneion along the south boundary of the Isthmus as a "fortified camp" that served the needs of military forces who sought to secure access to the Peloponnesus in the Hellenistic era. Like the work camps in North Dakota that fortified camp on Mt. Oneion was not designed for any enduring way - the roughly built field stone walls provided protection for structures that housed the forces encamped there - and these camps were also dependent on wide ranging geopolitical systems and events that were not necessarily under the control of the local population. Moreover, the location of the camps on Mt. Oneion is peripheral to settlement, cultivated ground, and political space. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="IMG_3129.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/img_3129.jpg" border="0" alt="IMG 3129" width="450" height="337" /> Our site in Cyprus - Pyla- Vigla - is likewise a peripheral settlement and the habitation appears to have been quite short lived. <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/the-site-ofpyla-vigla-on-cyprus/">We have suggested that the site was a base for local mercenaries</a>. Like the fortified camp on Mt. Oneion, the fortification wall appears to have been the most substantial investment on the site. The domestic structures on the interior of the site show only modest architectural investment. Simple stone sockles would have supported mudbrick walls and the absence

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of rooftile suggests thatched roofs. The floors were packed earth. In one trench we observed the rapid reconstruction or modification of the building perhaps over the course of a decade or two. Like. Mt. Oneion, the site it removed from the centers of political power, situated at a natural border (on the sea and at the periphery of the territory of Kition), and immediate surroundings of the site offer little in the way of economic incentives. Of course, our archaeological work on the site embraces some of the practices of camp. Our base of operations on site involve almost no investment in the site (plastic furniture, shade provided by vehicles, et c.). One of my favorite practices is that at the end of the season we backfill the trenches. We cover the collapsed walls with a blue tarpaulin (which we always call trapampoline) which echoes the ubiquitous "blue tarp" associated with provisional camps around the world. By backfilling the trenches we follow a different set of camping practices by "leaving no trace'. It not only preserves the archaeological remains, but also returns the space to the condition it was prior to our arrival. Hailey has some great descriptions of the methods used to restore the desert site of Burning Man festival at the conclusions of the event. They organizers walk transects across the site looking for trash. They also use gridded collection areas to sample other areas to ensure that the dried lake bed is spotless on their departure. The archaeological scrutiny employed by this group to preserve the natural beauty of the Burning Man site, provides a nice contrast to efforts by archaeologist to document the traces of human life in the landscape. Both practices represent efforts to view the landscape as radically separate from present human activities. This notion of people being alienated from the landscape is central to the mystic and allure the camp.

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<title>Barbarians at the Gate</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/barbarians-at-thegate/</link> <pubDate>Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:34:04 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1228</guid> One reason I love <a href="http://corinthianmatters.com/">Corinthian Matters</a> is that David Pettegrew's loyal bots constantly crawl the web looking for new academic articles on Corinth. As anyone who attempts to keep abreast of new scholarship on any topic knows, it is almost impossible to do so without some loyal human and software allies.Recently, he brought to my attention Amelia Brown's recent contribution to t<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/romans-barbarians-andthe-transformation-of-the-roman-world-cultural-interaction-and-the-creation-of-identity-in-lateantiquity/oclc/637709803">he publication of the 6th biennial Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity Conference</a> from 2005 at the University of Illinois. Her article titled "<a href="http://uq.academia.edu/ABrown/Papers/1102420/Banditry_or_Catastrophe_History_Archaeolog y_and_Barbarian_Raids_on_Roman_Greece">Banditry or Catastrophe?: History, Archaeology, and Barbarian Raids on Roman Greece</a>" takes on the perennial issue of the impact of raiding, rampaging, barbarians on the end of public, civic life in Late Roman Greece. She looks at the Costobocs, Heruls, and Goths in particular and makes the argument that there is very little archaeological evidence for these raiders. Moreover, the textual evidence that does exist is highly problematic and fits poorly with the long-standing empirical expectations held by more archaeologists. In other words, the destructive rampage of Alaric or the violent reconquest of Stilicho left almost no evidence in the archaeological record. Earlier thoughts to the contrary were almost always the product of overly optimistic interpretations of problematic contexts or have been overturned with revised ceramic chronologies introduced through the more controlled stratigraphic excavations. This is fine. The ancients liked to punctuate their history with barbarian raids, natural disasters, and other catastrophic events as much as modern scholars. The catastrophic events fit ancient communities and narratives into a wider conversation by making heroism, treachery, or divine displeasure recognizable to an audience. Similarly, archaeologists have looked for episodes of catastrophe in their excavations to align archaeological contexts with known historical events (and if possible dates!). Just as real or imagined tragedies created relevance for individuals living in the past, Mediterranean archaeologists have treasured evidence tying their labors to historical experiences conjured so dramatically in texts. Just as Mediterranean archaeologists have become more confident in the autonomy of their own discipline, so have they gradually shrugged off the ties of the world that they excavate to textual traditions championed by generations of Classicists. The result of this work is not just to call into question the past distilled from a carefully empirical reading of texts, but also to call into question the periodization schemes, narratives, and research agendas dictated by these texts. This has led to a sometimes violent rupture between traditions of humanistic scholarship that have contextualized research and teaching for centuries and the results of archaeological investigation. As you can imagine, research like Brown's that asks us to re-interpret such basic narratives as those surrounding the end of the ancient world do more than challenge the narrative of ancient Greece, but bring into question the line between barbarian and civilized that has been so central to the differentiation between the glorious, civilized Classical past and the brutish, uncivilized, Medieval time. By absolving the barbarians of some of the blame for the end of Classical public life, Brown has offered a modest challenge to the master narrative and begun the arduous process of using the very tools produced by a system that championed the Classical age to undermine its esteemed place in our society today.

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<title>Cesnola at Pyla-Koutsopetria</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/1232/</link> <pubDate>Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:45:52 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1232</guid> Two weeks ago <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/some-more-cool-observations-onsanctuaries-around-pyla/">I posted a passage from L. Hamilton Lang</a> that described his struggles to export the antiquities that he looted from a small farm that he had leased near the village of Pyla. Lang's friend and co-conspirator Luigi Palma di Cesnola also conducted some clandestine excavations at the site and describes them in his <a href="http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=n84GAAAAQAAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;o utput=reader&amp;pg=GBS.PP1"> Cyprus: its ancient cities, tombs, and temples, A narrative of researches and excavations during ten years' residence as American consul in that island (1877)</a>. He probably visited the site early in his term as American Consul on the island in 1865. He is widely regarded as a looter, and his collection of Cypriot antiquities forms the core of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection of Cypriot antiquities. <a href="http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=n84GAAAAQAAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;o utput=reader&amp;pg=GBS.PA178">From pages 178-179</a>: <blockquote>I found it in the end more convenient and less expensive to purchase than to hire animals, and in this way I became the possessor of several fine well-broken mules and two strong donkeys, as high almost as horses, of a breed particular to Cyprus. These donkeys are glossy and sleek with large eyes, and will trot as fast as a mule; they are beside very intelligent. Thus provided we started in the early morning, and proceeded eastward for two hours, quite close to the seashore, to a place called "Palaeo Castro", a name given by the natives to any tumble down building, whether fifty or two thousand years old. Here I found the stone walls of an oblong structure, not older than the Venetian occupation of the island. It had been a small fort mounted with three guns, the embrasures of which are still standing. Along the south-east coast are several of these guard-houses, built near the shore on elevated ground, some of which, now dismantled and roofless, are of Turkish construction, and two or three hundred years old. Most of them appear to have been erected for the protection of the neighboring villages against the Algerine pirates, who not longer ago than sixty years were daring enough to land and carry off wealthy inhabitants, and to detain them until the required ransom should be paid. In the neighbourhood is still pointed out the pirates' cave. Contiguous to the fort I found vestiges of ancient town, traces of the stone wall which encircled it, and small square foundations of dwelling houses. The cemetery is just outside the wall, and near the sea-shore. The tombs are only a few feet below the surface, and of the shape usual everywhere in Cyprus. Those I opened contained Roman lamps, glass, and black varnished pottery of a very common kind. A little east of the fort is a shapeless mound, apparently artificial, which I found to contain two large graves of the earliest period. From one of them I extracted fragments of twenty-seven different skulls, and a number of cylinders in haematite, not engraved; also a large copper caldron and in iron, but no vases of any kind. This mound seems to have been erected over some fifty or sixty bodies buried in two large oblong tombs, evidently all at the same time, and probably slain in battle. The earth which forms the mound be that which was dug up in making tombs. Continuing my journey along the coast, I reach a spot where the road takes a northerly direction. Pursuing this, I soon came upon a small village called Ormidia, inhabited exclusively by Greek peasants. It was in a pretty little white cottage on teh summit of a low hill near the outskirts of this village that I

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established in 1873 my summer residence, and this continued to be our summer resort as long as we remained in the island.</blockquote> These excavations must have come from very near our site. Older maps call Pyla- Koutsopetria Palaiocastro. We have documented the coastal battery there which is now overgrown and collapsing. <img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="IMG_0255.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/img_0255.jpg" alt="IMG 0255" width="450" height="337" border="0" /> We have found significant quantities of ancient glass vessels in our survey. It's difficult to identify the mound that he describes or the outlines of houses or fortifications, but we did find a fragment of a human skull during our survey. It may be that ploughing smeared the remains of the tombs across the area and leveled whatever was left of the mound after Cesnola's excavations.

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<title>Some Musings on Hellenistic Fortification</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/some-musings-onhellenistic-fortification/</link> <pubDate>Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:26:18 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1239</guid> This past week I've been enjoying <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/bunkerarchaeology/oclc/732955835">Paul Virilio's Bunker Archaeology </a>. The book takes a reflective, photographic journey along the coastal defenses erected by Hitler's army to defend his Fortress Europa from an Atlantic invasion. The photographs and essays are haunting. The massive, modern, brutally functional fortifications, watchtowers, batteries, and bunkers served to protect Hitler's vision of a unified, German Europe, on a resistant population. It got me to think a bit more about <a href="http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/the-site-of-pyla-vigla-on-cyprus/">the fortification on our site of Pyla- Koutsopetria </a>. Like Hitlers Atlantic Wall, the fort at the site of Vigla was likely built by the Hellenistic rulers of Cyprus sometime in the late 4th or early 3rd century. It is situated at the edge of the territory of Kition astride a major land route to the city of Salamis and overlooking a now infilled harbor. This location is interesting because the fortification would have stood watch over the eastern flank of the city of Kition had the city remained independent. Ironically, fighting between rival claimants to Alexander's empire infiltrated the rivalries between the Cypriot cities and led the Ptolemies to put the last king of Kition to death in 312. The fortification at Vigla, then, continued to stand at a strategically sensitive point in the territory of Kition. Only it did not serve to protect the city as an independent polity but rather to protect the interest of Hellenistic conquerers would positioned the fortification to forestall an invasion over land (as had occurred in the Classical period) or along the coastal plain. The most cynical reading of the fortress could even see as a way to occupy a strategic point to prevent local forces from holding it. At the same time as this fortification stood watch, the southeastern corner of the island witnessed an rapid increase in settlement. Like the Akamas peninsula in the west, numerous settlements appear east of the Pyla littoral. Presumably the expansion of settlement in this area benefited from the end of the rivalry between the independent cities of Kition and Salamis and occupied what was previously a liminal zone on the island. New settlements may have benefited from access to markets on the southern coast of the island and the end to political and military rivalries among the island's city kingdoms might have opened up territory to capital from new sources. On the coastal plain at PylaKoutsopetria, we clearly see an expansion of activities including evidence for the production of olive oil. In this context, the fortification at Vigla stands less as site to project domination and more as a site that offers protection to the new and vulnerable communities on the coast. Ptolemy the Geographer in the 2nd century AD notes a site called Dades along the coast of Cyprus and some (<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/69746749/W-Caraher-R-S-Moore-J-S-Noller-D-K-Pettegrew%E2%80%9CThe-Pyla-Koutsopetria-Archaeological-Project-First-Preliminary-Report-2003-2004Seasons-%E2%80%9D">including us!</a>) have plausibly assigned this name to our site at Vigla. Both Dades and the modern name Vigla are words that could refer to a watchtower (Dades means torch and Vigla is related to English words like vigilant). It may be that our site could communicate through torches to other posts along the south coast of the island. Such torch relays could alert defenders to the appearance of hostile ships or armies. The shift in the political organization on the island also changed the meaning of fortifications in the landscape. The line between projecting power, imposing control, and providing protection is blurry during times of dynamic political change.

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<title>Friday Quick Hit and Varia</title> <link>http://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/friday-quick-hit-andvaria/</link> <pubDate>Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:16:13 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>billcaraher</dc:creator> <guid isPermaLink="false">https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/?p=1243</guid> It's a frosty day here in North Dakotaland emphasized with a slight dusting of snow. My office is a chilly 55, but the various little heaters are blasting and soon it'll be warm enough for me to start my day. So with the chill outside and the chill inside, it seems like a good time to warm up with some quick hits and varia. <a href="http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/burleigh-county-to-study-man-campordinance/article_4f40eb3a-26b4-11e1-b3ef-0019bb2963f4.html">Some more on man-camps</a> and if you need high-quality luxury housing in the Bakken area, <a href="http://www.bakkenresidencesuites.com/">check this out</a>. (via <a href="http://www.whitewashedtomb.com/">Richard Rothaus</a>) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/arts/design/heart-mountain-interpretive-learningcenter-review.html">Another type of camp</a>. (via <a href="http://kourelis.blogspot.com/">Kostis Kourelis</a>) <a href="http://isaw.nyu.edu/publications/isaw-papers">ISAW's open-access journal</a> (or is it a publication series I think I'd like some clarification, but it seems really cool) is out. <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/what-is-college-for/">What is college for?</a> <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/south-africa-v-sri-lanka2011/engine/current/match/514032.html">So Australia was not the only side to encounter the buzz saw of South Africa's bowling.</a> I keep thinking about doing another "tips for academic bloggers" post that would be academic version of <a href="http://www.splatf.com/2011/12/better-blogging/">a list like this</a>. With Spotify, I have an all new appreciation for lists <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/stafflists/8727-the-top-50-albums-of-2011/">like this </a>and <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/content/my-favorite-records-2011">like this</a>. <a href="http://mediterraneanworldarchive.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/transitional-sp/">One of my first blog posts on this blog </a>was about a body found when excavating the foundations for the new President's house here on campus. Our local forensic anthropologist published <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2011.01738.x/abstract">an article about this in March that I somehow missed</a>. <a href="http://www.etsy.com/listing/83599070/your-favorite-kanye-west-tweet-hand">Hand-stitched Kanye West tweets</a>: awesome and transmedia. I learned the phrase "like chalk and cheese" from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FbbXJpzkuE">this song by The Bats</a> (although it sort of sounds like they say "like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chook_raffle">chook </a>and cheese". <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/arts/christopher-hitchens-is-dead-at-62obituary.html">R.I.P. (I guess) Christopher Hitchens</a>. Whatever one thinks of <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/cyprus/oclc/11099007">his book on Cyprus</a>, it did much to make the political situation there better known globally. And I'll have to think about this some: Writing is whats important to me, and anything that helps me do that or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation is worth it to me... <a href="http://hoosierapiary.blogspot.com/">A new blogging venture from an old friend</a>. <a href="http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=USRTR2V5YT#a=14">More abandonment porn</a>. <a href="http://flavorwire.com/240819/the-25-most-beautiful-college-libraries-in-the-world">Some

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book porn</a>. <a href="http://www.wdaz.com/event/article/id/11533/publisher_ID/30/">My colleague Eric Burin using his quantitative history powers for the forces of good</a>. <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/in-the-wake-of-protest-onewomans-attempt-to-unionize-amazon/249853/">These stories depress and worry me</a> considering how dependent I am on Amazon (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/opinion/amazonsjungle-logic.html">especially when followed up by stories like this.</a>) What I'm reading: E. Vaccaro, <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/sites-and-pots-settlement-andeconomy-in-southern-tuscany-ad-300-900/oclc/711861256">Sites and Pots: Settlement and Economy in Southern Tuscany 300-900</a> . (Archaeopress 2011). What I'm listening to: War on Drugs, Slave Ambient, The Roots, Undun . </ul> <p style="text-align:center;"><img style="display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" title="My_View.jpg" src="http://mediterraneanworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/my_view.jpg" border="0" alt="My View" width="450" height="269" /> The view from my home office this morning

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