April 2015 – Book and Sword

The Liebster Award, or, Becoming Aware of an Internet Tradition

Photo of a red limestone building with a weathered gateway of white stone carved in relief built into it — The very rich and very patient can ignore practical constraints on their collecting too: random Tudor gateway built into the Burrell Collection, Scotland.

A few weeks ago Alexandra of ascholarlyskater nominated me for the Liebster Award. Thanks Alex! I see that Judith Weingarten won one of these in 2013. Although I do not normally post personal things on this blog, I thought I would get into the spirit of things in my reply. Those of you who are here for the history can come back next week when I will have something nice and martial and either Babylonian or Phoenician.

Three Calgary Dissertations

Stone panel sculpted with a man in robes carrying a horn over his right shoulder — The funerary stele of Gnaeus Coponius Felicio, a trumpeter in the Roman army who was buried at Aquileia (CIL V 1027: Palazzo Te, Mantua; photo by author)

One of the joys of the modern age is that doctoral dissertations are usually published online. While it is still sometimes necessary to travel to the correct university and make a copy of an older dissertation by hand (or order it and wait months for the librarians and the appropriate university to send their copy), this makes the process of finding and obtaining research much less expensive and laborious. This week I thought I would take some time to mention some dissertations which my readers might be interested in. All of them are clearly written and provide enough background information that most readers of a blog like this should be able to understand their subjects, namely ancient horses, ancient Greek and Macedonian tactics, and the skeletons found in the tombs of the Macedonian kings.

Some thoughts on Tobias Capwell’s “The Real Fighting Stuff”

Photograph of the cover of the book with three suits of plate armour and a title — Cover photograph c/o the Wallace Collection website

Tobias Capwell, The Real Fighting Stuff: Arms and Armour at the Glasgow Museums (Glasgow City Council: Glasgow, 2007) ISBN 978-0-902752-82-5

Dr. Tobias “Toby” Capwell, jouster and curator with a PhD in fifteenth-century armour, is taking preorders for his forthcoming book on knightly armour in late medieval England. In honour of that, I thought I would post on the only one of his publications which I have been able to read, a book for beginners on arms and armour at the Glasgow museums.

Chronology, Ethnicity, Archaeology

A bronze horse bit in the Burrell Collection, Scotland (photographed by your humble correspondent). Note that there is no gap or join in the rings which link the left and right cheeks; the caster poured one side then made the mould for the other around it. They date it to the... Continue reading: Chronology, Ethnicity, Archaeology

Month: April 2015