Archaeology with a side order of fiber crafts

Disabled archaeologist, mostly European prehistory and all things Ancient Greece. I also spin and knit and write.

[en-theos]

something i get increasingly frustrated about with historical work is the tendency to go 'most of our sources are from athens and we know most about athens therefore i will focus on athens' but then the chapter is named like. this and that phenomenon in ancient greece. way to uphold the athenian mirage!!1! fortunately there are also many scholars right now working on not just other regions and their cultural landscapes but also. the inherent bias and projection and misconceptions we have inherited from athens and everyone working from athens. and that work is hard because indeed much less is excavated and much less is there to be excavated and the textual sources are also scarce but nevertheless the results are so worth it. our ideas on ancient greece are changing every day

[en-theos]

#i should read more about places that aren't athens#but yeah a lot of stuff is athens in disguise so thats a little tricky @est-pulcher

some stuff!

Aegina/Localism/Religion

Polinskai︠a︡, I. (with Jameson, M. H.). (2013). A local history of Greek polytheism: Gods, people and the land of Aigina, 800-400 BCE. Brill. -> full on methodological reconsideration of greek religion as we know it through the athenian lens, with the Dorian island Aegina as case study

E. Aston, Mixanthropoi: Animal-human hybrid deities in Greek religion. Liège, 2001.

J. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. Chicago and London, 2002.

Thessaly

Aston, E. (2024). Blessed Thessaly: The Identities of a Place and Its People from the Archaic Period to the Hellenistic. Liverpool University Press.

Mili, M. (2015). Religion and society in ancient Thessaly. University Press.

Arcadia

J. Roy, “On Seeming Backward: How the Arkadians Did It.” in Sociable Man: Essays on Ancient Greek Social Behaviour in Honour of Nick Fisher, ed. S. D. Lambert,    Swansea, 2011, p. 67-86.

T. H. Nielsen, and J. Roy (eds.). Defining Ancient Arkadia. Acts of the Copenhagen Polis Centre 6. Copenhagen, 1999.

myth and landscape/regionalism

G. Hawes. Myths on the Map: The Storied Landscapes of Ancient Greece. Oxford, 2017.

R. Buxton, Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology. Cambridge, 1994.

i haven't researched northwest Greece or the western peloponnese much yet, so i don't have any scholarship on those regions soz. let alone the islands or colonial greek regions

[thefibrarchaeologist]

May I also add, from memory: C. Morgan, Early Greek States beyond the Polis (London 2003)

and, a little bit older: S. E. Alcock, R. Osborne (eds.), Placing the Gods. Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in Ancient Greece (Oxford 1994)

Both more focused on pre-classical periods, since that's what I'm most interested in, but might be useful

[dexfiles]

here is a star for everyone who’s not feeling their best today (🌟)

[en-theos]

something i get increasingly frustrated about with historical work is the tendency to go 'most of our sources are from athens and we know most about athens therefore i will focus on athens' but then the chapter is named like. this and that phenomenon in ancient greece. way to uphold the athenian mirage!!1! fortunately there are also many scholars right now working on not just other regions and their cultural landscapes but also. the inherent bias and projection and misconceptions we have inherited from athens and everyone working from athens. and that work is hard because indeed much less is excavated and much less is there to be excavated and the textual sources are also scarce but nevertheless the results are so worth it. our ideas on ancient greece are changing every day

[twirld]

Augustus of Prima Porta (Augustus -Octavian- was the founder of the Roman Empire and the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in AD 14)

[dilutedh2so4]

Then from Phrygia to Sparta came Paris, who was the judge of the goddesses - so the Argives have the story. He came with his garments flowered in gold and his dress blazoned with barbaric gems. He loved Helen and was loved by her.

Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides (trans. Walker)

[thefibrarchaeologist]

#I´d love to know what the Greek says for barbaric gems#<- prev#the passage in greek [per murray/perseus] is < ἀνθηρὸς μὲν εἱμάτων στολῇ χρυσῷ δὲ λαμπὸς#interestingly enough... euripedes/agamemnon doesn't even use paris' name here!#instead says something along the lines of “That Man Who Judged The Goddesses”

And interestingly, if you look at the passage in total, there are no barbaric gems at all - instead it´s barbarian luxury (ἀνθηρὸς μὲν εἱμάτων στολῇ/χρυσῷ δὲ λαμπρός, βαρβάρῳ χλιδήματι) which makes a lot more sense, given Greek attitudes to Eastern cultures.

[theprofessional-amateur]

Item and letter never reached their destination in Denmark because Royal Navy seized cargo ship in 1807

Omg

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Visit Faroe Islands (@visitfaroeislands)

This is so freaking cool!!

[dilutedh2so4]

Then from Phrygia to Sparta came Paris, who was the judge of the goddesses - so the Argives have the story. He came with his garments flowered in gold and his dress blazoned with barbaric gems. He loved Helen and was loved by her.

Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides (trans. Walker)

[en-theos]

Hi! I have a question about Eleusis and Demeter. Do archeologists believe that Demeter originated and Eleusis, and then her cult spread to other city-states?

archaeologists believe there is literally no way to tell where she originated! apart from like. Greece. We think. This is one of those pesky 'we have no clear first/local attestation of this thing so nothing is conclusive' historical issues.

mycenaean period

i (and dear colleagues more well versed in linear A and B) go into depth here about how Demeter and Persephone, unlike other Olympian gods like Poseidon, Dionysus, Ares, etc etc are not explicitly mentioned by name in the palace records. some scholars argue for a few inscriptions of da-ma-te on Crete, which would rule out Eleusis immediately, but these are highly contested. In linear B there is 𐀯𐀵𐀡𐀴𐀛𐀊, si-to-po-ti-ni-ja, "Lady of the Grain", and the Wanassai, the two goddesses, a cult term used later for Demeter and Persephone/Kore, especially at Eleusis, but since we only have that term, we can't identify the goddesses in question.

A god is made up of a core name, a cultic function, attributes and characteristics, and all of these can be flexible to a point while still recognizably representing said deity. thus, artemis can be a city fertility goddess sporting a dozen tits (or bull's testicles or fruits or or or) while still being Artemis because the name is right there. an epithet that means nothing but 'hey these ladies are a pair' sadly isn't that. I am kind of a hardass on this point, even to the point where i don't consider the Mycenaean gods the same as the Greek gods even when we can point out name/function/attribute similarities and continuity (i think we just don't know enough yet + the possibly wildly different practices, beliefs and pantheon frameworks make them inherently different), but that's just my preferred side of this scholarly debate, so.

Eleusis

Eleusis clearly has Mycenaean origins: there was a megaron below what is now the Telesterion, the hall of mysteries, and this is somewhat flagged by the fact that in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter there is a royal family living in a megaron to whom Demeter gives exact instructions on where to build her new temple. said megaron, which actually lies beneath said temple, was also clearly used as a cult centre.

we cannot really determine, however, if this was a household cult, to what god it was dedicated (or how many, though a goddess seems most likely going off of the votives found) and what function it served. some scholars do argue that it was already dedicated to Demeter in this period, but the only real argument for that is historical continuity. which, solid point, but it's not evidence. moreover, to answer your specific question, this still doesn't prove that demeter an sich originated here- even if this was already one of her most important cult centres in mycenaean times, we cannot prove it started here.

Grain goddesses

the problem with Demeter is that she fulfills a very core religious function, and on a Panhellenic level is very abstract. she is an agricultural deity- you find those in most ancient agricultural societies. her name is etymologically linked to maternity and the earth- not unlikely and even very nondescript for a mistress of grain. but, it is very likely greek- and therefore we can pinpoint the Greek mainland at the very least, rather than Asia Minor or the Levant. Most likely, Demeter is a panhellenic amalgamation from various more local proto-greek earth and grain goddesses, which got consolidated into a single figure. if that figure found this final form in Eleusis is impossible to say. my money is on team effort- similar consolidations happening in many places at once and finding a consensus over time, with elements being discarded and added in order to find a figure that worked across the board. hence her genericness on a cult level.

myths and rites

two more points which make me believe this is not the case. Demeter features (barely, but still) in Homer's epics, meaning that she was known on a Panhellenic level before Athens and thus Eleusis started playing a larger role in the Greek sphere of influence. She also doesn't feature much in myths in general, many are local (not part of Panhellenic myth cycles) and pertain to her and her daughter/double only.

Secondly: the Thesmophoria, the yearly women-only fertility festival held in her honour. This was actually one of the most universal festivals in the Greek world; although Eleusis was a more solemn affair and nearly, almost, kind of achieved the same Panhellenic status as Olympia and Delphi, it only did so very late in the game. the ubiquity of the Thesmophoria, however, leads me to believe that Demeter was known, worshiped and celebrated across Greece before Eleusis developed itself into an exceptional cult place or the main cult of Demeter. She's a goddess for the people! I think the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and its insistence on the exaltedness of the cult and the blessedness of people initiated into it are an indication that in the 7th-6th century BC Eleusis was still busy making a name for itself. it's promoting the cult!

some scholarship to back this up:

Cosmopoulos, M. B. (2015). Bronze Age Eleusis and the Origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Cambridge University Press. -> about Eleusis in the Mycenaean period. iirc argues vehemently for Demeter being worshipped there and then

Mylonas, G. E. (1961). Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Princeton University Press. -> official archaeological records, the map above is from here

Larson, J. (2007). Ancient Greek Cults: A Guide. Routledge. -> argues for a neolithic Greek origin but does not pinpoint a local cult

Suter, A. (2002). The Narcissus and the pomegranate : an archaeology of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter / Ann Suter. University of Michigan Press. -> full disclosure i do NOT like this book. i think suter employs a circular argument (has a hypothesis, goes and finds evidence that supports that hypothesis, so proves her own hypothesis, discards counter evidence). HOWEVER she does present a lot of the neolithic/bronze age material about grain goddesses/connections to Demeter/Persephone. just. take it as the preludes to these goddesses/the seeds that sprout into what was eventually known as them rather than being them, as Suter does. that's just not how religious development works lol

[doloneia]

not to be a gatekeeper or anything but i wholeheartedly believe that if you cannot appreciate the constant planning, effort, and labor of ancient workers (slaves, farmers, weavers, potters, etc) - you genuinely cannot examine or appreciate antiquity in any meaningful way (besides becoming an example for what NOT to do).

[doloneia]

Because so much of what survives - the impressive works that people think of when they hear “Greece,” “Rome,” “Egypt,” “Sumer,” etc. is not the result of ‘scholars’ but was built off the labor and skills of laborers who were not ‘scholars’ in the modern sense, were not ‘educated’ in the same manner as someone from fucking middle-class USA or whatever, but who were trained and informed about their particular discipline in a way that most of us cannot even begin to fathom. And their labor was built off the unseen efforts of other workers - slaves, farmers, weavers, potters, quarrymen, smiths, etc - with similarly specialized, period-specific knowledge that I think is impossible to fully appreciate if you do not respect blue-collar work and manual labor.

Like, you can say you “know more” than the average person in antiquity - but you don’t. Maybe in a conceptual manner - yeah, we know about distant planets and galaxies, we’ve got germ theory, we have made a collection of the entire human genome, we have walked on the fucking moon - but from the perspective of someone from 500 BCE (if I may be allowed a dash of speculation here), does that matter?

In our industrialized, globalized world, I think we forget the sheer effort that went into everything. The sheer degree of skill needed to create homes, tools, clothing, ceramics, fine jewelry, statues, and everything in-between. The skill, knowledge, and effort that went into everyday subsistence activities, like farming, herding, and weaving; and into other trades such as shipping and manufacturing. These are not mindless tasks, devoid of calculation and forethought; to pretend they are in even the slightest is disingenuous.

I would even go so far as to say it is extremely classist & sexist, because - shocker - people still work in these fields. The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the streets you walk, the buildings you eat and sleep and live in - these did not spawn out of a vacuum. Constant effort - unending, backbreaking labor, time, and skill has gone into the world we walk through today, so people can go on pretending like they’re somehow ‘smarter’ than those who came before them, when the only difference is that we* are able to concentrate on something besides our own survival. something otherwise ‘useless’ for everyday survival, and i say that as an archaeologist. Excavating a Bronze Age brewery does not provide food, it does not provide you with clothes (it actually damages them), it does not give you shelter, it mostly provides you with broken potsherds and a whole lot of dirt destined for floatation. Yes, it requires practical skills too - but many of these are essentially also used, even more frequently, in manual labor and agriculture.

And - in this broken, frightful world - we are so damn lucky** that people can even spare time for this, to learn more about the ancient world. And we are even more lucky that - when we are born with health complications, are disabled, or are faced with diseases like pneumonia, measles, and COVID - that these are not death sentences. Artificial scarcity, corporate greed, and fearmongering can make them so, but there is still that ability to live. To focus on the past, instead of making it to the next day, the next week, the next month.

But - I want to emphasize here - this is all entirely reliant on the work of people who continue to carry out the same manual labor done by countless individuals - enslaved and free - up through antiquity. People whose calculations were their survival, whose understanding of the natural world and local resources made the difference between life and death.

To pretend like we are somehow more knowledgable, more capable, more “advanced” intellectually than those who laid the foundations for the entire fucking world we live in today, is a lie. A smug, disgusting little lie that spits on all we have done as a species (and all the progress we are trying to make) with the idea that “we’ve done it”, we’re “superior,” this idea that only encourages rotting in self-assured apathy while the world burns.

And you cannot appreciate the past when you approach it with false assumptions which are based on nothing except preconcieved notions of modern superiority and the belief that knowledge is both ‘quantifiable’ and absolute. We are just as capable of joy, wisdom, compassion, and love as the ancients; and we are just as susceptible to fear, anger, and hatred as they were. I’m not saying everyone has to know the ins and outs of every ancient industry ever to appreciate the fucking Parthenon, but if someone cannot approach the ancient world with an open mind, a sense of humility, and self-reflection - then I suspect they cannot appreciate the fucking Parthenon.

*When I use the term 'we,' I am referring to individuals who do not specialize in manual labor/blue-collar industries and/or engage in subsistence agriculture.

**I know that these are all very situational and that the management and medicine available to people is inextricable from their class, identity, and nationality. I am merely trying to stress that it is possible. I would be dead without modern medicine; and I know countless others who are the same way.

[doloneia]

the most unrealistic part of the iliad & odyssey is actually every single time they talk about a hecatomb of cattle like its nothing. 100 cows? in this collapsing late bronze age economy? Where Are You Getting These. Who’s Your Cow Dealer. Can I Have Their Address

[doloneia]

hey guys did we all forget that the earliest writing we have from greece is entirely devoted to taxes

[thewavesbrokeontheshore]

Nafplio 2026 film

[fibro-memes]

[animentality]

[narrativerehearsal]

@thefibrarchaeologist I mean, that does include the appendices, which had tables of statistics outputs and photos, and 48 pages of bibliography so the core writing was about 280. By the end the document was so big I had to take mini pauses between tasks because otherwise Word would just hang there and give me a heart attack.

But yes, people just....sit down and write and have been doing so for a very, very long time. Even when they have ADHD that was undiagnosed and unmedicated for 3/4 of the process.

Also, learning to sit down and do a task is a good skill to have. Even if you're writing bullshit, learning to bullshit is good for your brain and passing off every task that takes a modicum of effort to chatgpt is very much not good for your brain. We've all rewritten something to make it use more words and take up more space or searched for some random extra example to ramble about or whatever. That's part of learning to write and also just learning to think for yourself. Don't hand over your entire ability to think to some corporate algorithm. Damn.

[thefibrarchaeologist]

Yeah, appendixes and bibliography stack up fast. Especially if your supervisor makes you print out 377 pages of Excel sheets instead of allowing you to hand them in digitally. Not that I'm still rolling my eyes at that. It didn't drive up the cost either. At all.

(She learned from her mistakes - a friend was able to put her catalogue on either USB or a CD-ROM a few years later. Digitalization in Germany, let me tell you ...)

Anyhow, that's still a lot of work! And we both can say we've done it entirely by ourselves :-) Personally, I'd rather be proud of that than take the easy route (which will backfire anyway, because whatever the AI produces will likely not be factually correct enough to stand up to scrutiny. And if you have to go over it yourself anyway, why not do it from scratch?)

[narrativerehearsal]

^Exactly. I was researching health in three specific populations in medieval Scotland. No AI language model would come up with anything resembling an accurate statement, especially when all of the data was exclusively on my laptop and a decent chunk of the literature was not digitised.

Someone tried to recommend an AI powered tool that 'summarised' articles so you could read more and I looked at it once and that was plenty to know that its summaries were a) wildly inaccurate and b) even if they had been accurate they would still be completely useless to me because I needed a very specific aspect of the results/conclusions.

[animentality]

[narrativerehearsal]

@thefibrarchaeologist I mean, that does include the appendices, which had tables of statistics outputs and photos, and 48 pages of bibliography so the core writing was about 280. By the end the document was so big I had to take mini pauses between tasks because otherwise Word would just hang there and give me a heart attack.

But yes, people just....sit down and write and have been doing so for a very, very long time. Even when they have ADHD that was undiagnosed and unmedicated for 3/4 of the process.

Also, learning to sit down and do a task is a good skill to have. Even if you're writing bullshit, learning to bullshit is good for your brain and passing off every task that takes a modicum of effort to chatgpt is very much not good for your brain. We've all rewritten something to make it use more words and take up more space or searched for some random extra example to ramble about or whatever. That's part of learning to write and also just learning to think for yourself. Don't hand over your entire ability to think to some corporate algorithm. Damn.

[thefibrarchaeologist]

Yeah, appendixes and bibliography stack up fast. Especially if your supervisor makes you print out 377 pages of Excel sheets instead of allowing you to hand them in digitally. Not that I'm still rolling my eyes at that. It didn't drive up the cost either. At all.

(She learned from her mistakes - a friend was able to put her catalogue on either USB or a CD-ROM a few years later. Digitalization in Germany, let me tell you ...)

Anyhow, that's still a lot of work! And we both can say we've done it entirely by ourselves :-) Personally, I'd rather be proud of that than take the easy route (which will backfire anyway, because whatever the AI produces will likely not be factually correct enough to stand up to scrutiny. And if you have to go over it yourself anyway, why not do it from scratch?)

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Hey! I haven't seen this question on the FAQs, but if you have answered it before and I haven't seen it, I apologize. I wanted to ask about your writing process: do you plan your stories before you publish them in great detail or just in general? Do you outline? I'm curious about how other people go about this.

Thank you for your time!

I consider it a viable story idea once I have: - the main themes and setting (doesn't have to be a detailed setting, surface details related to the premise and plot are enough)

- the narrator's personality and voice

- How the climax will go and what the ending will be (can be rough; I don't need to know specifically what characters will be there are the end, just what the overall mood and conclusion will be)

Usually, by the time I start writing (because writing is a very slow process), I have more than this, but these are the elements that I consider critical before starting. I do not need to know every side character and subplot. I do not need to know every detail of worldbuilding, so long as I know enough to carry the central themes so I won't write myself into a plot hole. I started TTOU knowing who Aspen was and with a vague idea of exploring a bit about Arboreans, the Public Universal Friends, and a prison colony. I knew the basic layout of the ship and the chronostasis system, and I knew in *very broad terms* what they would find at Hylara (I won't spoil it here in case people haven't read it, but I had like, one sentence of knowledge about the place). I knew essentially what the first and last chapters were going to be. Everything else, including building the non-Aspen characters, came after I started writing.

I don't outline a lot at the start of a story, but once I pass about the two thirds mark I make a list at the end of my openoffice document of what I still need to cover and the order the events will probably go in. This is to help stick the landing without missing anything important; sticking the landing is massively important. Because I start writing without a lot of detail, I can't outline at that level of detail until fairly late in the process. Until then I just keep in mind the plot beats I need to hit for whatever I'm writing, which is an ever-changing list through the first two thirds.

Although I start with a pretty vague idea, I do have one rule, which is to *never introduce something that I do not have an acceptable solution for*. This doesn't have to be the solution I go with (sometimes a better one develops later), but it usually is. Never ask a question until you have an answer for it; don't bank on the ability to come up with an answer later. Don't be afraid to switch to a better answer, if you do come up with one, but you should never put yourself in a position where you have to do that. Don't introduce a corpse until you know how they died. Don't introduce a character personality or position change until you know what prompted the change. Don't introduce a conspiracy until you have a passable motivation for it and believable actions for the conspirators. When Aspen wakes up alone, I have a reason why the crew is dead. When Aspen can't get through a locked ring, I have a reason why the ring is locked. So while I do consider a story viable fairly early in the process, I do start having to answer more detailed questions very early on.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#oooh i very much like ‘never introduce sth you don’t have an acceptable explanation for’

This is a focused application of what Brandon Sanderson calls "keeping audience promises". Simply do not promise the audience anything that you might fail to deliver on. You can deliver formulaic or lackluster answers a lot of the time so long as you're also delivering good ones on other things, but you cannot fail to deliver, and you cannot disappoint audiences enough that they lose trust in you, so don't make the promise unless you have an answer ready that at least meets minimum expectations. Where possible, don't promise them anything where you don't have an answer that exceeds expectations, but in practice it's not possible to do that every time. You can deliver four mediocre answers and two good ones if you focus the story so that the good ones are the real payoffs, and maybe lampshade one or two of the mediocre ones happening in the background. (Don't overlampshade though, it's very tiresome and comes across as insecure. Some writers use lampshading as a get out of jail free card and I promise you, it does not get you out of jail. It taps the bars so that the audience knows it doesn't need stating and they can move on to the stuff you're highlighting instead.)

[xiaq]

One of the best things about being a writer is thinking of something small you can add to your work that’s just. Devastating. Like you’re sitting there going. Oh. That would be diabolical. People would get really riled up about that. Exquisite. Let’s do it.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

"calypso delivers a monologue about the unfair double standard applied to gods vs. goddesses when it comes to slutting around with mortals" really does sound like a scene someone would insert into an odyssey adaptation to make it more woke and "odysseus grabs a branch to cover his dick so he doesn't scare off the teenage girls he's about to stumble on naked" really does sound like a scene someone would insert into an annoyingly modernized odyssey adaptation that would get criticized for marvelesque humor. but beautifully and happily these are both things that simply factually happen in actual homer's* actual the odyssey

*famously a highly contested phrase