.

[neshamama]

monterey pop (1968)

[oupacademic]

Suzannah Lipscomb, the author of The Voices of Nîmes, explains why primary sources from women are so important. 

Gifs created by Mara Sandroff for Oxford University Press

[probablyasocialecologist]

What If We Called It the ‘Flax Age’ Instead of the ‘Iron Age’?

Correcting the Historical Bias Against Domestic Materials

Archaeology has traditionally had a fundamental bias against fabric. Fabrics are after all highly perishable, withering away within months or years, and only rarely leaving traces behind for those coming millennia later to find. Archaeologists—predominantly male—gave ancient ages names like “Iron” and “Bronze,” rather than “Pottery” or “Flax.” This implies that metal objects were the principal features of these times, when they are simply often the most visible and long-lasting remnants. Technologies using perishable materials, such as wood and textiles, may well have been more pivotal in the daily lives of the people who lived through them, but evidence of their existence has, for the most part, been absorbed back into the earth.

There are exceptions, of course, and traces can and do survive, usually thanks to an unusual climate: freezing, damp anaerobic conditions or extremely dry ones. The climate in Egypt, for example, is ideal for preserving all manner of usually perishable things and we subsequently know far more about ancient Egyptian textiles than those from most other regions. As archaeology has matured and diversified, scholars have increasingly looked for—and found—evidence of fine, complex textiles stretching farther back than anyone would have guessed. Their beauty and the skill needed to make them suggest a very different image of our earliest forebears than the club-wielding, simpleminded thugs of popular imagination.

[protoslacker]

““The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” an essay Le Guin wrote in 1986, disputes the idea that the spear was the earliest human tool, proposing that it was actually the receptacle. Questioning the spear’s phallic, murderous logic, instead Le Guin tells the story of the carrier bag, the sling, the shell, or the gourd. In this empty vessel, early humans could carry more than can be held in the hand and, therefore, gather food for later. Anyone who consistently forgets to bring their tote bag to the supermarket knows how significant this is. And besides, Le Guin writes, the idea that the spear came before the vessel doesn’t even make sense. “Sixty-five to eighty percent of what human beings ate in those regions in Paleolithic, Neolithic, and prehistoric times was gathered; only in the extreme Arctic was meat the staple food.” Not only is the carrier bag theory plausible, it also does meaningful ideological work — shifting the way we look at humanity’s foundations from a narrative of domination to one of gathering, holding, and sharing.”

—

Siobhan Leddy in The Outline. We should all be reading more Ursula Le Guin

Her novels imagine other worlds, but her theory of fiction can help us better live in this one.

There’s a link to a PDF of Le Guin’s essay here.

[its-a-newt]

How to change the course of human history

The story we have been telling ourselves about our origins is wrong, and perpetuates the idea of inevitable social inequality. David Graeber and David Wengrow ask why the myth of 'agricultural revolution' remains so persistent, and argue that there is a whole lot more we can learn from our ancestors.

[class-struggle-anarchism]

Pastness is a mode by which persons are persuaded to act in the present in ways they might not otherwise act. Pastness is a tool persons use against each other. Pastness is a central element in the socialization of individuals, in the maintenance of group solidarity, in the establishment of or challenge to social legitimation. Pastness therefore is preeminently a moral phenomenon, therefore a political phenomenon, always a contemporary phenomenon. That is of course why it is so inconstant. Since the real world is constantly changing, what is relevant to contemporary politics is necessarily constantly changing. Ergo, the content of pastness necessarily constantly changes. Since, however, pastness is by definition an assertion of the constant past, no one can ever admit that any particular past has ever changed or could possibly change. The past is normally considered to be inscribed in stone and irreversible. The real past, to be sure, is indeed inscribed in stone. The social past, how we understand this real past, on the other hand, is inscribed at best in soft clay.

Immanuel Wallerstein, The Construction of Peoplehood: Racism, Nationalism, Ethnicity, 1988 (via class-struggle-anarchism)

[rosierainy]

The Secret Garden (1993)

[lovevoltaireusapart]

[drowsyspace]

Yoko Ono, Grapefruit

[urmotheratemydog]

On Saturday 14 February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mt Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without a trace.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (dir. Peter Weir, 1975)

[peelingmandarins]

TIN-GLAZED LONDON EARTHENWARE PLATE INSCRIBED AND DATED BLUE, 1661

[standingatthefence]

Hans Breder | Nearness - 3 of 3, 7 minutes 12 seconds (featuring Ana Mendieta), 1971, Film Stills

[klept0cracy-deactivated20140208]

[its-a-newt]

Ana Mendieta was a Cuban born artist (1948-1985) who used her body to deal with issues of spirituality and cultural heritage. This photograph, called Flowers on Body (1973), was the first of her Silueta series of photographs depicting earth/body sculptures

[myfairylily]

‘Apollo pursuing Daphne’ (detail) by French painter René-Antoine Houasse,1677, Palace of Versailles, France. Daphne is a naid in Greek mythology, a nymph associated with fountains, wells and springs.

[neshamama]

irene hardwicke olivieri, “resting place, clark island,” 2018, oil on clayboard

[fleurdulys]

With goodly greenish locks, all loose ‘untied’ - Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

[ophelia-thinks]

[avvocarlo]

three guesses what these are for