……………………

JBB: An Artblog!

PR's Tumblrdome
tumblr dot com
RMH

pixel skylines
Sade Olutola

@theartofmadeline
d e v o n
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
dirt enthusiast
Show & Tell
i don't do bad sauce passes

izzy's playlists!
Cosimo Galluzzi

Love Begins

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Three Goblin Art
DEAR READER

seen from Malaysia

seen from Türkiye

seen from Norway
seen from New Zealand

seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from Mexico

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from T1
seen from United States
@dragonzair
……………………
Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.
Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.”
“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”
“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”
It’s just.
50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.
i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok
One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.
I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.
Then a mother looked at their findings and said “yeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.”
Omg the ancient child proofing add on tho lol
I remember years ago on a forum (email list, that’s how old) a woman talking about going to a museum, and seeing among the women’s household objects a number of fired clay items referred to as “prayer objects”. (Apparently this sort of labeling is not uncommon when you have something that every house has and appears to be important, but no-one knows what it is.) She found a docent and said, “Excuse me, but I think those are drop spindles.” “Why would you think that, ma’am?” “Because they look just like the ones my husband makes for me. See?” They got all excited, took tons of pictures and video of her spinning with her spindle. When she was back in the area a few years later, they were still on display, but labeled as drop spindles.
So ancient Roman statues have some really weird hairstyles. Archaeologists just couldn’t figure them out. They didn’t have hairspray or modern hair bands, or elastic at all, but some of these things defied gravity better than Marge Simpson’s beehive.
Eventually they decided, wigs. Must be wigs. Or maybe hats. Definitely not real hair.
A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”
“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”
So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.
She now works as a hair archaeologist and I believe she has a YouTube channel now where she recreates forgotten hairstyles, using only what they had available at the time.
Okay, I greatly appreciate the discussion here about the need for interdisciplinary work in academia, and the need to reach outside of academia and talk to specialists when looking at the uses of tools, but somehow people always have to turn this into a “gotcha!” where the stuffy academics get shown up (even though this very thread shows some archeologists reaching out to craftspeople to ask about how tools are used because they recognize the need for that knowledge and expertise).
“A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”
“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”
So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.”
Did they? Did they really? The archeologists all laughed at the plucky hairdresser and then she proved her theory by simply recreating the styles?
See, what actually happened is that Janet Stephens (the hairdresser/hair archeologist in this post), who published an article about her theory in The Journal of Roman Archeology in 2008, spent about 6 years of research pursuing her idea that perhaps Roman hairstyles were sewn hair and not wigs. She did both hands-on experimentation sewing the actual hair, and more traditional research reading through a ton of sources. This is coming from an interview done with Stephens herself:
“Lots and lots of reading, poring over exhibition catalogs, back searching the footnotes to the reading and reading some more! It helped that I am fluent in Italian and, in 2006, I took a German for reading class. Working in my spare time, the research took 6 years.”
“I am an independent researcher, but my husband is a professor of Italian at the Johns Hopkins University, so I have library privileges there. We are friendly with colleagues in the Classics/Archaeology department and at the Walters Art Museum. They were kind enough to send me articles and clippings, read drafts and help with some picky Latin, though I try not to impose.”
(Source: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/14729)
Wow, so people in the Classics/Archeology department and at the art museum sent her articles and clippings and HELPED her with her research as opposed to laughing at her in their gentleman’s club! It’s almost like people working the archeology/art history these days aren’t all stuffy old white guys from the 1950’s!
Stephens also presented her work at the Archeological Institute of America Conference, and according to the interview I cited above, it was apparently well received: “It seemed to create a a lot of buzz and people said they enjoyed it. It’s not every conference where you go to the poster session and see “heads on pikestaffs”!”
Like, there’s plenty to be said about the ivory tower and the need for interdisciplinary work, and the racism/sexism etc. that newer researchers are working against, but framing this story as “hairdresser totally shows up the archeologists with her common sense!” is needlessly shitting on the academics involved here (and the humanities in general have been struggling to maintain funding at many universities in the US, they don’t need to be further attacked), as well as greatly over-simplifying and downplaying Janet Stephens’ achievement. I think it’s more respectful to acknowledge the six years of work that she put into the project than to tell the story like she just sewed some hair and then all the archeologists’ monocles popped out.
So many people never learned to live with harmless discomfort at any point in their lives and holy fuck does it show
“But I wanna know!” You’re gonna have to learn to be ok with not knowing some things, especially when those things involve personal details about strangers that they’re not comfortable sharing.
“But it’s confusing!” If you take the time to educate yourself it’ll no longer be confusing. Otherwise you’re just gonna have to learn to be ok with being confused.
“But it’s weird!” You probably do weird things all the time. Everyone does weird things sometimes. Life goes on.
“But it scares me!” Is it hurting you? No? You’ll be fine. Being scared and being harmed are not always the same thing. Learn to tell the difference and then act accordingly.
“But I want it!” And I want a million dollars. You can’t always get what you want.
Addendum:
"But it makes me uncomfortable!" The world is an uncomfortable place and complete strangers are not required to fix that for you. Learning to endure harmless discomfort is a life skill for existing in public.
"But I don't like it!" There's plenty of things in the world and not all of them are fun or enjoyable or For You. This applies to everyone and we all have to deal with that in a mature fashion.
"But I want to do the thing!" You can't always do what you want. Most people learn this in preschool. Wanting something does not entitle you to be inconsiderate to the people around you.
the jb miis!!!!!!!!
oh my god.
THIS IS SO IMPORTANT TO ME
lionheart
I just wish that I had been more careful with my best friend because I would do anything to get them back. Them/her.
"[...]Something that is vital to note is this; despite the fact that many of the assumptions of the ‘humans are the real virus’ rhetoric are shared with eco-fascists, not everyone who has spread it or internalised it is necessarily a fascist. Reality is sometimes difficult to parse, especially when so much is happening with such frequency. The difficulty is compounded by modern media, which bombards everybody with a deluge of barely intelligible nonsense composed of equal parts guesswork, blatant lies, misrepresentations, and government stenography. The baseline intuitiveness of the eco-fascist assumptions at work are easy to understand. For an individual lacking a systematic critique but searching for answers, it can be easy to adopt elements of this thought – this means that even people who would ostensibly baulk at the idea of outright genocide being discussed openly, such as liberals or social democrats, are able to buy into and spread the auto-virality meme without ever truly realising the dangerousness that underwrites the entire concept. So what’s the trick? How can this horrible concept become so natural that even relatively pleasant individuals can spread it and accept the logic at its base?"
Eco-fascism: The Rhetoric of the Virus - Jay Fraser
sometimes I remember that Cersei and Tyrion are chasing and earning the Masculinity that is denied to them (Cersei because she was born a woman, Tyrion because he was born disabled) by becoming increasingly more Violent, exactly like the Manly Men who abused them (Tywin, Robert), and i feel like I need a cigarette. and I don't even smoke
and then I remember Jaime was already pretty much there, in the perfect Male Spot his siblings are currently chasing, by giving his life to become the epitome of Manliness (a knight who perpetuates violence upon violence), and then he met someone who was not violent, actually not a man at all, and yet more of a knight he could ever dream to be
one thing about me is that I'm looking stuff up. you mentioned something and I don't know it? I am pulling out my phone and googling that shit. an actor? theoretical physics? a world leader? a vocabulary word? I am on the wikipedia page as we speak
TONY TONY CHOPPER in One Piece Season 2
It’s only just beginning...
NAMI and VIVI ONE PIECE season 2
Is it true for a country as well? Can Drum Kingdom be saved? As long as there is someone to carry it on.
ONE PIECE LIVE ACTION S2.E1 ∙ The Beginning and the End
I would never trust my life to a warrior who claimed never to have been afraid.
One Piece (2023-) S2EP5: WAX ON, WAX OFF
My favorite one yet- heres the creator