A critical response to claims linking drought and conflict in late Roman History, co-authored by BCDSS postdoctoral researcher James M. Harland! 🔗 buff.ly/8oCejM0 @unibonn.bsky.social @dfg.de

One of the greats, and among her many other accomplishments, author of what imho remain two of the greatest introductory books available to anyone wanting to learn about the late Roman world (namely, "The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity" and "The Later Roman Empire").

The great historian of Late Antiquity Averil Cameron, who has died, reminding us that class matters alongside gender in British society wcc-uk.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/05/22/s...

It was great fun working on this with @calthalas.bsky.social @realhistoryguy.bsky.social @jmharland.bsky.social @dl-arch.bsky.social @vickymanolopoulou.bsky.social @sypianski.bsky.social @nikulinaav.bsky.social and others

Very happy to see this paper out, in which we explain that historians, just like scientists, have research methodologies which *must* be followed in order to do convincing palaeoclimate research using historical texts … link.springer.com/article/10.1... #environmentalhistory #environmentalscience

History without historians is doomed to fail. With an interdisciplinary team of scholars we show how the purported link between late Roman conflicts and drought has been misunderstood. We also outline a path forward in the use of sources in paleoclimatic research. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

An article last year claimed that tree-ring data shows a link between drought and late Roman conflicts such as the "Barbarian Conspiracy" of 367. We show problems with such claims and appeal for interdisciplinary palaeoclimatic research to respect historical method. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

“A whole civilization will die tonight” is the most vile thing a US president has ever said, certainly during the post-1945 era when they’ve had the power to kill civilizations with the dropping of a bomb. I’m staring into the darkness. May this not be one of the most fateful days in human history.

One of these political leaders has been repeatedly portrayed as an untrustworthy radical hostile to others because of his religious beliefs. You’’ll never guess which one!

In den letzten 10 Jahren sind die Mieten in Berlin um 69% gestiegen. In Leipzig um 67% In Großstädten in Deutschland im Schnitt um 43% Der Preis für den Liter Benzin ist im gleichen Zeitraum nur um 25% gestiegen. Über Mieten redet niemand, über die bösen Tankstellen jeder: Prioritäten, so wichtig

My new article has now been published in the 2025 volume of Traditio. I use a little examined episode on the lower Rhine in the late 350s with the aid of agricultural archaeology to reveal fiscal dependency relations between the Empire & Barbaricum, & the consequences of their rupture. #medievalsky

Shoe-shaped ceramic vessels, buried with a skeleton missing both feet at 6th-century-AD Germany. In medieval Europe, physical disability was seen as an impediment to moral goodness. The shoes may have symbolically 'restored' the body. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... #FolkloreThursday 🏺 #Archaeology

Fantastic cover story in this month’s NatGeo mag (I still get it in print) on the discovery near Croatia of a 7th c. Byzantine shipwreck laden with artifacts, like this signet likely bearing the image of Heraclius, whose reign, 610-641, witnessed an epic war with Sassanid Persia & the rise of Islam.

A study based on tree rings claimed that droughts played a role in events that led to the Roman withdrawal from Britain, but other researchers say that isn't backed up by historical evidence

Just published! Go read (or browse!) Wolfram Kinzig's A History of Early Christian Creeds. A true opus magnum! www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Thanks to @michael-marshall.bsky.social for this great write up of our new response piece in @newscientist.com! #Skystorians #MedievalSky

Something fun about the process of publishing this article is that we had the response basically ready to go within months when the article was still hot in the press, and the main reason it took this long to get accepted was that we had to wait for the original authors to draft their response...

I have no idea whether “history without historians” has finally become a term in common use but I hope so because it’s definitely a phenomenon in common use

The paper offers a thorough methodological critique of unreflected use of archaeological and historical sources. It also shows how aggregating historical data is not a neutral act and requires careful consideration of interpretations derived from databases that result from this process.

We recognise the importance of palaeoclimatic data for historical research but show that it cannot be used in isolation from historical sources. Moreover, on the example of the so-called barbarian conspiracy of 367 we show how it is necessary to respect historical method when using those sources.

An article last year claimed that tree-ring data shows a link between drought and late Roman conflicts such as the "Barbarian Conspiracy" of 367. We show problems with such claims and appeal for interdisciplinary palaeoclimatic research to respect historical method. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I am pleased to share that I have signed a contract with Cambridge University Press to write “The End of Roman Britain and the Arrival of the Saxons,” which I have been approached to write by the editors of their series “Cambridge Elements in the Late Antique World”.

Generally true, but "verschlimmbessern" is truly just a remarkable word.

While I have you here: German is often used for examples of “wow look they have a single word for this very specific situation” and I’m here to tell you that the only real difference between German and English here is that English puts spaces between the various components of its compound nouns

The dismal tide accelerates, sweeping from Coventry through Sheffield Hallam to London South Bank. 1/2

I’ve had a monthly donation set up to Wikipedia for about a year and I’m increasingly not regretting that choice.

after much deliberation and giving AI the benefit of the doubt, Wikipedia editors have had enough of AI slop. New policy bans LLM generated content, periodt www.404media.co/wikipedia-ba...

Deskilling students and devaluing intellectual work does not appeal more simply because we can now do it at scale

Even by his own standards "Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbour?" is a truly wild thing to say sitting next to the Japanese PM (who you want help from.)

Once again a heartfelt thanks to David "cut the Green crap" Cameron and Nick "What's the point in a nuclear power plant that isn't ready until the 2020s" Clegg for their visionary political choices, whose consequences we get to enjoy today.

I and many of my university colleagues have expressed the wish that we could bill OpenAI for the extra work hours their product has saddled us with.

Now available for preorder, with promo code TCCCR2026, "The Cambridge Companion to Classics and Race," a major intervention against the decades-old orthodoxy of the alleged anachronism of "race" and "racism" for the study of the ancient past. www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

And another press release from @unibonn.bsky.social, this time on our new project funded by @volkswagenstiftung.de The Nameless in History ...and in English www.uni-bonn.de/en/news/048-... @woodjamie.bsky.social

And now he is dropping late antique references? And correctly on top of that?

Was glad to be able to give some of my thoughts to New Scientist in response to some new aDNA results that have been published in a (not yet peer reviewed) preprint. www.newscientist.com/article/2519...

They’re telling me a great empire will be destroyed if I attack Persia. Even the oracles who don’t like me very much, very nasty, they all said to me, “Sir, it’s one of the great empires, and it’ll be destroyed. And all because you attacked Persia.” That’s what they’re telling me.

I'm fairly sure he's not the only painfully stupid and powerful person with a theory he wants to spread they've had to deal with.

Was glad to be able to give some of my thoughts to New Scientist in response to some new aDNA results that have been published in a (not yet peer reviewed) preprint. www.newscientist.com/article/2519...

I wrote this 4 years ago (when I had never heard of an LLM) inspired by experience of home-schooling ‘literacy’ with my daughter & running UG plagiarism hearings, both of which seemed to see language as something to be got *right* at the level of the individual sentence www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Springer are even more far-right than the Torygraph so if so it’ll only be for the worse.

www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Little-Kingd... My newest book, LITTLE KINGDOMS: AN A-Z OF EARLY MEDIEVAL BRITAIN, is now discounted by -30%! Which means you can read all about the 60+ territories and principalities that made up England, Wales, and Scotland after the Roman Period for only £17.50!

Jürgen Habermas ist heute im Alter von 96 Jahren in Starnberg verstorben.

I am on the advisory board for this exciting, newly launched series. Please be reassured that we are also interested in works that deal with archaeology and the world beyond the Roman frontiers (in so far as they relate to the world within them, of course).

Important point here that AI clones don’t just violate your personality rights, they also risk your professional reputation.

Fake references make Waite’s job as a librarian “so much harder,” she added. “I expect this on the wider internet, but not in reputable scientific journals,” she told us. “…It’s really worrying.” retractionwatch.com/2026/03/06/l... #medlibs

Another bump for this; expressions of interest due in by 24 March.

Roncesvalles Pass is open for transit, Frankish king Charlemagne said. “The only thing prohibiting transit in the pass right now are the Basques attacking rearguards,” he said. “It is open for transit should the Basques not do that.”

Man, one of the most depressing aspects of modern scholarship is finding a great article and then looking up the scholar to see what else they’ve done and just catching a glimpse of an abbreviated career hopping between visiting positions and publishing great pieces before disappearing from academia

It seems worth noting here that compared to the Houth Red Sea crisis, the Iranians are doing more damage more rapidly here. 21 incidents in 9 days (2.3 per day) in the Gulf compared to 90 incidents in the first year (1 per ~4 days) in the Red Sea. More than 9x the tempo.