This weekly feature is a place to discuss new developments in fields of history and archaeology. This can be newly discovered documents and archaeological sites, recent publications, documents that have just become publicly available through digitization or the opening of archives, and new theories and interpretations.
In his continuing series '/u/TheGreenReaper7 shamelessly advertises academic seminars', we continue with the newly announced schedule for the University College London IMARS programme:
(ps.) Brenda Bolton speaking on Lateran IV is not something to be missed for a Central or Late medievalist!
Autumn Term
20th October: Dr Matthew Beaumont (UCL) Idle Wandering Persons: Nightwalkers in Renaissance London.
17th November: Dr Brenda Bolton (London) Answering the Call of Faith? Behind the Scenes at the Fourth Lateran Council.
Spring Term
23rd Feb: Dr Huw Grange (Cambridge) Mapping the Prose Tristan: a Cartographic Quest.
9th March: Professor Carole Rawcliffe (UEA) Nurturing the Urban Body: Food Standards and Health in Late Medieval English Towns.
Summer Term
11th May: Dr Stephen Mossman (Manchester) Hatred of University Lecturers and the Inspired Word in the Fourteenth Century.
1st June: Dr Cornelia Linde (GHI) Arguing with Lollards. Thomas Palmer, OP, and De translatione sacrae scripturae in linguam barbaricam
These seminars are open to the public and free. Please do remember that these are professional events to test research and not public classes. There is no onus on the speaker or chairs to perform outreach or try to educate the audience from a basic understanding. There is often little in the way of explanation of terms and concepts familiar to professional historians (although topic-specific jargon is often toned down). Like anything you will get out as much as you put in, reading a book or two in preparation will enhance your experience immeasurably and if you are familiar with any of these, often world-renowned, historians or the period they are addressing these are invaluable opportunities to hear them talk (or talked about)!
Stanford released a guide to making your websites friendly to web archiving that's pretty useful. There's a lot of website managers here so might be of interest.
An article published today in Nature dated cave paintings in Indonesia to 35,000 - 40,000 years ago, comparable to the oldest cave paintings found in Europe.
From the abstract:
...it can now be demonstrated that humans were producing rock art by ~40 kyr ago at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world.
So that's pretty cool.