I passed my dissertation defense. I am now Dr. Yawarpoma. This sub has been the best distraction from writing and researching that I could find and still switch tabs back to my work when my advisor/wife/fellow grad school drones pass my cubicle.

I'm writing this at the airport on my way to an archaeological dig in southern Israel. I'm really looking forward to spending the summer playing in the dirt. In my experience, many people are quite interested in archaeology but don't really have a chance to see how it works. To that end, our excavation runs a blog through our excavation season every summer, which follows our dig progress and some details of the archaeological process, and photos. If anyone is interested, you can follow our progress at our excavation's blog:

http://digashkelon.com/blog

The site is Ashkelon, a city founded in the Middle Bronze Age (roughly 2000 BC) and persisting all the way through the Crusades. It was a prominent port city for many civilizations in the area, from the Canaanites, to the Philistines, to the Phoenicians, to the Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, and Muslims. It is situated about 4 miles north of the Gaza Strip on the coast.

It's going to be great. We are hoping to uncover the remains of Nebuchadnezzar's attack on the site which occurred in 604 BC. In another area, we are hoping to find the remains of the city's Cardo (main north-south road) and perhaps some of the buildings around it. Our third area that I know of will be an area at the north part of the site, which we don't know too much about, in an attempt to understand the sequence of occupation in that part of the city.

Do please follow along if you are interested!

I'm on a bit of a Crusades kick, so here is a small question: Simon of Montfort somewhat famously diverted from the Fourth Crusade when it was diverted to Zara, then left it all toether when it went to Constantinople. Five years later, though, he became possibly the most enthusiastic participant in the Albigensian Crusade. It seems a bit of a disconnect.

You could say that the Albigensians were heretics, but if he was that hung up on the Catholic Church wouldn't he have also approved joining the Eastern and Western churches?

EDIT: /u/idjet I summon thee!

I'm also digging this month, at a Viking chief's residence in Denmark.

So far we found at least 5 consecutive phases of habitation, representing a few centuries of building houses on the site. The houses we found are both enormous long-houses (like the hall of Beowulf) and modest dug-in huts, with the latter replacing the monumental big houses. From the styles of the bronze ornaments we have found we can date the use of the site to between the late 600s and early 1000s. That basically means that whoever lived in the houses we are digging would definitely have been personally familiar with the big heroes of the Viking age. But besides the houses of these big heroes, we also have a lot of these lower-class working huts. By looking more into the relation between these different houses on our same site we hope to get more insight into the relation between these two classes, thralls (peasants/slaves) and jarls (chiefs), of Viking society.

We also maintain a blog, unfortunately only in Danish, but I will try to post summaries every Friday.

IT just brought me an iPad "for work" and I don't know what to do with it. I will pretend to type on the little bluetooth keyboard in meetings I guess. However, I have learned that I have the most sweaty, greasy fingers, it is 11am and I haven't even eaten my lunch yet so I thought they were reasonably clean, but apparently I am just an oily person in general. My screen is pretty much unusable after a half hour. I never need hand lotion so I suppose it's a cost savings, but now I disgust myself.

Anyway, do any of the iPad apps for Reddit include basic moderator functions?

I've always been fascinated with the Maritime Republics (Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Ragusa etc), and I've read some great general books but I am interesting in taking a focused look at each city-state. The city-specific books I've read are from around the 1910s and I was wondering if anyone had any more recent books they could recommend?

Side note: I'm about to graduate in a couple of months!

Coming to us from straight from his jazzed-up Fiat Punto, it's this week's installment of Better Know An Historian with /u/Quirite! And in between talking about his beloved Eternal City, he has chosen to share an academic adventure-tale of the time he snatched a rare book right out from under someone...

The recent episode of In Our Time on the Lancashire cotton famine, a result of the Union blockade of the Confederacy during the US Civil War, is really outstanding. That's a good show in any case, but this episode is especially good. I'm also happy to report that the panelists confirmed our explanation from a few weeks ago of the chances of British intervention in the Civil War: diplomats and politicians considered the idea, but would have needed to overcome broad and deep support for the Union among the public. In a society dominated by liberal ideology, waging war to support chattel slavery simply would not do for the large majority of the British public.

A reminder for people who like doing family genealogy, and also don't like spending money, Ancestry.com makes all of the military records available for free accounts on Memorial Day Weekend, so this is an excellent time to try it out.

Let's play a game!

The rules are simple: identify the artifact. Who made it? When? Where? Why? Answer to the best of your ability.

Once someone has guessed what your artifact is (or if no one does in a timely fashion), I'll be expect some additional information and context from the person who posted it.

Here's a set of figurines to get us started. EDIT: I'll give everyone 30 more minutes.

Also, reverse image-searching is for cheaters!

EDIT: /u/RioAbajo got it. Further details about the figurines can be found here.

Did some recent reading and am looking for followups:

-o- Holger H. Herwig's The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World

• Going to pick up Herwig's The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918

• Any good complements to The Marne, 1914 for looking at the opening of the war?

-o- Thomas Barfield's Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History

• Looking for a book that takes a lower level look at modern Afghan culture (mostly day to day stuff in rural locations). Since Afghanistan is rather diverse, I'd be quite okay with a book that focused on one of the many ethnic groups.

-o- Rex Warner's translation of the War Commentaries of Caesar

• Looking for war commentaries written in a similar style. Being from the same period isn't important, but the style and commentary from a command perspective is what I'm looking for.

Can anyone recommend a book on the League of Nations?

I want to talk about the concept of nations as people. That is, the idea that a nation can be represented as a single sentient being, with feelings, ambitions, memories and personality traits.

This representation is normally found in humourous contexts – Polandball comics, for example, often milk national traumas, rivalries and inferiority complexes for all they're worth. Lately, however, I've been wondering whether it could also be applied in (slightly) more serious discussions.

Think about it. Newspaper articles and professional history books already often use the name of a nation, its capital or its people as a metonym for that nation's government (or, less commonly, for some kind of vaguely-defined "public opinion"). 'Paris has announced it is sending extra troops...' 'Prussia, however, had not reached its goals...' 'It remains unclear what the Americans will do...' From there, it doesn't seem such a big leap to the concept of a nation as something that can think and speak for itself.

Of course, it's still a gross oversimplification – it assumes that all citizens of any given nation think more or less the same, and that any given person clearly belongs to exactly one nation. Simplifications have their uses, though, especially in teaching.

Do you think the representation of a nation as a single sentient being would be a useful simplification in teaching history? Or does it conceal more than it reveals?

Question for historians (but not about history): I have a collection of bulletins and papers from the Department of the Interior on "Indians" and Indian affairs, all from the late 1920s. So what do I do with them? Would anyone like to have them?

Gallery here: http://imgur.com/a/pOfgA

They were apparently sent to my great uncle from the DoI (I even have the envelope they came in) for his school report. I can't find any information about them online, other than a few single bulletins for sale on auction sites.

I'd like to know if they're of interest to anyone, and if so, whom? I have no idea who to contact, or if these things are even worth it, but if some historical or Native American organization would like to have them, I'd be happy to donate the whole lot.

If I read Zinn's People's History of the United States and Johnson's History of the American People will I get a reasonably thorough and accurate history of the United States?

Did Roussel de Bailleul know about the Norman conquest in England?

I've realized I know very little about the history of Russia & Asia, since my high school history education was extremely European-centric. I'd like to read a comprehensive history of Russia and how that area's borders & politics have come to be, starting with the Mongolians or maybe even earlier. Is there a good resource/series of resources?