A terrific read from @bhgreeley.bsky.social in the new FT Wealth: what wealth meant to Americans in 1776 www.ft.com/content/6bc0...

Why do we talk about the “history of collection” when whole sites were torn apart and dispersed across the globe? Is it a collection, or a breaking apart? Read about Palmyra’s dispersal, out now in AJA www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

The fundamental test of birthright citizenship is this: if someone illegally trafficked people to this country and forced them into bondage and then those people had children, would those children have rights to object to continued servitude? If you answer isn't "yes, they have rights" you lose.

Wish I could share an example of an AI-generated paper we receive all the time because they are *weird*. Mechanical manucripts that tick the boxes as academic content but really contribute nothing to knowledge. If AI has benefits for research, we're not seeing it. Just seeing shoddy autoscholarship.

Super interesting paper. Open access. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This book sounds wonderful. I'd like to see something like "textiles and economic time" added-- textiles as collateral for loans, textiles in wills & inheritance, production time from an economic and not just domestic angle. bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2026/2026.06...

He published it as a LinkedIn article. And any staff member and manager in #UKHE should read it and keep bringing it up in any meeting about cutting into departments.

It knows exactly how good it looks

Ooh can’t wait to read this

A brief appreciation thread for some of my colleagues in Classics at Exeter, who the University of Exeter have put at risk of redundancy @exeter.ac.uk. A few are on here, most are not, but I'm going to say nice things about them anyway.

On advance access: "Involuntary Investors in British State-Building: Seamen’s Tickets and the Financial Revolution c.1700–1760" by Tawny Paul (@uofcalifornia.bsky.social) #OpenAccess doi.org/10.1093/past...

Checks: a technology proudly unimproved in America since the founding

An absolutely stunning photo! The 35m-long #Roman shipwreck, along with its cargo of 6,000 (!) amphorae was discovered in 2019 off the coast of the Greek Island of Kefalonia. It’s one of the largest Roman shipwrecks found in the Mediterranean. 📷 Ionian Aquarium

Along with almost all of my colleagues in history, this afternoon I got an email telling me that I am at risk of redundancy. It looks like the University of Exeter sent this email to the vast majority of people in Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty. Bit hard to breath right now.

It’s easier to imagine that an LLM can replace all other libraries and all other forms of knowledge if your corpus has been painstakingly transcribed, edited, tagged, and digitized by generations of scholars.

At least in the Greco-Roman context, it seems to me that a New Institutional Economics framework ironically often ends up de-emphasizing institutions except in a v. abstract and general way; this is partly b/c the focus is so frequently on individual economic agents.

This nonsense claim from this paper is making rounds on Twitter, claiming fertility & gender (in)equality correlated at .81. But the Gender Inequality Index includes adolescent fertility as part of the measure! When you rebuild the index without circular reproductive outcomes correlation cut in half

David Graeber sure hated math.

Pwoofs 🥺

If Waffle House doesn’t make this their new slogan, then capitalism has failed

Since the launch of ChatGPT monthly submissions to arXiv have almost doubled to 30k & even if the rejection rate has also doubled since 2023, academia is looking at a fundamental crisis of dealing with AI-fueled texts...

I think about Dan Davies’ “The Unaccountability Machine“ almost every day

I appreciate this piece’s emphasis on the vast social machinery required to ensure that a dollar is exactly a dollar. Being both unit of account and means of payment is not just an interesting fact about money. It’s an integral part of a deliberate, almost utopian, project.

Ahem, excuse me, Houston embodies that (arguably the most!). But you have to drive a lot.

Ahem, excuse me, Houston embodies that (arguably the most!). But you have to drive a lot.

New Yorkers singing Empire State of Mind

look I realize I’m a New Yorker but separately on a deep spiritual level I also understand futzing around for the first three quarters and realizing all of a sudden you have to show up for the fourth

John Maynard Keynes on coinage-- later partly quoted by Finley-- was, uh, something. (Quoted from Martin's "Why Did the Greek Polis Originally Need Coins?")

The magic of America

In my high school AP US History class, I was taught that the Civil War was not fought over slavery but over States’ Rights. (This was in Texas & I suddenly had the depressing thought that what Erin says might not be true there anymore, at least at certain universities).

This is true *but* we have also seen an increase in archaeological research on inequality/lack thereof that I think is interesting and productive…so something genuinely to be said for it as “provocative”

Wait, this was 16 professors commenting on other professors and no students involved at any time?

there's a real feeling of like...if a man did something horrible to me or someone i know that guys like this just wouldn't fucking care

Proofs day for the published version of my 2024 Hans Lietzmann lecture on Marcion as Slave Trader.

Wondered this myself. Not sure I’m convinced by this methodology.

My daughter's beloved child is the one I hold here. The one that I held on my lap While we looked at the light of the sun when we were alive, And that I still hold, now that we are both dead. - inscription on this c. 400 BCE Greek grave marker, carved with a grandmother holding a swaddled baby

In a small gesture against the general death of language learning in our time, we've enrolled our son in the county elementary school French immersion program.

Five years ago, I made a meme I'm still mighty chuffed with.

American-born French dancer, singer and actress Josephine Baker was born #OnThisDay in 1906. This cut-out mesh costume, embellished with a scalloped design of metal beads, textured sequins and rhinestones, was worn by Baker in the 1930s. Sold by Kerry Taylor Auctions. #fashionhistory

Thread

“Surely this chapter will be shorter than the others,” I think. [Chapter hits 26,000 words.] Ah well, nevertheless. (The good thing is there aren’t many chapters in total)

Fascinating details of what an utterly corrupted army looks like on the frontline in here, like bribing your way out of assaults.

Starting my sabbatical on a great note! Roman Rural Archaeology: Society, Economy, and Culture ed. by Gijs Tol and Astrid Van Oyen is published! The volume looks amazing and includes my contribution on the Abundant Egyptian Countryside <3 Congrats to the contributors and the brilliant editors!

I found an incredible map of sewers in central Boston for 1811. It shows clearly who had direct access to waste disposal and who had to carry their waste into the street to dispose of it. Also, just how subdivided and tiny some tenements could be. More literal History from Below! 🗃️

I’m currently obsessed by Boston’s early C19 sewage infrastructure, which relied heavily on the labor of African Americans. Here’s an 1803 map of sewers in Middle (now Hanover) St in the North End & an 1802 receipt from Peter Virginia for emptying septic tanks. This is literal History from Below! 🗃️

in this video in like 4 different ways and I hate that

Wrote up all my thoughts on this and other fractional notations in the tablets & some lead tags, and it reads like this:

Forget ancient history; kids aren’t even allowed to learn about 2002

When UBC took floors from the library to host senior administration we were told all the removed books would be easily and quickly available from storage. Then the robot arm that was supposed to pick them broke down and a replacement part could not be found for years.