Things not done today? Sitting in the sun for long enough (it went cloudy and windy too soon!). Feed the cat enough (at least according to her. She's very vocal about that.) Cuddle the cat enough. (Same. How I can dare to just get up from the desk from time to time, really. I surely don't need to get tea, or go get rid of tea, while Madame decides she wants to lounge on my arm.)

Also not done: Quarter tax work. I did not forget to send of the Textile Forum newsletter second half (it's too many mails to send in one go), or to send off the post. On the slightly down-ish side, I did not manage to not eat too much chocolate... so there's that.

Otherwise it was another day of taking care of bits and bobs and this and that - with lots of cuddly support from Madame. I won't complain! 

And just in case you want to see my favourite (German, but never mind) instagram post of the day: Check out this one here.

It's Monday, and we've had one hour stolen. Or something like that.

On Saturday night, there was the switch to German "Sommerzeit" - daylight saving time. And really, apart from it being rather unneccessary and causing trouble with timetables and whatnot, and also costing the economy quite a lot of money and making people like me cranky (and even more so on the switch back, when you suddenly have to re-adjust to completely different degrees of light at a specific time again), what's with that name? If there's any time in the year where it would be important to save daylight, because there's not so much of it, that would be winter, right?

Well. As you can tell, I might be a little cranky. In that, I will join the (still too chubby) cat who is Not Amused about her mealtimes suddenly shifting around again. Although she's not objecting too much that they come earlier now...

And now I'll get back to my work. Which is happening not quicker, even though I am told it's saving time. Or so. 

Aaaand... we're back at the gender discussions. Because there's been recent research about the scribes writing the medieval manuscripts - and in some cases, the scribes left a colophon, that is some information about the manuscript and its making. And in some of them, there's information about the scribes themselves. Including, well, their names.

So a group of researchers has looked at colophones for an attempt to quantify the role that female scribes played in the medieval manuscript-writing and copying. 

And... you can read the full article, open-access, here.  

Archaeology content yesterday, archaeology content today: Otto the Great's grave in Magdeburg cathedral will be opened. That's a necessary procedure as there's been damage to the sarcophagus, and an intervention is needed.

Since the grave contains textiles, this is of course a big thing - and I hope that there will be updates on what is happening. For now, you can read the German articles here and here about it. 

If you're following the news about archaeology at least a little bit, you'll have seen the Big News about the Viking burial with weapons and a woman in it. There were big speculations regarding that woman's role as a warrior or possibly even as a war leader.

Well.

Sex and gender are a difficult topic in archaeology, and have always been. Why? Because even if you find human remains, finding out what the person's biological sex was is not always easy. You can see some hints in the bone structure, in the attachment points of muscles to the bone, in the pelvis shape and also in the angle of the ear canal (yes, insert joke about why women are the better listeners here). However, that all requires a) good bone conservation and b) somebody knowing what they are looking at, with sufficient experience and c) not having a body that, due to some reason, appears more androgyneous.

So, back in the past, a lot of archaeologists mostly relied on the grave goods where the burial customs were distinctively gendered. The inconclusive, mixed-message burials posed a problem here. As time passed, it became more of a best practice to have an anthropologist look at the bones to help find out whether the gendering was as strictly correct as assumed before, or whether there was some mix-up in some graves.

Now we get to the interesting bit. We have a history of abuse of history (or, to put it more correctly, the interpretation of historic events) and of archaeology (or, again, the interpretation of archaeological finds) to support messages or agendas of contemporary political or sociological groups. (The abuse of archaeology during the Third Reich is one of the reasons why German archaeology is still more leery to venture forth with interpretations, and prefers just stating the number of axes and spindle-whorls found instead, by the way.) 

Which means that I tend to get suspicious when we suddenly find Woman Generals!!1!! Gender Fluitidy in prehistoric societies!!1!! or similar things today, when gender fluitidy and gender equality are big topics. Don't get me wrong, I would like it very much if women today were finally given equal standing with all others (especially men); if nobody were attacked or disadvantaged due to their sexual orientation; if nobody cared who is wearing the dress and who is painting their nails. I also think that we may have an image of gender equality or inequality that in some cases does not match the historical reality - otherwise it would have been quite weird that some medieval wives took over the craft workshop after their husband's death in the role of master. 

However, I am also of the opinion that even if non-binary people are fully accepted and fully integrated, we will still have the heterosexual couple as the norm. Because of, you know, biology. Again, that does not mean I think that there were only two genders, or that only two genders were accepted by the group/society - but that the heterosexual orientation would have been that of the majority of humans.

So I'm kind of feeling validated that a recent study has found that gendered burial practices in two large Bronze Age burial sites do align very well with sex identification - and the latter was based on a new method of searching for sex-specific peptides in the teeth. This newer method does not rely on the good preservation of the skeleton and it having good indicators, so it's a really good possibility to double-check previous interpretation. And in the case of the two Austrian cemeteries that were analysed in the paper, there was an almost complete match between sex and gendered burial style, with a few mixed-message burials (but none clearly contrary in gendered burial and sex of the skeleton). You can read the full article here.

The weather is nicer today - but in spite of that, I spent part of the morning in our wardrobe. 

We have a walk-in wardrobe (well, you can barely walk in, but still), and that's the spot I use for doing sound recordings. (Small spaces with lots of fabric are the recommendation to avoid unwanted sound effects.) 

Today, though, I was not in there for an Escape Artist story, but for a podcast with Kaptorga. There's a number of podcast episodes already online, and you can find them here (or in other places) - all German, though. And if things go well, there will soon-ish be another one where I join Adam in rambling on about textiles, textiles, and textiles. 

It was a lot of fun for me, and, well, maybe we'll even make a second one at some point...

... and even though it's grey and rainy here today, I will have to go out now to bring the post to the post office.

I'm quite sure that this will not better my standings with the little cat, who is being cuddled on my desk while I'm writing, and was generally not very content today when cuddle time had to be interrupted for some reason. (Like coffee. She was more gracious when the reason also included cat food, but since she's still on the rather, um, well-padded side, there's a hard limit on the amount of cat food available per day. Poor Madame.)

More, hopefully interesting, news might come tomorrow.