Looks like the folks at Oxford are jumping on the crowdsourcing bandwagon … today my mailbox is filling up with coverage appealing to “armchair archaeologists” (philologists? paleographers shurely) to help with that famous archive of papyri. Since I have a readership who know what the Oxyrhynchus Papyri are, we’ll post the BBC coverage, even if [...]

A casual Twitter exchange with @TLockyer and @exploreclassics (on Latin not having a single word for “volcano”) reminded me that Latin does seem to have a rather large number of words for earthquake … ecce (cutting and pasting from English-to-Latin Word Search Results for earthquake at Perseus; go there for links to L&S): chasmatias – [...]

Laura Gibbs has been giving Google+ a workout over the past couple of weeks and her latest efforts include compiling a list of Latin abbreviations for all those things you type with your thumbs … I think folks without Google+ can check this out as well: Laura Gibbs – Google+.

Amidst all the US debt debating which is taking up much of the news cycle, we hear of attempts to limit and/or  drastically decrease the funding to the NEH, which would likely affect Classicists in the US at some point … see the post at the APA blog:  Action Alert from the National Humanities Alliance

Adrian Murdoch continues the series: #30 Decius: Emperors of Rome … and if you’re wondering about the death of Decius after watching that: The Death of Decius

Interesting item in the Bucks Herald: AN AMATEUR archaeologist from Aylesbury has been given a national award after uncovering a coin press which may have been used to make counterfeit currency in Roman times. Tom Clarke, who has been metal detecting for more than 40 years, found a number of blank bronze coins and a [...]

Folks might be interested in this one:  Socrates Wouldn’t Trust the Web. Should We Trust Him? | Learning From The Past | Big Think.

Tip o’ the pileus to Laval Hunsucker on the Classics list for this one … a potentially useful bit of technology for reading/photographing inscriptions (although I would have liked to see what it did with the wooden example at the beginning): RTI has been around for a while (there are actual tutorials at Youtube on [...]

Seen on the Classics list: Re-Creation: Musical Reception of Classical Antiquity October 27-30, 2011 At the University of Iowa *Preliminary program* THURSDAY October 27 Late afternoon public lecture on contexts of Peri’s Euridice by Wendy Heller (Princeton University) Sponsored by Opera Studies Forum. 8 pm. evening concert by the Center for New Music at the [...]

Seen on the Classicists list: Desiring Statues: Statuary, Sexuality and History Conference University of Exeter, 27th April 2012 Keynote Speakers Dr Stefano-Maria Evangelista (University of Oxford) Dr Ian Jenkins (British Museum) Statuary has offered a privileged site for the articulation of sexual experience and ideas, and the formation of sexual knowledge. From prehistoric phallic stones, [...]

Seen on the Classicists list: The Centre for Hellenistic and Romano-Greek Culture and Society (Exeter) and the Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies invite you to a Seleucid Study Day University of Exeter, 15 August 2011 Amory Building, Room 219 Programme 9:00 Tea, Opening 9:20-12:40 Session I: Queens, Princesses, and Dynastic Issues of the Seleucids (chaired [...]

Seen on the Classicists list: ANCIENT CARTHAGE: MODELS OF CULTURAL CONTACT St John’s College, Durham UK 5th – 6th August 2011 The aim of this networking project is to address the Carthaginian- Phoenician nexus in the wider Mediterranean context from the 9th century BCE to the fall of Carthage to Rome in 146 BCE, as [...]

Seen on the Classicists list 1st International Congress on Piracy and Maritime Security in the Western Mediterranean and the Iberian peninsula in Antiquity University of Seville 27-28 October 2011 Programme Thursday 27 October – University of Seville Auditorium MORNING SESSION 10.00-10.30 Welcome and opening remarks 10.30-11.15 – G. Chic García, Universidad de Sevilla "Violencia legal [...]

This is another one which ended up not getting much coverage in the English-reading press for reasons unknown. A couple weeks after all the excitement about the ‘solar’ alignment of Hadrian’s Villa, AFP reported: Lack of money mean parts of Roman emperor Hadrian’s villa have had to be closed off to tourists because they are [...]

From Iran’s Press TV: Known as the best preserved archaeological site in Bulgaria, Nikopolis-ad-Istrum is called by some the Bulgarian Pompeii, StandArt reported. The team is slated to start excavations this summer by exploring a building dating back to the time of Roman emperor Septimus, which experts believe was used as temple by the worshippers [...]

This is one of those annoying stories which either has coverage that is way too detailed or way too short and I grow weary of waiting for some decent coverage. We first heard of Turkey’s plans to try to repatriate the half of the ‘Weary Hercules” which was in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts [...]

From the Greek Reporter: On July 21st the Museum Board of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, approved a preliminary report for a new Museum of Marine Antiquities in the building SILO at the “Cultural Coast of Piraeus”. The museum’s exhibits will include 2000 archaeological findings, copies of ancient artworks, works of modern artists concerning [...]

Tip o’ the pileus to ASCSA publications for passing this one along:

Working my way through my mailbox (as often) I came across this item from a couple weeks ago in Athens News … nice little list of who’s working where at the end too: NEARLY as old as ancient Athens itself is the long history of travellers – both foreign and domestic, among them kings, merchants, [...]

From a Getty press release: The J. Paul Getty Museum announced today that one of the most prominent holdings of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France’s Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, the Berthouville Treasure, has begun a three-year-long process of conservation and technical research at the Getty Villa. This rare cache of approximately 95 ancient Roman [...]

At the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens: Illyrian Apollonia: Toward a developmental history of a Corinthian colony in the Adriatic

ante diem xi kalendas sextilias 367 B.C. (?)– dedication of a Temple of Concord (and associated rites thereafter) 64 A.D. — the Great Fire of Rome (day 5)