I stumbled across this link a few days ago:

archaeologywordsmith is a page with some kind of archaeology dictionary - so if you ever wanted to read about trowels, ditches, mottes and a gazillion other things, you can do that there. Plus there's a "learn a word" feature when you open or reload the page.

Have fun!

If you are interested in medieval material culture, you will surely have heard about the IMAREAL - an Austrian institute that did a lot of research and made a lot of publications about that topic. The IMAREAL also includes several helpful databases, among them the picture database REAL online - which you probably also know. (If not, you should. It's huge and immensely helpful.)

All this institute is part of a larger organisation, the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Austrian Academy of Sciences). This is a rather large Academy - in fact it's the largest non-university establishment for research in Austria - and it's an important employer for scientists in social and historical fields as well. 905 people* including admin staff work there, and I have at least two friends who are employed by them.

However, this is about to change. There has been a "Performance Agreement" (that never bodes well, does it?) between the ÖAW and the Ministry for Science and Research in Austria, signed on November 4.
This agreement paves the way for a large budget reduction and, consequently, for the loss or closure of many demonstrably excellent and internationally acclaimed research organisations. With these, up to 300 full-time staff members may have to go between 2012 and 2014.

That's about one third of employees! Such drastic employee cuts are unprecedented in Austrian
history since 1945.  The current economic climate does not serve to justify this severity, and cuts on this scale have not been made in any other areas.
Since third-party funding totaling approx. 22 Mio. Euro was acquired by employees, who now stand to lose their jobs, further negative impacts are foreseeable.  This amounts to a sustainable destruction of knowledge and infrastructure. 

There is a petition online to protest against these budget cuts and the subsequent loss of jobs. The petition page linked is in German, but there is a full English translation available on the page as well, with a translation of the field names and confirmation email you will get (link opens .pdf file). It is even possible to sign anonymously, if you do not wish your name to appear. If you want to go directly to the signing page, just click the red button below.




Please help by signing and passing on the information about this petition - it will only run for 54 more days. If everyone who uses the REAL online database signs, they might be in for a surprise...

* This may not sound much if you have large businesses at the back of your mind - but for social or historical sciences, it's oodles.

Doc, over at Medieval Cookery, has posted an article about how medieval a given "medieval" meal is.

And you can more or less use his three points - medieval ingredients, medieval recipes (or techniques) and menu (kit) consistency.

Speaking of medieval or not-really-medieval stuff, medievalists.net have outdone themselves. They have actually posted an interview (which is more or less really a plug) with a lady making "medieval leather clothing". I am not going to post a link to it - but I will tell you that I watched it, and that I could not decide whether to laugh hysterically or cry into my coffee. Leather garments in the Middle Ages are something that is not easily grasped due to the relatively sparse sources, and most leather finds we have are from shoes. Let's just say that the things shown in that video are not medieval in ingredients, recipes or menu consistency.

Wisely, medievalists.net have closed the interview article to comments.

You probably know that saying that goes something like "once it's on the internet, it stays there forever", right?

That is one of the nice and one of the not-so-nice things about the 'Net. Well, mostly nice, provided you don't have weird or compromising stuff about yourself up in there that you would like to get rid of.

One of the reasons things stay in the 'Net is the Internet Archive. That is a non-profit project to build an Internet library - to make sure that things do not get lost just because they only existed in digital form. Part of the Archive is the Wayback Machine which you may have heard of (timetravels in the 'Net!) and which I already knew, but I just recently discovered that there are  also texts in there. Texts as in scanned books in .pdf form: catalogues, how-to books, you name it. And that includes embroidery books and other texts about textiles. So a search of the Internet Archive may be worth a try!

Internet is good. Well, since you read this blog, you will know that I think the internet is good. But sometimes, it comes back to me just how good it is - and then I have to say it again.

The internet helps me to connect with my friends. To find out when favourite musicians play somewhere I can go. It enables me to buy strange and useful things, like my new spinning wheel (yes, I have a new one). It continuously provides me with new programmes that are good to use and totally free for most private purposes (like Anti-Twin, a wonderful tool to find duplicate files, or Sequoia View, a programme that shows you how big a file is on your hard disk). It is a wonderful place to do research for writing and working.*

And it makes it possible to collaborate with people who live on the other side of the planet. All the way around, with no delay whatsoever, I can send things and messages and pictures, and we can discuss what is good and what is okay and what is not so good. And that, I think, is absolutely amazing.


*And yes, it also provides me with endless opportunities to get side-tracked, procrastinate, and waste time and money. But hey, that's the Internet for everybody, right?

Today's a holiday over here in good ol'Germany, so you are not getting a proper blog post.

Instead of blogging, I will be having fun and relaxing - but you might want to check out the open access journals that are still online for open access week, and there's a handy customised search engine right here, thanks to Doug's Archaeology blog.

For those who have not found out about it yet, it is Open Access week this week!

Open Access is a model of publishing that aims to remove the paywall barrier to research knowledge - by granting open access to results. Now, if you've ever thought about getting an article via a portal such as ingentaconnect and were asked to pay, say, 45 USD for a 5-page paper where you don't even know if it will really hold that vital information, you will know about what "paywall barrier" means.

Open Access has its pros and cons, as every system has. But this week and for me, it has only pros - since the portal I just mentioned hosts journals by Maney Publishing house, and that house takes part in OA Week. You can find 22 archaeological journals on their page, and all the papers are free for you to read - no paying, no registration, no nothing - until November 4.

Also taking part, but only until October 30, is Internet Archaeology.

And finally, there's a long list of Open Access journals in archaeology on Doug's Archaeology blog.

And if this blog post is not going to steal at least half an hour from your life, I don't know what will...