There've been questions about the radio interview that Gillian and I will be doing on Friday. (Yay radio interview!) In case you missed the first announcement, here it is again:

...totally excited about being on a radio show on Friday, together with Gillian. We'll be interviewed about our book "The Middle Ages Unlocked", and the really cool thing? It's a radio station that is also sending via the internet. It's the afternoon show in Talk Radio Europe, and we'll be on air this Friday, 10 July, somewhere between 14:15 and 15:00.

Tune in if you'd like to hear us talk about the book - there might be a fun fact or two for you to hear about...

 

And now for the questions.

What's that in Greenwich time? 

Ah, yes, the joy of time zone differences.
Here's a little table of the times we'll be on:

UTC/GMT (Time Zone)    Friday, 10. Juli 2015, 12:15 UTC 

Nuremberg (Germany)    Friday, 10. Juli 2015, 14:15 UTC+2 hrs  
Sydney (Australia, NSW)Friday, 10. Juli 2015, 22:15 UTC+10 hrs 
London (England)       Friday, 10. Juli 2015, 13:15 UTC+1 hr

Malaga (Spain)         Friday, 10. Juli 2015, 14:15 UTC+2 hrs 
Los Angeles (U.S.A.)   Friday, 10. Juli 2015, 05:15 UTC-7 hrs  

Gillian will be in Sydney, I will be in Erlangen, the radio station is based in Malaga, Spain, and our host is, if I got it correct, British. So we'll be a very international bit of the show!

Will the interview be in English?


Although I would really like to hear Gillian attempt to speak German one day, and the station is based in Spain - yes, it will be in English. You'll get to hear my slightly weird accent, and Gillian has promised to practise British English in the hours before the interview so she's not too Australian-sounding.

Will it be downloadable if we can't hear it live? 

Yes, it will! Talk Radio Europe offers all their original shows to listen to again for seven days after the shows ran. It's their "Listen On Demand" offer.

So. Tune in, or download later - and we hope you'll enjoy our radio interview!

There's been a Bronze Age find, with residues of food (which is really, really special) in Cambridgeshire.

In sadder news, the C14 lab closest to my home, situated in the Physics Institute Erlangen, is closing down this summer, after twenty years. They don't say why they will close down, but Mathias' blog Schauhuette hints that it's due to budget cuts.

Finally, though a little older news already: The remains of a medieval knight whose skeleton shows damage consistent with jousting injuries.

There's a huge stack of links I want to share with you!


A German archaeologist, specialising on excavation and research of gallows squares and other places of execution, is trying out crowdfunding for her upcoming excavation project. You can take a look at the (German) page here - it definitely is an interesting excavation, and I hope she'll succeed with her funding!

Ferguson Municipal Public Library has received the award for the "Library of the Year". The article shows what a library can be and do for the public - that award was really deserved!

You might have stumbled across an article telling you that chocolate can help weight loss during the last months - it was all over the internet, and apparently all over print media, too. That study was actually a half-hoax - it was intended to show how unreliable pseudo-studies will have an impact on diet fads and public opinion, revealed by the author about two weeks ago. Let's hope this helps, because what John Bohannon writes about the many studies that tell you anything you wish is unfortunately true... fat is good for you, fat is bad for you, carbohydrates are good for you, bad for you, ... there's studies to prove all this. More or less, that is.

The Sad Puppies Hugo thing is still making waves.
Related to that, Kameron Hurley has a rant on her blog that I found well worth reading.

The Middle Ages' love for colour extended to the subtle colouring of gold alloys - as evident on the Shrine of Our Lady of Huy, c 1260. A group of researchers has studied recipes and the actual colouring of the shrine. (Linked article contains link to the actual study paper behind the Maney paywall.)

Genevra Kornbluth has a photo archive about "luxury arts" online, including many museum objects dating back to the Middle Ages.

And if that was not enough of a Linkfest for you, go over to Phiala's blog - she has linkage, too.

This Friday night, Pierre Brice has died, aged 86.

If you are German and my age, or probably a bit older, or a bit younger, chances are high that Pierre Brice has helped form your image of Native Americans - even though he was French, and the reason for this formative action was a German author living in the late nineteenth century who had never been to America when he wrote a series of novels... featuring a German adventurer and a noble Native American.

I am, of course, talking about Karl May and the Winnetou novels. Pierre Brice was the actor portraying Winnetou, the Apache hero, and I watched the films as a child and teenager, enjoying them immensely. I had posters of the Pierre Brice Winnetou in my room, and I was reading up on Native American culture* and listening to Country music. I remember dressing up playmobil cattle with shredded brown napkins to look like bison, and building playmobil-sized teepees for my "Indianer".

I read Karl May's novels, not only Winnetou but a lot of the others as well - many, many hours of reading. I watched the Winnetou films, and I had the soundtrack. We went to watch the Karl May festival at Elspe... I had a lot of good times thanks to Karl May.

A while ago, I discovered that a) the popular image of Native Americans in Germany is surprising to some people, and that b) not everybody knows where this comes from. (In case you do not know, it's very positive overall - Native Americans are living in harmony with nature, are almost always playing fair and are very honorable... you get the idea.) Well, one of the reasons for the spreading of this popular image has died on Friday.

For those of you who would like a glimpse of one of the films, here is the first part of the three-film series about Winnetou.  Watching a bit of it should give you a good impression of Old Shatterhand, Winnetou, the portrayal of Native Americans in these films, and the general not-so-small cheesiness of the movies.



Rest in peace, Pierre Brice.


*That meant I did discover most of what Karl May wrote was, well, not close to the truth. It was fascinating anyway.

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer have put together an issue of the New Statesman, and there were, let's say, "slight difficulties" concerning the cover. If you are at all interested, go read the piece on Neil's blog, it's worth it for the comic alone.

If you read German, Rainer Schreg has posted a very good reply to the concern that archaeologists (and the feuilleton press) are talking about the loss of monuments and cultural history that is going on in Syria and the Iraq. If you do not read German, here's the TG;CR (Too German, Cannot Read) short version:

If we are writing about the loss of monuments, it does not mean we consider stones as more important than people. We are concerned about the cruelty to people, but destroying their cultural heritage is part of destroying people and their identity. The effects of this will be felt long after the civil war, when new generations will ask questions about their own history - those questions will not be answered anymore with the lack of cultural heritage.
Loss of cultural heritage has been going on for many decades, all over the world, but it's only with the war and terror in Iraq and Syria that it has hit the press in force. However, if not in connection with these transgressions, when should we discuss this loss of our history? When the world is a beautiful, perfect place that has forgotten what war is like? If we wait until then, it could be too late. Let us stop discussing the merit of stones versus the merit of people and rather start asking why the rest of the world is just sitting there, doing nothing.

Over at archaeosoup, there's a video of Gary Bankhead (who recently stayed here to chat textiles and do some research) explaining about his work in Durham and the cloth seals he is researching.

And on a final note, going on in the Blogosphere in the near future: Gillian and I are planning a blog tour to celebrate the launch of the Beast (soon! very soon!) so if you happen to know of any blog who would be interested... let us know. (Gillian is especially looking for someone who wants to know how she knows so much about Old French insults, and I agree with her that it would be fun to tell about the issues of working together when you are ten thousand miles apart.)

The Hugo nomination ballot is still causing a lot of discussion - among many people. There's those that have a firm opinion in one way or another what should be done this specific time and maybe for the future; there's also a lot of thinking and pondering and suggesting going on about how the Hugos have changed over the years, and how they could be changed now to fit in with the times again.

If you're interested, Jim C. Hines is having a nice long post about choosing sides, with some links sprinkled in, and there is now a survey about the impact of the Hugo on non-US readers of the genre, here. Shaun Duke made that survey, and eventually the results will be written up and posted.

In case the Hugos are something that you never heard about and don't even want to hear about, you can always take a look at the Will of King John instead. Or in addition, if you like both old legal documents and modern genre award debates...

If you are doing research, you'll know about paywalled journals. For those of us lucky enough to live near a university, many of the paywall problems can be solved with a library card and some quality time spent on the computer among all those books... but not every library has the stuff you need, and no library ever has All The Things, and anyways the beauty of online articles is the quick access right from your home workstation, and that is much rarer to get than a library card.

So it's extra nice that from time to time, some of the big paywalls open up and give out stuff for free. Like Maney, this week: You have free access to 43 of their journals about archaeology, conservation and heritage until April 26!

Why are you still here? Oh, right. Here's the link. I know where I will be spending my breaks today - there's still the typeset Beast to finish proofreading!