Claire Keane

oozey mess

â
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
hello vonnie
Cosimo Galluzzi
Xuebing Du
occasionally subtle
Cosmic Funnies

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$LAYYYTER

#extradirty
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
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@digging-time-w-kaz
I think the most unique aspect of this job is that, no matter how small, ugly or cosmically (?) irrelevant thing you may find, it always somehow manages to connect you to Some Guy (gender neutral) from literal eons ago who made A Thing. I introduce - small uglyass jar/pot handle with clear, visible fingerprints of the Some Guy who made it!
People on this website will really mock anti-vaxxers and flat earthers for ignoring scientists and getting their alternative facts from facebook, and then turn around and insist they know more history than historians and more archaeology than archaeologists because they read an unsourced tumblr post once
Is there a real life example of this?
It happens a lot.
I know it's bad but I kind of want to know more about the woman who thinks the Roman Empire never existed
Oh shit i believed the Leonardo Da Vinci one
Also why do people make these
What do you hope to gain
There are a lot of different misinformation dynamics at play here. Only some are innocent, only some are malicious. But thatâs why it pays to fact-check things, because the innocent misunderstandings, the arrogant personal hypotheses stated as fact, and the malicious lies are all jumbled together.
Some of these are a misunderstanding or conflating of true facts. The Da Vinci one goes here. Many historians do believe that Leonardo da Vinci had a romantic/sexual relationship with his apprentice(s). And itâs well-established that his apprentices modeled for some of his paintings. But they did not model for any of his paintings of Jesus - which was the core point of the post that this fact came from, enjoying the irony. So this isnât true because itâs a conflation of several true facts into a false but understandable conclusion.
Some of these are just a victim of internet telephone. The âPersephoneâs daughterâ and âfake Greek goddessâ ones refer to Mespyrian, who was some teenagerâs wattpad OC daughter of Persephone and Hades, that someone else on tumblr accidentally mistook as a real figure from Greek mythology.
Some of these come from people making their own conclusions about history, and then turning around and insisting that the experts therefore must be lying to you. This is where it gets dangerous. The âarchaeologists broke the noses off Egyptian statues to hide the fact that they were Africanâ one goes here. Many Egyptian statues are missing their noses, so several years ago someone on the internet claimed that it was because archaeologists deliberately broke them off, and this gained a Lot of traction because it felt true and people wanted it to be true. People overwhelmingly want to believe that they, ordinary citizens of the world with no special training, are actually smarter than the experts. People love to believe that, so itâs very, very easy for people to decide the experts are stupid and clueless (the âHistory Hates Loversâ song, the thing about the dodecahedron or the Roman hairstyles or the leather burnishers) while salt-of-the-earth ordinary folk are smarter than those ivory-tower eggheads. At worst, people decide the experts are maliciously hiding the truth about the world for their own gain (the Lovers of Valdaro one here is an example of this, but you also see this a lot regarding âall ancient cultures were feminist utopias until the Catholic Church invented misogyny and covered up the feminist pastâ type posts that are extremely popular with TERFs.) This is the dynamic Iâm comparing to anti-vaxxers and flat Earthers, and yes, this kind of anti-intellectualism is dangerous.
Some people are just trolls because they like lying on the internet and riling people up. This cannot be discounted. People do do this. The tiktok woman who doesnât believe in the Roman Empire and doesnât believe that Vesuvius erupted is almost certainly a troll who likes the attention her wild false claims get.
Itâs a combination of things, but itâs why you shouldnât assume that historians are all old homophobic clueless idiots and only you, tumblr user persephonesmassivebadonkers or whatever, know the REAL truth. Because thatâs how you get Flat Earthers, but more pressingly, itâs how you get antisemitic conspiracy theories and transphobic radfem proclamations of We Need To Return To The Ancient Feminist Utopia (By Destroying All Trans People)(And, Usually, Abrahamic Religions).Â
But also by believing easily-debunked falsehoods it makes genuinely well-meaning people easier to dismiss by bigots as Brainwashed By Those El Gee Bee Tees Who Will Lie Because They Want To Destroy Academia/Biological Sex/The Church.
Spreading misinformation on tumblr is an understandable consequence of the existence of the internet, but itâs not harmless and really ought to be challenged when itâs seen.
And itâs not remotely helped by the fact thereâs plenty of similar true stories that can be pointed to. Like, hereâs a list of things: Brits in the 1800s used to eat Egyptian mummies, numerous gay relationships in history were called âfriendshipsâ by Christian historians, the Vatican is hoarding almost all history ever written and refuses to let anyone access it, the original biographies of the Sons of Liberty were all works of fiction (like Washington and the apple tree), Greek and Roman statues were painted but the people who discovered them found it garish so they stripped the paint off, DaVinci invented a tank, Lancelot is a fanfiction OC, and the Catholic Church was founded after numerous other Christian churches and proceeded to burn the holy books that didnât support their version (like the Gospel of Judas, which establishes that the âbetrayalâ was Jesusâs plan because how was he supposed to die as planned, and they plotted it together). Itâs easy to believe bullshit when the truth is just as rank.
This is exactly the sort of thing Iâm talking about: confidently firing off a mix of half-remembered and out-of-context factoids with âlies and coverups in history!!!â to make them seem like theyâre correcting the record rather than reducing a mix of truth, common misconceptions, conspiracy theories, misunderstandings, and poor reporting to pithy one-liners. Letâs go through them.
Brits in the 1800s used to eat Egyptian mummies,
It's complicated. There's definitely a grain of truth to this, but it's not quite what the common narratives suggest. For example, eating mummies was a Medieval thing more than it was a Victorian thing; Victorians did "Scientific" mummy-unwrapping parties, but they didn't then eat them - they were collectible antiquities. For another, the mummies used by Victorians for paint were rarely ancient Egyptian humans. I'll let @thatlittleegyptologist take this one because they've talked about it. A lot. Like a lot. So often.
numerous gay relationships in history were called âfriendshipsâ by Christian historians,
It's complicated. Have historians in the past denied that their favorite historical figures could possibly be gay? Absolutely. But people who were romantically and sexually involved with each other in the past very often did call each other "friend." (Or, in ancient Egypt, "brother"). Even husbands and wives would call each other "friend." (it's midnight and I am blanking on how to search for sources that show this but I have transcribed 18th century letters and diaries, I have seen this.) Like, while historical squeamishness and denial of gay relationships has been a thing... the modern assumption that friendship cannot possibly ever include any gay stuff is also not helping. And heteronormatively taking words at face value is somewhere in between. It's sometimes malicious, but you have to give space for simple hetero brain too. And give space for all the queer and queer-affirming historians working in the field. And for people like Oscar Wilde who were arrested for sodomy and the Ancient Greeks who were Ancient Greek so it's hardly like anyone's denying that, even if their interpretation was that it was Bad. It's not cut and dry.
the Vatican is hoarding almost all history ever written and refuses to let anyone access it,
This one isn't actually complicated, it's just a bizarre misunderstanding (generous interpretation) or an Evangelical conspiracy theory (less generous interpretation) of what the Vatican Apostolic Archive, formerly known as the Vatican Secret Archive, is. They're not "hoarding almost all history ever written" (how would that work?). It's an archive of the Church's and the Vatican's records, accounting, correspondence, declarations, decisions, and other various affairs. Over the past several hundred years of dutiful documentary-keeping, that does add up to a lot of history about the development of European politics, culture, and colonization! There are in fact two archives; one which has been accessible to scholars since 1881, and one which is owned unilaterally by the Pope and only extremely rarely opened for any sort of access to outsiders. John Paul II actually made it easier for researchers to access those archives, though "easier" does not mean "easy" and is still very much at the Pope's discretion. However, they are archives pertaining to the Pope's and Church's affairs, not all of human history.
the original biographies of the Sons of Liberty were all works of fiction (like Washington and the apple tree),
True! But also a little complicated. The story about Washington and the cherry tree is complete fiction, and we know who to blame for it: Mason Locke "Parson" Weems, who wrote his famous biography of Washington right after Washington died and the nation was clamoring for tributes to him. He was kind of shameless about writing for the masses things that would sell. But at the same time, it was part of the myth-making of the new nation, part of a very common process at the time of nearly deifying Washington. But it is also true that we do in fact have a lot of letters and diaries written directly by these guys. We don't need to rely on Weems for fanciful stories about them, even if they have entered into the mythology-building of the US as a nation.
Greek and Roman statues were painted but the people who discovered them found it garish so they stripped the paint off,
Have you ever seen what happens to painted stone when left out in the elements over time? The paint chips off. Being exposed to the elements or buried in the dirt for hundreds or thousands of years does a number on the painted exterior of a statue. Here's a Jesuit scholar from 1913 lamenting this: "It is a notorious fact that the remains of colour fade very fast from marbles that are exposed to the light after centuries of burial and concealment. It is the universal experience of classical archaeologists. A French explorer describes some colours vanishing from sarcophagi found at Carthage "comme de la fumĂ©e" [like smoke]. Add to this the perfectly intelligible cleaning consequent on first discovery in the earth, and the still more disastrous and less pardonable washings with acid that, until recent years, were the fate of all classical statues. Even still another risk has to be remembered, the taking of casts [âŠ] Add these fates together, and say whether their total does not offer an explanation for a prejudiced view." Honestly, as Gisela M. A. Richter (1944) says, "The fact that any color at all remains is really more remarkable than that it has disappeared in the majority of cases." Greek and Roman statues, probably even marble statues, were painted! Yes! But there was probably little paint remaining even when the Renaissance sculptors and art collectors got ahold of them. And while the discoverers deliberately stripping off the paint because they decided it should not have been there is one potential reason (note the reference to acid-washing), and the pure white marble was a very ideologically-loaded Enlightment-era aesthetic highlighting the purity of the form, and 1700s-1800s English archaeologists and antiquarians had vicious debates over whether the marble statues were painted like the fate of their cultural hegemony rested on it, "removing the paint for its garishness" was not even close to the primary reason the colored paint does not remain. These are some resources about the Gods in Color exhibition that did experimental reconstructions of the colors of some statues.
DaVinci invented a tank,
Leonardo da Vinci drew designs for many devices, including a war machine that does resemble a modern tank! It's frequently described (with hedging descriptions) like "has been seen as a prototype of a tank." But there's no evidence that it was ever built, and it's unclear if the wheels and gear system would have worked. Can he be said to have "invented a tank"? I guess it depends on your definition of "invented."
Lancelot is a fanfiction OC,
This is either a flippant or deeply disingenuous way to describe the origins, evolution, and recording of King Arthur mythology, its use in literature and nationalist propaganda, and the way this is different from the way fanfiction interacts with a canon. @chimaerakitten knows much more about this than I do.
and the Catholic Church was founded after numerous other Christian churches and proceeded to burn the holy books that didnât support their version (like the Gospel of Judas, which establishes that the âbetrayalâ was Jesusâs plan because how was he supposed to die as planned, and they plotted it together).
Ohhhh boy it's complicated. I am out of energy and by god it is late but there is a reason that books and books and books have been written about the history of Christianity, the early schisms, the creation of the canon, Gnosticism, and the origins of the Catholic Church.
Basically: if it can be summed up in one sentence as a "gotcha!" it is probably More Complicated Than That.
OP, you deserve many medals for not simply having many of the replies to this post become your supervillain origin story. Sympathy from the very bottom of my soul.
You know you've fucked up when you go to a doctor and the thing you have wrong with you has been named after an occupation that isn't a thing anymore. Like imagine a doctor looking at you and going "yeah you've got ox-drawn ploughman's disease. We don't even test for that anymore. Yeah the reason you've never heard of it is because the last known case was in 1927 and happened to some guy who was like 98 years old and didn't believe in modern medicine of the time. What the fuck have you been up to."
Here in Sweden we have a pretty active larping community and many of them have a historical setting. I remember a story of a really awesome WW2 larp where, unfortunately, one of the participants hadn't removed his boots for three days straight and it rained the whole time. His feet suffered so much that he had to be taken to the hospital, which was a sight to behold. See, this guy covered in mud and wearing authentic WW2 gear had managed to get an incredibly historically correct case of trench foot. From a trench.
Peer reviewed! Too good to leave!
Update!
NOT A HUMAN BONE
Fuck you, City of Ur!
If you're dumb enough to buy a cartload of copper this weekend, you're a big enough schmuck to come to Ea-Nasir's Imported Metals!
Bad deals! Low grade copper! Thieves!
If you think you're gonna find a bargain at Ea-Nasir's, you can kiss my ass!
It's our belief that you're such a stupid motherfucker you'll fall for this bullshit! Guaranteed!
If you find a better deal, shove it up your ugly ass! You heard us right, shove it up your ugly ass!
Bring your deposit, bring your sealed tablet, bring your messenger! We'll send him back!
That's right, we'll send your messenger back through enemy territory!Because at Ea-Nasir's, you're fucked six ways from Sunday!
Take a hike to Ea-Nasir's, home of challenge pissing! That's right, challenge pissing!
How does it work? If you can piss six feet in the air straight up and not get wet, you get no down payment!
Don't wait, don't delay, don't fuck with us, or we'll turn you into a eunuch!
Only at Ea-Nasir's, the only merchant that tells you to fuck off!
Hurry up, asshole! This event ends the minute after you make a donation to the palace, and it better not bounce or you're a dead motherfucker!
Go to hell! Ea-Nasir's Metals: Sumer's filthiest, and exclusive home of the meanest sons of bitches in Mesopotamia! Guaranteed!
I'm sorry I had to do this. I couldn't not make this sound happen
2,300-Year-Old Plush Bird from the Altai Mountains of Siberia, c.400-300 BCE: this figure was crafted with a felt body and reindeer-fur stuffing, all of which remains intact
This plush bird was sealed within the frozen barrows of Pazyryk, Siberia, for more than two millennia, where a unique microclimate enabled it to be preserved. The permafrost ice lense formation that runs below the barrows provided an insulating layer, preventing the soil from heating during the summer and allowing it to quickly freeze during the winter; these conditions produced a separate microclimate within the stone walls of the barrows themselves, thereby aiding in the preservation of the artifacts inside.
This is just one of the many well-preserved artifacts that have been found at Pazyryk. These artifacts are attributed to the Scythian/Altaic cultures.
Currently housed at the Hermitage Museum.
There's a whole flight of these!
@elodieunderglass
Thank you so much! I also like making plushes (for my children) and this feels like the massive continuity of storks. How lovely and long the thread of human connection is. ïżŒ
Roman mosaic floor discovered under a vineyard in Negrar di Valpolicella, Veneto.
#something about this really gets to me #how if you get enough dirt on your floor it just becomes the ground #and eventually someone is trying to farm in your living room
It official!
Iâm going to grad school in the fall! Archaeology degree #2 here I come!
If anyone has advice regarding doing a masters in mortuary archaeology, please share! Iâm nervous about the move overseas, but super excited to get into this specialty!!
A colourful Thermopolium in Pompeii , Regio V, at the time of its discovery (2019) The amphorae, in the same place where they were placed at the time of the volcano's eruption, contained the last delivery to the owners of this ancient food and drink stall. The painting depicting a dog clearly suggests that it was the watchdog of the bar owners, another victim of Vesuvius.
It's so beautiful đ
What do ancient Greeks, Romans, geologists, and newspaper editors have in common?
We all love a good column
You all need to see how beautiful this stratigraphic column is
đđđ
900 Artifacts From Ming Dynasty Shipwrecks Found in South China Sea
The trove of objectsâincluding pottery, porcelain, shells and coinsâwas found roughly a mile below the surface.
Underwater archaeologists in China have recovered more than 900 artifacts from two merchant vessels that sank to the bottom of the South China Sea during the Ming dynasty.
The ships are located roughly a mile below the surface some 93 miles southeast of the island of Hainan, reports the South China Morning Postâs Kamun Lai. They are situated about 14 miles apart from one another.
During three phases over the past year, researchers hauled up 890 objects from the first vessel, including copper coins, pottery and porcelain, according to a statement from Chinaâs National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA). Thatâs just a small fraction of the more than 10,000 items found at the site. Archaeologists suspect the vessel was transporting porcelain from Jingdezhen, China, when it sank.
The team recovered 38 items from the second ship, including shells, deer antlers, porcelain, pottery and ebony logs that likely originated from somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Archaeologists think the ships operated during different parts of the Ming dynasty, which lasted from 1368 to 1644.
Many of the artifacts came from the Zhengde period of the Ming dynasty, which spanned 1505 to 1521. But others may be older, dating back to the time of Emperor Hongzhi, who reigned from 1487 to 1505, as Chris Oberholtz reported last year.
Archaeologists used manned and unmanned submersibles to collect the artifacts and gather sediment samples from the sea floor. They also documented the wreck sites with high-definition underwater cameras and a 3D laser scanner.
The project was a collaboration between the National Center for Archaeology, the Chinese Academy of Science and a museum in Hainan.
âThe discovery provides evidence that Chinese ancestors developed, utilized and traveled to and from the South China Sea, with the two shipwrecks serving as important witnesses to trade and cultural exchanges along the ancient Maritime Silk Road,â says Guan Qiang, deputy head of the NCHA, in the agencyâs statement.
During the Ming dynasty, Chinaâs population doubled, and the country formed vital cultural ties with the West. Ming porcelain, with its classic blue and white color scheme, became an especially popular export. China also exported silk and imported new foods, including peanuts and sweet potatoes.
The period had its own distinctive artistic aesthetic. As the Smithsonianâs National Museum of Asian Art writes, âPalace painters excelled in religious themes, moralizing narrative subjects, auspicious bird-and-flower motifs and large-scale landscape compositions.â
The shipwreck treasures arenât the only recent discoveries in the South China Sea, according to CBS Newsâ Stephen Smith. Just last month, officials announced the discovery of a World War II-era American Navy submarine off the Philippine island of Luzon.
By Sarah Kuta.
Thread on the excavation and such on bluesky here
Is wikipedia a good source, and are there other free online sites where I can learn about Mesoamerican history
Take wikipedia with a grain of salt. Always check the citations to see if they are citing good sources or wonky websites.
I recommend searching Google Scholar as they are often easily accessible journal articles, book chapters, and sometimes even entire books. But again, make sure these are reputable publications from known journals, publishers, or academic institutions.
For whatever it's worth, I prefer JSTOR (hi @jstor my beloved) to Google Scholar when it comes to looking for peer reviewed literature. Google Scholar will often show you results that are then behind a paywall, which you may not have access to if you don't belong to an academic institution. With JSTOR you get 100 free articles a month, and pretty much everything that turns up in your search results will be accessible. You can get whole books from there too.
Identify some key words for whatever you're interested in within Mesoamerican culture and see where that takes you. JSTOR also has a related works feature that will show up once you click on an article, so you can follow a trail from a publication you really liked.
The downside to scholarly research is that it can sometimes be difficult to read, but librarians at your local library can be great sources for finding reputable books that are written for more general audiences.
-Reid
tis the season to remember Medjed aka The Smiter, an invisible egyptian deity with laser eyes and nonbinary swagger:
rotating them gently in my mind as they do a spiffy little dance number
please know that at any given moment Medjeh is occupying prime real estate in my brain as they perform an emotive interpretive dance based on the following artistic depiction:
Ok so I looked up Medjed, and apparently they look like that because they are supposed to be invisible but like, how exactly does one illustrate something that's invisible? So it's possible that the Egyptians, unsure of what else to, put a sheet over them to try and depict the fact that they're invisible in a way that could still be depicted.
So, with this in mind, since they are supposedly unable to perceived, one may wonder if they are Among Us as we speak.
Also note that, literally every other character in egyptian mythology and art is consistently painted en-profile. everyone, from the slaves to the gods is en-profile. But Medjed isnt, Medjed is looking at the observer Always at the observer. Medjed might be the first character in the narrative tradition to break the fourth wall. (its certainly the oldest I am aware of).
Anthropomorphic stone stelae or statue menhirs from TyritĂĄke, an ancient Greek town of the Bosporan Kingdom, situated in the eastern part of Crimea.
i met one of my aunt's archaeologist friends/colleagues earlier today & he was telling me about legends that not too far from here there's the ghosts of a roman legion that people see walking up the cliff towards the edge of the sea and then off the edge of the cliff and onwards, because the coastline has receded so much since roman times that the 'land' they're used to walking on goes on far past the point it falls into the sea today. and like. OUGH. I don't even strictly believe in that type of ghost but I'm Obsessed with this image of them still interacting with landscape that has crumbled into the sea & completely disappeared over the thousands of years since they were alive. ghost landscapes Real