So I got a new book that was written by one of my professors yesterday (Who's a really brilliant woman, honestly). I got curious, so I picked it up - the title is Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean 800 BCE-200 CE. If you're averse to hilarious NSFW content, you've been warned!

The TL;DR of the below is that this is why I love studying ancient history. Seriously

So the island of Delos is a really super cool thing to read about, because it was in an almost entirely unique situation. They originally favoured Macedonia in the Rome-Macedona war...and the Macedonians lost. So, Rome being Rome, they expelled the island's inhabitants, replacing them with an Athenian cleruchy (Sorta like a colony). Athens had control over Delos...but only on one condition. It had to maintain a "duty-free" zone for all transit cargoes. Needless to say, that was essentially a BEACON to trade - and the island became a major trading hub almost overnight. It's almost similar to the "boomtowns" of the Wild West in this regard - whole neighbourhoods sprung up out of nowhere, including the "district of the Sacred Lake" - which happened to be a sort of "red light district" that catered to the massive number of sailors who were stopping in town (shown by the high number of engravings of piloi - or caps of the Dioscuri, the twin-brother patrons of sailors, Castor and Pollux). The best part about this district? The massive number of phallic everythings! Here's a relevent quote concerning a certain...house.

The entrance to house C in particular began as a short alleyway leading to the recessed doorway of a partially excavated house slightly set back from the street. The excavated marble posts of the doorway, in sity, exhibit small reliefs set high on their inner faces above the doorsill. To the right stands a graffito-like phallus with a "smiley face" and sticklike legs recalling the stuccoed feet of the phallus relief at the house of the Diadumenus; to the left a skeletal human figure appears to be slaying a small animal with a large knife.

If you want more context, it's a REALLY hilarious read. I mean, where else can you find dicks with smiley faces and legs? Obviously, ancient advertisements were WAY better than their modern counterparts ;D

I've been working on a project involving the preservation of Arthurdale, West Virginia. Arthurdale was a New Deal community created during the Great Depression to give out of work coal miners an opportunity to coax a living from the soil. It did not work well. In 1947/8, the federal government sold the buildings to private owners and the "social experiment" was deemed a failure.

In order to build a historic context for my project before I visit Arthurdale, I have been reading:

"Arthurdale: An Experiment in Community Planning 1933-1947" by Stephen Haid (PhD dissertation)

"Southern West Virginia and the Struggle for Modernity" by Christopher Dorsey

"Arthurdale: Its History, Its Lessons For Today" by Richard S. Little

"Back to the Land: Arthurdale, FDR's New Deal, And The Costs of Economic Planning" by C.J. Maloney

"An Appalachian New Deal: West Virginia in the Great Depression" by Jerry Thomas

Any suggestions on further articles or books to read is appreciated. Otherwise, would love to hear what everyone else is up to!

I'm an undergrad student, so I can't know levels of graduate frustration when it comes to research, but this was incredibly frustrating.

I am researching Libyan history related to the Sanusi Order, the UN mandate that created Libya, and what allowed the Sanusi order to be given rule over Cyrenaica, Tripoltania, and Fezzan. Interesting stuff.

Everything I came across was Orientalist literature from the 1920-1950 and recent journal articles over the Arab Spring. When I talked to my prof. about this he laughed and said yeah I should of warned you about that and pointed me to some articles that were useful.

But holy shit that was frustrating. Anyone have any other similar stories?

I just want to say, I simply can't recommend enough the book Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West 300-900 by Leslie Brubaker and Julia Smith enough. I stumbled across it while doing research at the library, and it is filled with absolutely awesome scholarship, on topics as wide ranging as clothes and masculinity in the late Roman world, the rhetoric of gender in Procopius, what it means when geneaology is traced through the female side like with the pippinids, to romance in the Byzantine bridal world.

It is amazingly researched, and far far far far far far superior to the (in my opinion) absolutely atrocious Women in Early Medieval Europe by Lisa Bitel, which was not only grating in tone, but filled with outdated history as well as unsourced speculation that was more in line with undergrad history than someone who should be publishing for a major university press.

I can't recommend Gender in the Early Medieval World enough. It'll answer some obvious questions, as well as some questions you may not have thought up before. Either way, a useful addition to any late antiquity/early medieval library.

(Not a paid reviewer endorsement) :)

I've been reading up on pre-Columbian foodstuffs with a focus on the Maya. My primary source has been Sophie D. Coe's book America's First Cuisines in which she compiles numerous archaeological and colonial sources to a paint picture of what they may have eaten. Unfortunately, in most cases, exact recipes are lost to time and closest we can get to are basic steps in making some of the things they may have made. I've been doing this in an effort to help the Denver Museum of Nature and Science offer more authentic Maya dishes in their cafe and for catered events for their upcoming exhibit Maya: Hidden Worlds Revealed.