Skip to content
Home » Weekly Roundup of History, Archaeology and Writing Wisdom March 26-April 1

Weekly Roundup of History, Archaeology and Writing Wisdom March 26-April 1

I’ll start with a reminder that if you’d like to read Laura Gill’s book about that neglected woman from Greek mythology, Danae, click over to her guest post and leave a comment. I’ll draw for a winner of an ebook next week.

Posts I enjoyed from around the web this week:

Schliemann's Troy engraving fr his book Ilios The City & Country of the Trojans
Schliemann’s Troy engraving fr his book Ilios The City & Country of the Trojans

Don’t be fooled: In an article in the Dutch archeological society’s journal Talanta, Frank Kolb is back at arguing that the site of Troy on the western coast of Turkey isn’t Troy and the whole thing took place in Greece and has no “eastern” elements in it. His previous arguments were addressed and rejected by a wide range of scholars a decade ago. There isn’t any reason to think his angry insistence is any more valid now than it was then. I can think of several fundamental problems with his arguments. Click here for The Australian Arts Section  “Historian Frank Kolb Shifts Trojan War from Turkey to Greece”

A list of the 120 most helpful websites for writers 2016. It’s subdivided into categories so you can hunt down the help you want without overloading with the stuff you don’t have time for. Click here for “120 Most Helpful Websites for Writers 2016” on Global English Editing  

Book cover image Priestesses and ProstitutesPriestesses and Prostitutes: Four Novels of Ancient Times. Here are some outstanding writers of ancient world fiction, gathered in one collection all for less than a dollar, Stephanie Dray, Libbie Hawker, Rebecca Lochlann, Cheri Lasota. Catch it while you can. Click here for Historical Fiction Ebooks “Priestesses and Prostitutes: Four Novels of Ancient Times” 

A huge cemetery in Phaleron, an ancient port of Athens, dating to the 8th-5th centuries BCE reveals “deviant” burials of shackled dead tossed in face first that may reveal information about the political upheavals just before the rise of the city-state. Other graves, such as many children buried in pots, will help reveal ordinary lives and health. Usually elite burials are what are available for study so this cemetery gives an unusual opportunity. This site was first excavated starting nearly a century ago, but a large-scale dig was conducted between 2012-2016. The research on the finds is a huge task with 1500 skeletons to inventory and analyze. I was interested to see that the bioarchaeologist, Jane Buikstra, taking the lead with this stage of the work is at Arizona State University, right in my backyard. I’m guessing we’ll be hearing interesting findings from this project for years as the work progresses. Click here for Forbes Magazine “Archaeologists to Study Skeletons from Ancient Greece to Understand Rise of Athens”