#material culture

[shitacademicswrite]

Someone solved the Lorem Ipsum mystery!!

[piizunn]

Colonizer Classics, 2024

Glass seed beads, beeswax, nylon

[clove-pinks]

Look, I just really want the cool hunting frock to complement my book knowledge, being a great museum animatronic sounds wonderful, actually!

[absolutewonderwoman]

TW: Violence

The Story of Khaled al-Asaad and the importance of Cultural Preservation.

Hearing Khaled al-Asaad’s story about five years ago when I first started down my archaeology path changed my entire outlook on the discipline.

al-Asaad was the director of antiquities at the ruins of Palmyra (UNESCO World Heritage Site) in Syria for 40 years, before his retirement in 2003. Even after his retirement, he continued to work with antiquities and museums until his death. In 2015, at age 81, he was taken hostage by Islamic State (IS) militants. He was publicly beheaded, his body hung from a lamp post. He was executed for refusing to cooperate and disclose the location of priceless artifacts. According to a BBC report on the potential retrieval of his body in 2021, three of his sons and his son-in-law, all archaeologists, brought artifacts from the museum in a nearby town, Tadmor, to Damascus to protect them. Asaad refused to leave his home, reportedly saying “I am from Palmyra, and I will stay here even if they kill me.” (article 2021). The BBC quotes UNESCO’s Director General, Irina Bokova: “His work will live on far beyond the reach of these extremists. […] They murdered.a great man, but they will never silence history.” (article 2015)

al-Asaad devoted his entire life to this site and its protection, and was willing to die to protect it. After 10 years, efforts to re-establish the site as a visiting destination and for future archaeological research are underway. (article 2025)

al-Asaad is an inspiration to archaeologists and archaeology students around the world. 10 years later, his story is still being told. I think about him often, I see his legacy everywhere. I thought of him with emergency archaeology efforts at the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022. I have been thinking of him a lot recently, with continued disregard for cultural heritage and international law in Israel’s attacks in Lebanon and throughout the genocide in Gaza. The destruction of cultural heritage is erasure of history, it’s used to control narratives and erase what doesn’t fit within them. It is used to attempt to erase human existence and cultural continuity. This post was inspired by a CBC report on attempts to preserve books and manuscripts on the history of the Palestinian people and Gaza city.

Archaeologists and other cultural preservationists frequently put themselves in harms way to document and protect cultural heritage for the betterment of humanity. In an age of repression and violence, it’s essential to think about people like Khaled al-Asaad and the lengths they are willing to go to to protect material and cultural history.

[magnetothemagnificent]

I think because of the nature of preservation, because things that were used less tend to be preserved more, many people, from enthusiasts of history to the uninformed masses, tend to have this image of humans of history with wealth and abundance as the default. But if you look at contemporary human culture- not just the remnants in the archaeological record- you see that the default state for most humans for most of time was that of struggle, of poverty, of toil, and of work. Most of the most iconic cultural foods and dress from around the world are that of peasants, that have become so ubiquitous that they have been adopted by the higher class. The fact of the matter is that humans have never had it easy. We've always had to struggle to survive just like every other living thing on this planet. Most people in history were poor people just trying to get by, leaving their mark in history not by jewels and palaces left behind, but by the culture they passed on to their descendants. The average person alive today is more similar to the average person alive in the past, to peasants and slaves and servants and labourers and craftspeople and merchants and farmers, not to the nobles and royals we see depicted in opulent tombs and portraits and statues. Chances are, the food you're eating or the clothes you're wearing or the language you're using was influenced in some way by the struggles and scarcity of humans that came before you. The intangible culture they left behind may not be made of gold or precious jewels, but it was used, and continues to be used, instead of sitting behind glass in a museum or gathering dust in an attic somewhere. And I think that's valuable.

[nocnitsa]

[grimmborg-in-the-bog]

Am i a 10th century baddie yet?

After four years of having my viking clothes mostly done, i've finally been made to finish them. My basics were all done back then, but this is more of a fancy summery fit that took a lot more work (especially the weaving)

Dress is based on the Vangsnes pleated dress, it's a super thin wool dyed with madder (the colour is a little uneven sadly)

Woven band is from a similar grave to vangsnes, but in Køstrup, because the vangsnes band is all swastikas

My brooches are NOT historical but just what i have rn :(

Half the beads are made by me, the other half were bought. it might be a bit much ngl but i felt very fancy

[acrossthewavesoftime]

A curse that comes with Knowing History, and harbouring a particular interest in material culture, is that you can never watch a documentary, film, or series without paying attention to the tiniest details, which will inevitably ruin your viewing impression.

Watching a documentary about Louis XIV for Reasons, one of the scenes recreated by actors is the last illness of the Grand Dauphin, seen here drinking a fortifying bouillon from what would not be the type of bowl used in these circumstances in the early 18th century. That would likely have been an écuelle (a specific soup bowl that often featured a lid which could be converted into a plate), not this thing:

Thankfully, Monsieur le Dauphin here tilts his bowl of bouillon enough to allow a peek underrneath:

That is no 18th century porcelain mark. That is a modern Seltmann-Weiden mark, likely second half of the 20th century, possibly pre- German Reunification:

I put a couple of filters over the image to make the mark slightly more visible. Image of the reference Seltmann-Weiden mark found here.

For all ye who want the really very absolutely authentic soup bowls in use at Château de Meudon in the time of the Grand Dauphin, you will have to look for second-hand or new old stock options because Seltmann-Weiden has discontinued the Theresia/Heimatland series some time ago, but they are definitively still around, presumably because the Grand Dauphin's household, having been dissolved after his death, has flooded the second hand market with Seltmann-Weiden crockery:

I will leave whoever was in charge of the props that though: the Grand Dauphin was married to Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria, and Seltmann-Weiden is a Bavarian firm, so if this was an intentional decision, I have to say it is a nice touch. Blue and white porcelain was much en vogue then, but this here pattern reminds me a tad too much of Meissen's iconic Zwiebelmuster, which was only created in 1730, 19 years after the Grand Dauphin's death. I get that it is not economically feasible to procure authentic surviving 18th century porcelain for filming a few scenes for a documentary. But still. This choice of soup bowl is not as historically informed as it could have been.

TL;DR: I beg you, never watch anything remotely historically-themed with me.