In 1990, Crayola "retired" several classic colors, including BLUE GRAY, GREEN BLUE, and an all-timer, RAW UMBER, replacing them with "fun" new colors like VIVID TANGERINE and WILD STRAWBERRY. We didn't know it at the time, but this was the beginning of the end. In this essay, I will

My heart is with a different article that came out this year, but I am pleased to have pulled off a citation of Tolkien's 'Return of the King' as if it was some sort of source. archive.org/details/DOP7...

I am so happy I got the article on the knapped lithics from the Nepi survey written! It does not come out until 2026, but it means I have pretty much published the material from the survey. Several articles finished but mainly book reviews published, e.g. rheaclassicalreviews.com/2025/10/16/r...

My annual list of blog posts, articles and other internet things that I enjoyed or found especially interesting this year: thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/29/b...

@calthalas.bsky.social this has published date 2025, though I got my copy a couple of months earlier - so it just about counts!

The year is coming to a close! What are you most happy to have written, achieved, created in 2025? I want to see your books, articles, podcasts, all sorts of creations! (If you want to post your full grant application, by all means, we do not judge here!)

Issue 23 (2025) of I Quaderni del Maes is finally out #openaccess! You will find scientific papers, source editions, a monographic section on sermons and several book reviews. maes.unibo.it #UniversitàBologna #AlmaJournals #medievalsky

Geruchia, a widow in Southern Gaul, wrote to Jerome for advice. Her letter is lost but we can reconstruct her motives,prompting Jerome to paint one of the most entrenched images of a "barbarian invasion", mostly through imagination and literary repetition. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Gregory of Tours describing a historical event ▶️🔘───────── 00:07 Gregory of Tours about that one guy miraculously healed from hiccups, St Martin be praised ▶️🔘───────── 7:35:12

The year is 2037. A fearful party of journalists braves a long pilgrimage called „The Fact Check“ to a remote location known as „The Campus“. In a lonely brutalist building they enter, warily, an office in which a person sits. Known as „The Historian“, the legend has it they can tell fact from slop.

there's to be a Christmas court!

hey i made a starter pack of cutting edge humanists (broadly defined) doing cool stuff inside and outside academia. check out these folks and repost to signal boost! let's see if we can't "network" better than conferences!

How delicately a Romanesque angel uses the lightest touch of a finger to wake one of the magi, snuggled with the other 2 under their embroidered circular blanket at St Lazare, Autun, c1130 (& how beautifully the textures of pillow & blanket are represented). Season's greetings to you all!

On the tenth day of Christmas, Thucydides sent to me Ten misquotations Nine IR Realists Eight toiling triremes Seven sorry Spartans Six truest causes Tragic irony!

a lot of people don't realize that Christmas carols and traditions are actually folk memories of suppressed pre-Christian events, namely the end of the Third Age and the Fall of Sauron.

Ah, come, the problem with AI is that they will make *us* responsible. We are supposed to „step up“ and „change our pedagogy“ when they blow the house up into smithereens. And we will. But it is not our fault that they are dismantling higher ed and robbing a generation of access to knowledge.

It is time for a pierogi induced coma, my job is done. Everyone enjoyed the heaps of herring, bigos, pierogi, mushroom stuffed pastries and barszcz. The cook can now have a little Caol Ila in the kitchen when cleaning up, my favorite part.

Just saw the Odyssey trailer and it is horrible but they are all dressed like in what I imagine Roman carnival costumes of Homer would have been, and I cannot stop thinking that Vergil would have absolutely*loved* it.

On the ninth day of Christmas, Thucydides sent to me Nine IR Realists Eight toiling triremes Seven sorry Spartans Six truest causes Tragic irony!

Just saw the Odyssey trailer and it is horrible but they are all dressed like in what I imagine Roman carnival costumes of Homer would have been, and I cannot stop thinking that Vergil would have absolutely*loved* it.

It is time for the ultimate Christmas movie

The final count is 177

Ok, time to get serious with this whole Christmas thing. 37 down, 123 to go.

thread:

🎉 [Sous presse] "Étude comparée des villes de la péninsule Ibérique méridionale et du nord de l’Afrique durant l’Antiquité tardive : la polynucléarité urbaine en question", par Laurent Brassous et Sabine Panzram, in Gallia, 82, 2025 @umrlienss.bsky.social, @uni-hamburg.de, @spanzram.bsky.social

For the conceptual history wonks.

📆 "Religious Practice and Salvation" ist Thema des zweiten Vortrags von Mateusz Fafinski in den Monday Lectures . Los geht's um 16.15 Uhr im Gebäude C19. Interessierte sind sehr herzlich eingeladen. www.uni-erfurt.de/universitaet...

Coming soon! We are excited to share our first issue in just a few months. We are also accepting submissions for issue 2 onwards! Feel free to send any questions or ideas to @calthalas.bsky.social @sihonglin.bsky.social or me on here, or with the editors via email tinyurl.com/tph5wvmd

some news 👇 we're going to find out how to overcome the numerous practical and ethical problems we face when researching the nameless.

NEW FOR 2026 | Essays in Long Late Antiquity A new Open Access journal in first millennium studies, enticing interdisciplinary and superregional approaches to research in the second to the ninth centuries & broader Afro-Eurasian region: bit.ly/4f7BXZC @calthalas.bsky.social @sihonglin.bsky.social

What is writing if it’s not spending an hour writing a pedantic footnote about a mistranslation from German?

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

These initiatives show that research and higher education do not have a financing problem. They have an allocation problem.

Antonio Felle shows two inscriptions from 3rd-cent. catacomb. Latin was used for daughter and Greek for her mother. Language choice interpreted as related to Greek as main language of Scripture at this time rather than geographical origin. Learning a lot at conference on Rome and the Others

The e-codices December 2025 update is live, with 31 manuscripts! Enjoy them all! www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/all/...

Cambridge Elements do not get reviewed often (I guess the format is to blame) so I am even more chuffed to see Louise Blanke discussing Monasticism and the City in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages for JMMS. Really honored by such kind words from a giant in our field!

In this AI age I still offer bespoke, handmade history at reasonable prices.

You will be visited by three spirits

Warsaw Late Antique Seminar on 11 December: Paweł Nowakowski (UW) Thinking in Greek and Thinking in Aramaic: How Languages Foster Unique Ways of Processing and Expressing Thought in Late Antique Epigraphy. In-person in now terribly grey Warsaw and on Zoom.

📣Did you read someone's great first article from either 2024 or 2025? Is the author a NAPS member? Would they like cash money? Nominate them by sending a PDF of their piece to [email protected] by January 31, 2026 Best First Article prize and a cool $250 awarded at the NAPS annual meeting!

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

Always nice to see articles published in actual print copy!

Do you or your students work with English manuscripts? We have a summer school course for you👇 Book now for June 2026 in person in London. #MedievalSky #RenaissanceSky 📖✏️ #palaeography ies.sas.ac.uk/study-traini...

The paperback is now out and available to buy. I'm very glad the book is finally available at an affordable price.

IMC acceptance day seems to come earlier every year.... but excited to have this session on 'Britain and Byzantium at the End of Antiquity' finalised. Co-organised with the wonderful Janel Fontaine and featuring @helengittos.bsky.social, you'll want to stick around on Thursday for this! #IMC2026

A lovely duty of the Vertretungsprofessur for the History of Ancient Religions is to deliver a series of lectures on your project. Tomorrow I will begin with my take on how monasticism revolutionized the late antique Mediterranean. www.uni-erfurt.de/universitaet...

This coming Wednesday, I have the great honour to discuss Jörg Rüpke's latest book Studies on Roman Priests and Priesthoods: Fasti sacerdotum 4 with its author, at the official book launch in Erfurt and online www.uni-erfurt.de/max-weber-ko...

I’m at a conference in Innsbruck on the Marcomannic Wars, and key question has now been posed: esp given the shortage of material evidence for serious destruction within the Empire, was this (as per usual narrative) desperate struggle against existential threat - or failed imperial expansion?

For what is worth my first book is going into paperback now, so you can actually have it for less than 40 euros. (Or even better: recommend it to your librarian!) www.routledge.com/Roman-Infras...

Just listened to @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social talking about topics of his new book, and it was so interesting. Now I have to get hands on the book (and find some time to read it, which is much more difficult.) www.historyextra.com/membership/1... #medievalsky