Weekly Roundup of Archaeology, History and Historical Fiction Sept 3-9

First 3 events for those of you in Arizona:

Next Saturday, September 17 we’ll open this year’s season of Arizona Historical Novel Society Meetings with a dynamic talk by Fernanda Santos, author of The Fireline: The Story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots and Phoenix bureau chief for the New York Times. We’ll meet from 2-4 pm at Judith’s house. Everyone welcome, members or not. Email Judith for directions. Here’s a description of Fernanda’s talk: Reconstructing (recent) history: Transforming public records, academic studies, historical documents and live interviews into pieces of a giant puzzle to reveal the story behind one of the deadliest days in American firefighting.

Thursday September 22 at 6 pm Agatha Christie and Archaeology, a lecture by Irene Bald Romano of University of Arizona, sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America, Central Arizona Society. Benedictine University, Community Room, Mesa Campus, 225 E Main St, Mesa, AZ Click here for more info and a map.

Arizona authors, take note: All-Zona Book Fest in Tucson Oct 23, 9-3 pm. Worthwhile place to sell your books. This event is going into its 4^th year. Last year attendance was about 400 visitors. Jude Johnson is organizing (you may know her from AZ HNS and other local writer events). Click here for All-Zona Fest Website for more information and author signup 

Here are some posts I enjoyed this week from around the web:

Trojan War era find (an amphora) in Bulgaria, along with much earlier finds, as well as a Roman city. This is a meandering post about all archaeology in Bulgaria during the main dig month of August this year. It’s interesting to realize how many layers of civilization Bulgaria reveals, from 6,000 to 8,000 year old “bird-man” figures to Byzantine churches. No photos of the bird figures, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were similar to the Cypriote figures that remind me of birds and man combined. I’m thinking the Thracian cult center dig may turn up the most intriguing bits with its time span of 12^th century BCE to beginning of 9^th century BCE. Sun worshippers, apparently, from their temple remnants. The Thracians were up to a lot in the ancient world. And as far as I know, we don’t know a lot about them (that may be my ignorance, not to be so blithely generalized). More secrets of the ancient world coming to you from the subterranean news bulletins! Click here for The Sofia Globe “Archaeological Finds in Bulgaria August 2016 Hightlights” 

Virginia Wolf, in the only surviving recording of her voice, talks about words, the English language and why writing isn’t a craft. Food for thought, and I love her idea of words being sentient beings that one ought to use with thought and care, but some of this is harder to follow for me. I think, for all that I love to play with language, I see it as more utilitarian than she does, more a solid presence to be used in the real world.

In the Only Surviving Recording of Her Voice, Virginia Woolf Explains Why Writing Isn’t a “Craft” (1937)

On Oxford University Press’s website here’s a post by Catherine Fletcher about multi-racial families through the House of Medici. She’s written a nonfiction book called The Black Prince of Florence. Many years ago the field of classics began looking at the “missing” multiracial makeup of the Greek and Roman worlds (missing only because historians had pretended it didn’t exist in these “foundations of Western Civilization”), but I’ve been talking with various historical fiction author friends about how little that multiracial awareness has been incorporated into the fictional portrayals of the ancient world. On the one hand, if you’re looking for change, there’s the “what’s historically accurate” view that’s gradually built up the evidence over the last couple generations of scholarship—which is a far more multiracial ancient world than the popular imagination would have it (and popular imagination, i.e. readers, sometimes objects to new ideas because such ideas crush their long held visions of icons. What color was Hercules’ skin? What was the origin of the picture that came into your mind?). And then there’s the Hamilton approach—which I love. And then I toy with the interesting proposition of portraying, fully, a world in which racial awareness was absent, at least the part of race that we can describe as the notion of defining “other” by skin tones. The Hittites show no signs of having a “racial” awareness. And I think that’s true of the Romans and Greeks. There was no shortage of hate and denigration, but not arising from that particular locus. How do you make that lack of awareness something a modern reader will be aware of, or do you not and that’s okay too? Lucky I have smart fellow writer friends to kick these nuanced problems around with. If you think a multiracial Italian Renaissance would be a good idea to put in your head, read this post for a taste. Oxford University Press “A Look at Historical Multiracial Families through the House of Medici”