When I was a child, my TV consume was not very great - but there were a few shows I enjoyed a lot, and watched quite often. One of them was "Die Sendung mit der Maus". The show is still running (the Mouse has turned 40 in 2011) and is still loved and appreciated by children... and adults.

Here is a snippet of it where they explain why the city Mannheim is called Mannheim. In German, of course... but very nicely.

A heap of conference announcements and Call for Papers are hanging out in the Internet at the moment - so for all of you looking for places to go to in the next months, here's a few of them:

From my large-ish stack of tabs open to remind me of interesting things to blog about, here are some more links:

A study shows that the global cooling trend reversed in the 19th century. Industrial revolution, anyone? The NY Times/dotearth also covers this topic. With colourful charts.

There is a conference "Archäologie und Paläogenetik" in Erlangen, starting the day after tomorrow (May 9 - May 13), for those of you German speaking and in the region (or willing to travel). There's also an open evening lecture on May 10. More info? Go to the DGUF website.

I have been telling people about the job offers board at H-Soz-u-Kult for ages - and now there seems to be another board posting job offers for academics, including archaeologists and historians.
There's also a job offer for a textile conservator open in South Central Pennsylvania, just north of Gettysburg, about 1.5 - 2 hours from DC, 1.5 hours from Baltimore, and 2 hours from Center City Philadelphia. The job seems to be work as a conservator for an antiques dealer specialising in flags - if you are interested, email me and I will pass on the mail.

And finally, if all this has made you hungry: A 12th century manuscript including recipes has been found.  Isn't that nice?

While I was away, stuff has accumulated - so here is one of the linky lists again.

There seems to be a dispute about Viking sails and their reconstruction, as this article indicates. With my previous experiences regarding pictures as sources, I'd say it would be worth a try with the broad sail version that is depicted.

And here's a nice appeal to "stop dissing the humanities" - it's relating to US politics and financing, but much the same is true for other places, too.

Finally, in case you have heard about the "Paleolithic Diet" and wondered about how much it really has to do with food in the Stone Age, here is a very interesting video of an archaeologist explaining about... everything.

I'm back, the car is (mostly) unpacked, and we even managed to get everything loaded into the car dry(ish) so there's little residual work apart from the usual checking, cleaning, and storing away again.

This year's event was sort of a mixed bag, weather-wise: rain when we set up, rain on the first days, then sunshine mixed with bouts of rain again. At least it got dry and sunny enough to dry everything that had gotten wet during the first days, and that the ground reverted from muddy to firm yet bouncy again. Otherwise, it was a mixed bag as well: I enjoyed meeting with all the friends and old acquaintances once more during the event. The last years, however, have seen a trend in more and more market stalls that sell stuff I would not expect on a medieval market, ranging from cheap mass-produced spoons and wood implements for the kitchen to colourful wax candles to all kinds of jewellery (modern or fantasy) and garishly brightly coloured clothes that have as much to do with medieval clothing as I have with driving race cars. Plus there are more and more stalls serving food and drink - it's a small wonder if each of them will make profit enough to keep coming.

All this together is a development into a rather unexpected direction, seeing that Freienfels is one of the really big markets for Living History folks, and had the reputation of being one of the one-stop-shops for medieval gear. If the development continues like that, I think it will only be a few more years until it will become less and less attractive for the LH folks - I've heard from a lot of them that they are only coming to meet old acquaintances these days, because the event has changed so much. A pity, really!

Not only the time of year that presents me with tulips springing up in the garden and the cat's unbridled happiness at being able to go outside and enjoy the sun and the hunting of mice - it's the time of year when the season starts.

So I will be off to Freienfels tomorrow, which means no blogging for a few days. I will be back on the blogboat on Friday next week. Until then, have a good time - and maybe I'll see you in Freienfels!

First of all, the good news: The 14C-Dating of the Ribe mitten is fully financed, and the initiator is, accordingly, quite happy. Thanks to all of you who helped funding! If you have not helped funding yet and are sort of sad that the others did it without you: You can still pitch in, any extra money will be used for additional analysis of the piece. Ideas on further research are including the stitch type used, wool analysis, and yarn analysis. For the previously blogged English instructions on how to fund on the Danish site, click here.

The petition against the full cut of heritage conservation funding in one of Germany's federal states has led to some political discussion... but with no clear statements yet. You can read a short piece about that on Archaeologik (in German). The petition still lacks about 1.400 signatures to reach its goal, so if you have not signed yet, please do so and spread the word, there are still 30 days left to go. The text on the petition site itself is in German. If you need to get up to date on what it's about first, you can read my blogpost about it or go to the DGUF who initiated it; they have an English translation on their webpage.

And a last one - I have posted a link to the petition against food patenting before, but it seems as if there's more in the works: an EU law to make almost all traffic of non-industrially produced seeds illegal. When I first read about that, I thought it was a belated April Fool joke, but no, it looks like they really mean it. I found a link to the draft proposal here, and I'll keep my eyes open for protests against this. If you know more, please share in the comments!