come fly with me

international student in scotland || archaeology and history || studyblr

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Hi my new favorite rock is Troublesome Formation chert

[archeohistoria]

tag yourself, I’m Troublesome Formation chert

[sovietpostcards]

“Peace will prevail!” 

Soviet poster by N. Babin.

[archeohistoria]

working on uni assignments, and slowly losing the will. at least my handwriting is aesthetic.

I'm supposed to be writing about the cultural indoctrination of Amerindians by the Spanish during their conquest of the Americas; however, I am finding it difficult to do so in a way that doesn't downplay the significance of, in essence, purposeful acculturation and assimilation into Spanish society. I have been charged with connecting an excerpt from a converted Luiseño Indian's account of Spanish arrival to the 'bigger picture'. Hopefully I can do it justice.

[archeohistoria]

I would like to write, but I can’t. 

[archeohistoria]

I've never seen snow on a beach before

[archeohistoria]

my first semester of uni is almost over and i am so glad I finally get to study subjects I actually enjoy :)

[archeohistoria]

I am terrified. Terrified to try new things, to move to a new country, to put even a step in the wrong direction. Perhaps this fear is wanton, but somewhere along the way my delightful brain developed a fear of failure. This fear is so infectious that I am afraid I filled out a simple form wrong, or forgot to put a period on one sentence in an essay I turned in a year ago. 

[asundergrowth]

Rupi Kaur is a terrible poet but I can't pin down why

[asundergrowth]

Its like she managed to write poetry without poetry

[asundergrowth]

Two randomly chosen untitled Rupi Kaur poems vs a randomly chosen Sandra Beasley poem.

[yungbicon]

I already reblogged this but I’m reblogging again to say the same thing I said in my previous tags.

It’s because she bit off Nayyirah Waheed, a Black woman, without having the same knack for– well, anything lmao

[muppethole-deactivated20240312]

Rupi Kaur's poetry is somebody jotting ideas down in their notes app and then forgetting to make those ideas into actual poems and just publishing the raw notes instead.

Nayyirah Waheed is the obvious and rightful comparison, but when i taught a poetry unit i also found it helpful to look at Mary Oliver as an example of accessible, "simple-but-resonant" poetry. here're two Kaur poems and a Mary Oliver poem (one of her more famous) that you could say share a theme or two

what each of these poems are saying is simple, but Oliver puts in work, and the poem is weightier and more substantial for it. if Kaur were to write the same poem, she'd skip to the last two lines and cut everything before, because she's not concerned with poetry as experience, she's just concerned with recording platitudes and thoughts she had in the shower.

then look at those Waheed poems. even without Oliver's length, even in just a few lines, as Kaur is trying to imitate, Waheed packages an idea (ideas often more complex than Kaur ever attempts) in language both more interesting and arresting than you might think could happen in four or five lines. i mean, look at this

now compare it to that first Kaur poem at the top of this post. Waheed makes you see/feel/understand more than you already did by giving you a new/different lexicon for it (soul-stained shoulders! lovely). Kaur tells you what to see/feel/understand using the language you already had. it's poetry via sheer relatability, not poetry via empathy or understanding or expanding.

which is all to say that the difference is that not only is Kaur an imitator, she's a low-effort imitator

[metamorphesque]

Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami

[archeohistoria]

When reality fails, I enter the world of Dreams.

[daweyt]

Thinking about the latin phrase “sedit qui timuit ne non succederet” (“he who feared he would not succeed sat still”) and how my perfectionism and fear of failure makes me procrastinate and do nothing of my day.

[ritualpurposes]

Dead and Buried: The attack on Archaeology in the UK

Another day, another archaeology program closing in the UK. It is a definate trend now, and its hard not to get discouraged. The thing about this that really bothers me though, is which Univerties are closing. Cambridge, Oxford and Durham are safe, but the places that are largely working class or cater to mature students (such as Sheffield and Worcester)? Those programs are getting the axe. Heritage should belong to everyone, and diversity in British archaeology is already a huge problem (in that we really dont have any).

This is not the 19th century, heritage should be more than a rich mans hobby. Archaeology is a window on to the past, it lets us see the everyday, the common people and those who get left out of history books. It lets us challenge racist and sexist naratives about the past, and renforces the idea that humans, no matter where or when they are from, are human. 

History matters, the past matters. And while I firmly believe that you can and should be able to dig without a degree (the apprenticeship scheme MOLA just rolled out looks excellent), making archaeology degrees inacessable to everyone who doesnt go to a Russel Group university is, in my oppinion, an act of cultural vandalism in and of itself. 

If you want to help: 

The link to the Worcester petition is here

And the excellent Dig4Arch campain is here

[archeohistoria]

I chose to study in the UK because there were little to no options for archaeology or history majors that would provide me with the education I desired unless I went to expensive, name schools like Harvard or Yale. 

It is disheartening to see other countries falling into the same category, focusing more on STEM courses rather than the arts or humanities. But this is why the study of history and our past should continue, and those who are able should pursue it with fervor. Hopefully, others will continue the trend in the future as well.

[archeohistoria]

I started reading Emma by Jane Austen, and let's just say my vocabulary is sorely lacking.

[mycroftrh]

catholic guilt vs protestant belief in your own inherent superiority, fight

[mycroftrh]

wait no I just remembered a few hundred years of history I take this post back

[bananahomo]

[calamari-chaos]

Rich people with private historic art collections are the worst tbh.

What are you even doing with it, asshole? Showing off to your stupid rich friends at a stupid rich dinner party? Keeping it in storage until it’s even more expensive? I fucking hate you. Your greatest contribution to society and culture will be your death. Nobody will remember you except to scoff. Donate it all to a museum or Eat Shit.

…And if I find out you have pillaged fucking archaeological artifacts in that crapshack you call a mansion, I WILL drive my civic through your biggest window. That’s a promise.

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

I really enjoy the genre of “older literature featuring a really smart but deranged college student who does something really fucked up with his knowledge and has multiple breakdowns over it for the rest of the story.” one because it is entertaining and two it encapsulates the college experience in a way nothing else does.

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

like hamlet, raskolnikov, frankenstein—i do not condone but i DO understand

[archaeologysucks]

If anyone is looking for more of these, I recommend THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER by James Hogg. Published in Scotland in 1824, it follows the exploits of a young fanatical Calvinist who believes he is one of God’s Chosen, and can therefore do no wrong. He ends up murdering his own brother, and becoming BFFs with a maybe-real-maybe-imaginary person who may or may not be the actual literal Devil, who goads him into taking more and more extreme “justified” actions as his life progressively falls apart around him.

[zaatanna-moved]

anyway just a reminder for the myth lovers out there

king arthur was welsh. merlin was welsh. camelot was in wales. the lady and the lake she pops out of; welsh. excalibur; magic inanimate welsh object. etc.

on the way to see family, i drive past a lake that in which is welsh legend, is the last resting place of excalibur.

i’m just saying in my experience a lot of these legends had been so anglo-fied in the past and it’s like, all this cool shit is celtic welsh legend.

[jackironsides]

Arthur’s wife was called Gwenhwyfar first.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Like the kraken I emerge, summoned by the English theft of Arthur

Arthur is a Welsh name. It means ‘bear’. He’s likely derived from a Gaulish bear god

In the form of King Arthur, he is an anti-Saxon mythological WELSH figure, representing the native Brythonic people of Britain against the Anglo-Saxon invaders, dating from the 500s AD

The version appropriated by the English in the 1100s is the shitty boring sanitised version - they did it because they were trying to compete with the romance tradition on the continent at the time but didn’t have anything of their own to romanticise

Merlin is called Myrddin

Percival is Peredur

Kay is Cei, and also was subject to enormous character assassination in the English version - in the Welsh version he’s much closer to Arthur’s right hand man

Guinevere is Gwenhwyfar

There is no Lancelot, no Galahad, no tedious affair story

There is no Camelot. Arthur’s seat was Caerllion - modern Caerleon, putting him into both the region of the Silures (one of the most fearsome and warlike of the British tribes, modern South East Wales) and the old Roman fortress, which would have been an impossibly huge Palace for a warlord at the time.

They all have super powers and get up to wacky hijinks involving hair care, giants, strange giant wildlife, spectral revolving/glass fortresses in the Celtic sea, and a really fucking weird chess match. Also a cloak made out of beards.

What the fuck is the round table

Anyway it’s particularly irritating because traditional Welsh culture and beliefs have been so thoroughly stripped away and destroyed by England over the centuries, and Arthurian legend is one of the few surviving fragments we have left to preserve. And he’s specifically an anti-English figure. So the ubiquity of the boring and appropriative English Arthur across the whole fucking world is… Well, it’s not great.

[may-or-may-not-be-me]

This is so interesting! Does anyone know a good source/reading material where one could get more of the original Welsh versions of the stories?

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The Mabinogion, translated by Sioned Davies is your best bet! It’s got a bunch of big-ass Welsh myths in, but most relevantly it includes Culhwch ac Olwen, which is a full-on Arthurian text (plus a couple of interesting ones).

There’s a whole bunch more that’s survived in fragments, but they’re all in Old Welsh - fully readable if you speak Welsh, but obviously not much use if you don’t (I don’t know if you do or not but from context I’m guessing not lol).

[cythraul]

Trioedd Ynys Prydain (literally “the Triads of the Island of Britain”, though in English they’re usually called “the Welsh Triads”) are a huge collection of lists of three things from Welsh lore, including a lot of Arthurian lore. They’re not stories, but they contain fascinating allusions to stories, to whole strains of the Arthurian tradition, that we may or may not have elsewhere.

Keep reading

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Absolutely fantastic addition, yes, Rachel Bronwich’s Triads are glorious.

[sleepnoises]

okay you know that scan/photo of a teen girl’s diary entry that goes like “wore yellow dress today. chris keeps trying to talk to me even though he KNOWS i’m not interested! ugh! man landed on moon.” anyway that’s the mood

[skinhorses]

[sleepnoises]

THIS person is valid, as is their grandmother

[art-thropologist]

humans prioritize like that

[archeohistoria]

mine would go something like this: woke up today and drank two Dr. Pepper's. still in a panoramic.