tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39102374137125515582024-03-05T08:14:20.177+00:00Historian on the EdgeThe Historical, Philosophical and Political Musings of an Autistic HistorianHistorian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comBlogger407125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-32177487978787424152024-01-22T15:41:00.005+00:002024-01-23T06:27:31.200+00:00Spectres of Marcus: the Roman Empire ‘between two deaths’This time, ah - ahIs coming like a ghost timeWhen I wrote Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West,
getting on for 20 years ago, I used a three-part organisation of the text: Part
1: Romans and Barbarians in an Imperial world; Part 2: A world renegotiated;
Part 3: Romans and barbarians in a post-imperial world. I used the term ‘post-imperial’
for a couple of reasons. I borrowed it from Andrew Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-36954245050925412022023-11-30T12:39:00.003+00:002023-11-30T12:39:41.491+00:00Reflections on the End of Western Antiquity: 4. The supposed ‘Rupture’ of the Ancient Mediterranean , Part 4Several problems are raised by the economic/political
paradigm. As indicated last time, my aim here is not to replace them but to add
a new level more concerned with ideas, attitudes or culture. To this end it’s
important to note that the broad outlines of economic development sketched in
Part 3 match, in general, those of the shifts in culture mapped out in Part 2,
of the gradual turning away Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-38940253258386639112023-11-30T12:39:00.002+00:002023-11-30T12:39:31.147+00:00Reflections on the End of Western Antiquity: 3. The supposed ‘Rupture’ of the Ancient Mediterranean, Part 3 In the third part of these reflections we finally enter the
territory of the Pirenne Thesis, and indeed of my project: the changes of the
late sixth and early seventh centuries.
Let’s recap. Around 530, in spite of all the developments
discussed last time, in spite of the socio-cultural dislocation that had been
going on since the third century, and in spite of the dramatic events of the
fifth, Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-47913625143186649782023-10-16T19:42:00.006+01:002023-11-30T12:36:27.642+00:00Reflections on the End of Western Antiquity: 2. The supposed ‘Rupture’ of the Ancient Mediterranean, Part 2.In the previous post I was arguing, ultimately, that
explaining ‘the end of Mediterranean unity’ is not a question of finding an
‘event’ that ruptured Mediterranean unity (the Arab conquests, Vandal Piracy,
etc) as much as looking at why the features that had held it together earlier –
and which had overcome those features that might militate against unity – came
to an end. This post muses ratherHistorian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-68274357490174539802023-10-04T14:42:00.002+01:002023-11-30T12:38:46.901+00:00Reflections on the ‘End of Western Antiquity’: 1. The supposed ‘Rupture’ of the Ancient Mediterranean, Part 1 Re-cap
Readers of this blog will be all-too-wearily aware that I
have been working on the changes that took place in western Europe between 550
and 650 for well over a decade, since I received a Leverhulme fellowship for a
project called ‘The Transformations of the Year 600’ in 2009. What I thought
the final outcome of that would be has been through many versions but I
currently envisage Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-25199231646654273982022-12-15T16:48:00.001+00:002022-12-15T16:49:09.315+00:00Professor Grumpy's tips on how to write a lecture quickly (not counting PowerPoint) Don’t write a script that
will take you 50 minutes to read out: this will be far too much information for
the students to take in
1: Decide upon the four
things you want your students to know about at the end of the lecture. Add
Introduction and Conclusion
2. Make those your four
main sections and assign ten minutes to each of them. Put those on the left
indent of your page. (make a Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-34159642204837856402022-12-15T16:47:00.004+00:002022-12-21T10:29:32.715+00:00Archaeology, History and Bad Science: A critique of the analysis of DNA at Szólád (Hungary) and Collegno (Italy). Part 3 (Conclusions) ConclusionsThe aDNA analyses of Szólád and Collegno were combined with study of stable isotopes in the skeletons and then compared with the distribution of grave-goods. The essential overall conclusions were expressed – less than clearly – as follows:In both Szólád and Collegno this genetic structure mirrors the variation that emerges from their mortuary practices, i.e., how living members Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-6603052969600992562022-12-15T16:45:00.005+00:002022-12-21T10:43:20.355+00:00Archaeology, History and Bad Science: A critique of the analysis of DNA at Szólád (Hungary) and Collegno (Italy). Part 2 (Method; Results).Method
Imagine a historical study that claimed that a general north-south
division was visible in, for the sake of argument, the prologues of medieval
charters and that this model had predictive value, such that the geographical
origin of a charter could be accurately discerned from the sequence, appearance,
or non-appearance of particular phrases. This would be quite an assertion, if not
Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-31953104653708514752022-12-15T16:43:00.003+00:002022-12-15T17:57:43.924+00:00Archaeology, History and Bad Science: A critique of the analysis of DNA at Szólád (Hungary) and Collegno (Italy). Part 1 (Introduction; setting up the experiment). [This is a critique I wrote to form my part of an article I co-wrote with Prof Martial Staub (Sheffield) about genetics and archaeology. Later I cut it down, with the idea of publishing the more detailed elements as 'online supplementary materials'. It didn't get published, sadly. I think that there were two main problems: one was a significant jump in the scale and breadth of Martial's Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-28197787389298159652021-11-18T12:06:00.001+00:002021-11-18T12:06:31.800+00:00Facts and Legends: Britannia after the Romans (until around 700) [This the English original of the short piece I wrote for the German history magazine Damals. My thanks to Mischa Meier and Steffen Patzold for the invitation to participate in that issue.]Historians nowadays very rarely use the phrase ‘The
Dark Ages’ to describe the period after the disintegration of the western Roman
Empire. It is now understood that it wholly misrepresents the early Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-50114575366430083572021-10-07T16:46:00.015+01:002021-10-07T16:52:55.247+01:00How the World forgot about Far-Western Eurasia[I am at a bit of a loss as to how to open The End of Western Antiquity. I essayed an alternative opening on here before. I still like that, but one of the things that I want to do in this book is, while writing about western Europe, not give the impression that this history is in some sense privileged. I want to attempt to decentre Europe while writing about it (indeed I would argue that the Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-33533285537194339632021-07-19T18:10:00.007+01:002021-09-10T12:28:15.815+01:00A Difficult Decade; An Apology Readers of this blog will know that I have long suffered with mental health issues, especially depression. I haven't made any secret of this, largely because I felt it was one small way of confronting the stigma which continues to be associated with mental illness.It's been a difficult decade or so for me, including a minor 'breakdown' (as it would have been called) in late 2015 and severalHistorian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-35972656265027439802021-04-06T16:14:00.000+01:002021-04-06T16:14:11.992+01:00History: The True Story Uncovered (Part 2)[In this second part of the chapter I develop the argument that history has the same features as language in general. It is incapable of being pinned down to a single factual original simply because we retell history in language. The way history is written - even at the most basic level - is mired in linguistic and other choices that have nothing to do with fact. Again, that is just how history Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-43632500517546568162021-04-06T16:04:00.002+01:002021-04-06T16:04:17.749+01:00History: The True Story Uncovered (Part 1)[As some of you know, I have for the last decade been trying to put together my ideas on a philosophy of history that attempts to do two things: first returning academic history to a place (if it ever had one) where it is taken seriously as an intellectual discipline rather than a bourgeois pastime or a service industry for popular entertainment; and second where it has a coherent ethical/Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-71849225553382618292021-03-12T12:11:00.002+00:002021-03-28T11:25:30.813+01:00The Theory of the State[As anyone who has followed this blog since its inception (has anyone?) will know, I have long been interested in the issue of the post-imperial state in the West, and indeed whether or not the polities that existed in c.650 can be considered to be states. Having wrestled with this issue for a decade, I have finally come up with a discussion and definition with which, provisionally at least,Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-81643786108391970402021-02-03T19:46:00.004+00:002021-02-03T19:46:52.719+00:00Organising the Late Antique World (6): The EndThere was of course an important reason for such calculation. Could you calculate when the world would end? Many theologians said no. Mankind couldn’t try to second-guess the Almighty’s divine plan. St Augustine was one who forcefully said that you should stop your counting. Some people thought that the world would last 6,000 years, so when 6,000 years since Creation were up the world would end. Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-66442977080845941332021-02-03T19:42:00.004+00:002021-02-03T19:42:54.260+00:00Organising the Late Antique World (5): The Measurement of TimeWhat, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.Augustine of Hippo’s famous comment on time from Book 11 of his Confessions. The nature of time has remained the subject of philosophical and scientific discussion ever since. How do with think of time? As a sequence with a beginning, middle and end? Or as a cycle, with things coming around again and Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-3002150898678462242021-02-03T19:37:00.000+00:002021-02-03T19:37:23.577+00:00Organising the Late Antique World (4): Theological Correctness gone mad: the 5th-Century WorldThe creation of a new, martial model of masculinity in the fourth century was one way in which the mental world began to be reorganised in the late Roman period but it is very important to note that the Emperor still remained at the centre, legitimising both forms of masculinity. Nor, as I have said, did the new forms of barbarised military identity imply an actual rejection of Roman identity. AsHistorian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-34680429725609829022021-02-03T19:32:00.001+00:002021-02-03T19:32:17.701+00:00Organising the Late Antique World (3): Fourth-Century ChangesIn [a previous lecture], I mentioned how a new martial model of masculinity appeared in the 4th century. I alluded to it again the first element of the previous lecture package, too. This doesn’t seem to me to have had the recognition it deserves, as this was a development with really profound long-term effects.I want to go back to this issue and discuss it in a little more detail. The Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-50889737349348124002021-02-03T19:25:00.002+00:002021-02-03T19:26:12.402+00:00Organising the Late Antique world (2): Classical Ethnography (2) – the taxonomicIn the previous [post]I discussed what I called the binary aspect of Graeco-Roman ethnography, in other words, the distinction between Roman-ness and barbarism. As we saw, this was really a pretty abstract element of thinking about the world and its organisation. In this area of thought the barbarian and the Roman were both ideals, and the barbarian ‘other’ largely existed as a counter to the Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-390483741842261582021-02-03T19:18:00.002+00:002021-02-03T19:18:53.165+00:00Organising the Late Antique world (1): Classical Ethnography (1) – the binaryIn [these blog posts] I want to talk about cosmologies – how people thought about the world, not so much in terms of geography – or not only in those terms – but more conceptually in terms of cores and peripheries; legitimate centres and illegitimate outliers; and eventually about time and their place within it. What we’ll see, I think, is that things had changed significantly by the close of ourHistorian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-23170984467477735132021-02-03T19:05:00.005+00:002021-02-05T17:57:44.265+00:00Organising the Late Antique World: Introduction[The following group of posts represents more of my Short Reads on Late Antiquity. As with the others, they originate as the scripts of short, 10-minute video-lectures given to my second-year students last term. As with the others I haveposted, the texts are as read - lightly modified to make them make more sense as blog posts - and are obviously simplified and introductory. If these are of use Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-80832128005879950622021-01-24T19:09:00.003+00:002021-01-24T19:09:19.484+00:00The Not-so-natural world of Late Antiquity (5): Queer Late Antiquity? The final element of this [group of posts] takes up the strands of the argument in the previous to underline how sexual categories in late antiquity were very different in late antiquity not only from those of today but also from what one might initially have expected.Sex between men (typically, as across many historical periods, sex between women receives very little discussion) is seen inHistorian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-47406713580437905882021-01-24T19:08:00.004+00:002021-01-24T19:08:38.541+00:00The Not-so-Natural World of Late Antiquity (4): Sex and society In the remainder of this [cluster of posts] I am going to talk about another way in which people divide up the world, which might seem natural but which isn’t on closer inspection, and that is sex, gender and sexuality.It is still commonly believed that gender is the social construction placed upon the biological binary of sex. Indeed this lies at the heart of one of the most current and Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3910237413712551558.post-75421722361527103162021-01-24T19:07:00.002+00:002021-01-24T19:07:57.275+00:00The Not-so-natural world of Late Antiquity (3): Late Antiquity was not white The Romans did not assign any paramount importance to obvious bodily – somatic – features in the way they drew up the world. Yet they were every bit as racist and prejudiced, and every bit as murderously nasty, to the people they did define as inferior. What we might identify as their racial schema was very different from that of the modern world. Two things can, I think, emerge from that, Historian on the Edgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14069934072719158780noreply@blogger.com