Wednesday, 13 August 2014
Oh, that Gitche Gumee is formidable, and continues to maul this wreck. Water levels higher than I’ve seen for some years, I’m pretty sure. We read 57° and 59° as we drove along the shore, with a wind that made it…chilly. But the brilliant sun compensated….
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
Did a wee (and I mean wee) bit of thinking about the power of the Internet in connecting people who otherwise would not encounter one another. Not ground-breaking, that thought, but worth contemplating for several reasons. I was considering how/whether it makes for a significantly different dynamic when considering how civilizations and societies function.
Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, is this broad, empty hallway in a busy well-populated office building this size mostly to satisfy fire regulations? That’s a lot of square footage that can never be rented….
Sunday, 6 July 2014
I’m back to slogging through the details of Rome’s architectural history (mostly before about AD 400). I find that I have to parse the details first and get them close to “right,” then I try to step back and see…patterns. This afternoon it finally hit me that two ancient shrines were adjacent—shrines to water and fire. The legends place both in very ancient times, so they probably pre-date Rome-ness in some form.
The water shrine (and pool) is the Lacus Juturnae, and the fire-shrine is the Aedes Vestae (usually termed temple in English, blurring the difference between shrine and temple to the Romans). An everyday nymph honored by the first, Vestal Virgins tending the second….
The ancient histories record that there was a sacred grove around the Temple of Vesta, so the Lacus, only a few meters away, must also have been in the grove…. To me they seem like they were paired, at least symbolically, in early times. As Rome grew, the importance of the Lacus must have waned, based on its small footprint and reduced ease of access—plus the insertion of a ramp between the two (attributed to Emperor Domitian, b.51–d.96; it connected the Imperial palace atop the Palatine with the Forum).
Anyway, when I finally put this all together, the fire-water neighborhood seemed especially important, culturally loaded, and… ignored in the literature that I’ve peeked at…so I’m probably just taking meaning when there was none. Ah, can’t be the first time that’s happened (sarcasm). 🙂
Monday, 30 June 2014
I like the lighting very much, but what I notice most is the mold seam to the left.
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
Love outdoor statuary you can walk right up to. Thank you, Booth Museum.
Sunday, 30 March 2014
Tristán de Luna y Arellano statue, Pensacola, Florida.
Hard to imagine what this area was like when Tristán and his crews arrived in 1559, without the high-rise beach housing, planted pines, roads, vehicles, master-planned communities, signage, drainage ditches, fast-food joints, and putt-putt mountains.
Thursday, 27 March 2014
Baptist Church.
The high points of Cedar Key are staked out by various civic-ceremonial structures. The Baptists and Episcopalians got two of them.
The community got one, and put the water tower there. After all, drinking water is a scarce and valued commodity in these—and many other—parts.
The final peak (such as it is) is capped by an “Indian Burial Mound.” Much of it has been borrowed away, and what’s left looks rather eroded. So you understand what you’re looking at, the retaining wall label clarifies….
Note that an easy stroll around the Key’s streets gave me several flights (registered by the Fitbit), unlike the flats we explored around Crystal River yesterday.
Saturday, 1 March 2014
I experimented with That Lens Thingy again. I love these dots on this Gail-cup. Punctates I’d consider calling them, if I were in an archaeology lab. Or maybe not, since the vessel is glazed.
Is punctation situational?
Backnote: I’ve been looking at (drawings of) Copper, etc., Age pottery from I guess you’d call it Southeastern Europe lately. More tall vessels than I’d expect.
Tuesday, 18 February 2014
New geographic term: where was the Roman Province of Pannonia? Turns out, if the info I have is correct, that my grandfather came from what was at one time Lower Pannonia.
The Latin term was from their predecessors in invading and record-creation, the Greeks. Turns out that the people living in the grandfather-area were not the Pannoni (probably), but Illyrians, according to the records (depending); the material culture is more difficult to sort spatially, showing some occupations of one and some of the other.
That is, this area was a cultural and political edge, frontier, or boundary for millennia, as it is today.
Monday, 10 February 2014
My ignorance is vast.
Today I worked on improving my knowledge about the Roman Empire’s eastern provinces—specifically those of the Carpathian Basin. And their post-Roman history….