In case you're wondering how green your country's energy is overall, or how it fluctuates with demand and supply and night and day, have a look at the electricity maps here. It's quite interesting - and yes, France is very green because of low CO2-emissions from their nuclear powerplants. But there's still the issue of the material you need to get them running, the incredible cost of building them, and the tiny little detail of how to handle both the ruins once they are out of order, and the nuclear waste left over.

If you ask me, I'd prefer solar and wind energy...

The University of York is offering a fixed-term, paid full-time job for a postdoctoral Research Associate in Textile Archaeology.

The placement is part of the project "Seeing the Dead", an AHRC-funded project which aims to investigate the funerary custom attested in Roman Yorkshire in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE of pouring liquid gypsum over the bodies of adults and children in stone or lead coffins before burial. The Research Associate in textile archaeology will examine all surfaces of the gypsum casings, complete and fragmentary, for fabric imprints that reveal structures (textile weave, animal or vegetable fibres, borders, and selvedges). They will document the casing details, identify the nature and function of the fabrics, the technical tradition involved in their manufacture, and the types of garments and shrouds chosen. Remains of embedded textiles in the casings or in the sediments of coffins will be selected and sampled for microscopy and spectroscopy for better visualisation and analysis. The Research Associate will generate new knowledge about the nature and function of the burial textiles and how they reflect the social status of the people in them. Deadline for application is March 31, the interview date is April 25.  

For more information see the website at Uni York.

If you're looking to learn about archaeological textile conservation and archaeometry, you might want to consider this summer school taking place in Rome: 

It's taking place June 30 to July 5 2025, and application deadline is May 29. 

As I was looking out into the garden around noon, there was an unexpected guest: A small hedgehog was rustling around in the leaves, obviously looking for food.

Now... it's still very early spring, and not very warm outside, so the proper place for a hedgehog is somewhere cozy, resting and waiting for it to be warmer. Also, the proper time for a hedgehog to forage for food is dusk and dawn, but not the bright noon sun.

So I went off to raid the emergency cat food stash (which is two cans of cat food, as she can't eat the canned food without getting digestive trouble anymore) and offered the small guy some of it. That was promptly followed by something that looked suspiciously like food coma (as in sitting down after two steps and not moving anymore), so I went to secure it.

The little guy has now been weighed (a meagre 328 g) and is sleeping in a box in our living room, where it's nice and temperate and it can relax and regain some strength. More cat food to be served soon...

Monday. Up to now spent by catching up on emails, doing some writing, finishing the current round of book-keeping, and preparing a 15-minute presentation for a conference. Also thinking about learning, and teaching, and all the many things involved in this.

I have also found a favourite new way of explaining why trying things out/archaeotechnic/experimental archaeology are important. One of the reasons is that it seems easy to reconstruct a process on paper, but once you get your stuff out and try to do it, there's usually information missing. Why? Because it's surprisingly easy to forget essential steps - sometimes because you are not familiar enough with something, sometimes because they are so normal you don't think about them. 

Like drawing a bicycle. Most people, given pen and paper, will draw something that others will, no problem at all, recognise as the drawing of a bicycle. But if you were to transform it into an actual object, chances are very high that it won't work. Or you could try and write down every step necessary for you to go out and buy a box of eggs (or of cereal, for the American peers who have utterly pricey eggs at the moment). Chances are quite high you might forget something... 

If you do try, do let me know how it came out!

Today was spent in catching up on book-keeping and bills, and now I'm happy that the weekend is drawing near. It looks like there's quite a few interesting exhibitions going on in Nuremberg at the moment, and of course in early spring there's always something that can be done in the garden. The willow fence is cut already, but experience has shown that clearing out and weeding the flower(ish) beds now is a smart move. Especially if experience also points out that the probability of much less weeding happening during full summer is rather low, due to different circumstances.

And also, apart from all that: Happy Pi Day!

If you feel like you know what's going on worldwide, or, even better, if you have an idea on how to solve the kerfuffle we're all in - please let the rest of us know.

While keeping half an eye on what the news tells me is happening in the US, Germany is having its own kind of fun. As you know, elections have been held a while ago, but technically the old government is still active. So now the party who "won" (as in had more votes than the others, though they came in under 30% total) wants to quickly do some changes to the constitution because they think it might be easier in the old government than it will be in the new one.

Which... might be correct. However, the Green party, who they'd bashed and proclaimed basically incompetent idiots for three years, are not toppling over and saying "yes" to their (quite vague and in some cases not very sensible) proposal. While some other parties are appealing to the Verfassungsgericht (constitutional government) that this quick action to get something very big and important through with the old group while there's already been new elections and thus technically a new mix who the people want to reign is not fair and/or not constitutional.

And regarding the proposal itself: Basically it's yes, we do need more money to run this country efficiently, especially since the CxU (the same guys who now want to have a metric shitton of money to spend however they'd like) has blocked investments into infrastructure and education for a few years... while other parties were supposed to run the country. They blocked basically everything they could.

It stays interesting. In today's meeting of the Bundestag, there seems to have been no big progress made. Because - oh surprise! - the Greens don't trust the CxU any further than they could throw them anymore. Or so.

We'll see how it goes - and if the CxU has to debate and find an agreement in the new Bundestag, it means they don't only have to find a compromise with the (still utterly pissed-off) Greens, but also with the leftist fraction of Die Linke. Who are more or less so anathema to the CxU that they don't even talk about them. 

What do you think - should we get a popcorn maker while all this goes off?