Here are some posts I enjoyed this week from around the web:
Troy Fall of a City is almost here on Netflix. It’s been out on BBC to positive reviews. “Troy: Fall of a City series features Louis Hunter, Bella Dayne, David Threlfall, Frances O’Connor, Tom Weston-Jones, Joseph Mawle, Chloe Pirrie and Johnny Harris, and runs for six episodes. All six episodes will drop on Netflix April 6, 2018.” Here’s a link to the “official” trailer of Troy Fall of a City
Here’s an article that reveals another hidden way ancient women created major cultural shifts. A recent study concludes that skilled female potters travelled around the Baltic Sea around 2900-2300 BCE spreading a distinctive, new pottery style called corded ware. Why did women travel and thus cause this dispersion? Because women relocate upon marriage and they bring their skills with them. Pottery is the indicator that survives to us, but behind the pots lie all the other aspects of cultural exchange that have turned to dust so that archaeology can’t “read” them. Two interesting points in this study. One is that the study of the clay’s make-up caused the researchers to upend the patterns of movement they had assumed before. Apparently, the Baltic Sea was more a highway than the barrier researchers had thought—that confirms a general trend in ancient world studies of much farther flung trade and interchange than we used to think. So much for global being a modern thing. The second idea I found so poignant in this—the women potters used the broken shards of the pots they’d brought with them by incorporating them into the local clay as they made new pots. Researchers propose that the potters wanted to preserve a commemoration of their old home in this way, rather than some production need that caused the use of grog. (I learned a new term, grog, not only a drink but a term meaning, “crushed unglazed pottery or brick used as an additive in plaster or clay.” Definitely check your cup before gulping if someone hands you something they call grog…) I’m wondering what other signs or commemorations of home before marriage women have woven into their new lives through history and now? What ones come to your mind? Click here for Archaeology News Network “Skilled female potters travelled around the Baltic nearly 5000 years ago”
When people think of archaeological treasures, gardens probably don’t come to mind. But in the recent years of more precise, scientific excavation, we have learned about ancient/historic gardens in many parts of the world. Funerary gardens in Egypt, food and wine gardens in Pompeii, villa gardens in Italy, scientific gardens in Philadelphia, etc.—if you love gardens, this article about old, lost ones that have been reconstructed through archaeology may charm you. I read about these while watching through the window my husband tending our desert garden, a pretty lush place given that the plants all thrive with little water. Click here for Archaeology Magazine “The Archaeology of Gardens”
Here’s archaeological irony. While building metal shelters and a rainwater catchment tank to protect the site of a Mycenaean settlement, another tomb was discovered, a very extensive one with 20 or so burials, adult and child. It’s part of a site in Dimini in Thessaly, a northern part of Greece. The tomb contained lots of interesting grave goods such as drinking cups, spindle whorls, bronze pins with rock crystal heads, bronze needles, amethyst and sardonyx beads. The tomb is the earliest built chamber tomb found in Thessaly and serves as a connecting link between the old burial mounds and the later beehive, vaulted tombs (like you may have seen if you visited Mycenae). The extensive tomb and its grave goods show the rise of a wealthy class at this time in this region at the end of the Middle Bronze Age (1700-1600 BCE) that wanted to show off its elite status. Click here for Archaeology News Network “Large chamber tomb with multiple burials revealed in Mycenaean settlement at Dimini”