Last week I was looking at the site of Tonina in Chiapas, Mexico on Google Earth because of an article going around that one of its pyramids was discovered to be the tallest in Mexico. I was under the impression that someone had mistaken the acropolis of Tonina as a pyramid and forgot that the whole thing is built into a hillside. It turns out that this tallest pyramid may be from a second nearby acropolis.

In the process of looking at the landscape on Google Earth I spotted what I thought to be a guachimonton (coordinates - 16°53'53.35"N 92° 0'37.82"W). I was like, there's no way that's possible. This is Chiapas and guachimontones are in Jalisco. I scoured the web for sources on Tonina, found a French archival site with an incomplete set of photos from the excavations done in the 70s. I didn't spot what I saw on Google Earth so I requested all four volumes of the French excavation reports on the site through interlibrary loan and I was planning on going through them with Google Translate to get to the bottom of this mystery structure.

That is until someone posted a link to their personal set of photos taken from the air of Tonina on the Ancient Mesoamerica Facebook page. Buried in photos of the acropolis I spotted it. A guachimonton complete with altar space, patio space, and eight circular platforms on the ring.

http://www.mesoweb.com/mpa/tonina/tonin322.html

http://www.mesoweb.com/mpa/tonina/tonin323.html

http://www.mesoweb.com/mpa/tonina/tonin349.html

I asked the person what that circular compound was and he said he was curious himself. Locals had told him that it was some kind of historic cattle enclosure. I didn't buy it. It wasn't until a second guy commented that the mystery has been partially solved. He said an INAH archaeologist built the guachimonton at Tonina as part of an experiment about 20 years ago. I managed to get ahold of this archaeologist's email address and I emailed him asking for more information about his experiment. Why build a guachimonton? What kind of experiment was it? Is there any data I could use for my thesis?

I will report back when/if the archaeologist responds to me.

Thanks to some very interesting links, I'm currently reading this about women in Viking society, and Viking sagas in particular.

Also ordered a book on Old Norse Magic and Gender, and have added these books to my Wishlist- Old Norse Images of Women (Jenny Jochens), Studying Medieval Women: Sex, Gender, Feminism (Nancy Partner), Gender and the Archaeology of Death (which looks to be particularly interesting), Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, The Cold Counsel: Women in Norse Literature and Myth, Women in Old Norse Society (Jenny Jochens, again) and Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West (Guy Halsall).

Anyway, any more interesting book recommendations about Viking sex would be very much appreciated!

I've got a few pieces of reading going on right now. In terms of work, I have a journal review of an interesting book to do--one that deals with agrarian violence and the road to apartheid in the first half of the 20th century. It's a promising book and archivally very thick, which is not the norm for works dealing with that era and those events. The other is a book manuscript I'm evaluating for a university press, and it's actually outside of my immediate field in terms of its era and its specific approach (very Political Science), but I am apparently the closest person to that field who's neither involved in the work or specifically taken to task within it. I am looking less forward to that.

The pleasure reading (can we call it that?) that I'm doing right now is actually Delius, Maggs, and Schoeman, eds., Forgotten World: The Stone-Walled Settlements of the Mpumalanga Escarpment (Wits, 2014)--now available in softback for under $40 on this side of the Atlantic. I've been waiting for this for a while, as it is the fruit of the "500 Years" project's Bokoni Complex wing. In short, the Bokoni Complex is a network of settlements that, from at least the 15th century to the 18th, was a robust trade system leading towards the Indian Ocean in the northeastern portions of South Africa. We're only now finding out how this system functioned via anthropological, historical, and archaeological data; a lot of stories about the region were long written off as irrelevant or mythical, but in fact there's a tremendous link between past and present in this region. Only recently have all of these settlements been recognized as constituting one network, and that's leading to some exciting re-evaluation of the way Bantu-speaking societies in the region of present day South Africa operated and interacted with one another and people beyond their usual ken. I'm just getting into it, but it's got great photographs, drawings, and diagrams, without losing any of its evident rigor. I'm always glad to know that the fracturing of history as a discipline in SA is neither universal nor prohibitive of the kind of pathbreaking interdisciplinary work that characterized the 1990s and still needs to be done.

Recently, I made the decision to purchase a subscription to NK News, a site that provides articles, analysis, and tools to study and read about the DPRK. It's been money well spent thus far, and I feel like a kid in a Stalinist-themed candy store. Apart from the daily news docket, I've been reading some backlogged analysis on the formation of North Korea and the initial purges which led to Kim il-Sung's rise.

To supplement, I've also been reading Andrei Lankov's The Real North Korea, which provides a palatable and concise history of North Korea from the Second World War to the present day.

I also recently received a cookbook curating traditional and popular recipes of North Korean cuisine. I'm looking forward to making some Gimchi Onmyeon (Kimchi Soup with Noodles) and Gwimil Tteok (Oatmeal Cake) soon!

If you have any interest in or questions about North Korea, have some cool recommendations you want to share with me, or you want to talk about the latest in DPRK news, please send me a message! I'm always happy to engage in some group research.

So I'm reading the poppiest of pop history and reading Hamilton Sides' "In the Kingdom of Ice", about the failed 1879-1881 arctic expedition of the USS Jeanette. Mostly I am reading it because hey, I like polar survival stories and the senior surviving officer (George Melville, chief engineer) is my great great great uncle.

I just bought "The Other Annapolis 1900-1950" about black Annapolis during segregation. It's a book I've been meaning to pick up for ages because I'm really interested in local history, particularly local African American history.

Currently reading The Mongol Invasions of Japan 1274 & 1281 by Stephen Turnbull. It is very well written with adequate explanations of various terms to those not familiar with Japanese or Mongolian. My favorite parts though by far are how he presents the explanations both sides give in their various historical records and how each one is very generous in their embellishment of their own deeds.

I'm slowly making my way through Pakenham's The Scramble for Africa and really enjoying it. It's the first thing I've read on the subject and it's really approachable. I do wish it had some more African perspectives but it's already pretty long...

I finally bought a book I wanted to read for a long time and I am not disappointed so far !

It is written by French historian Mathieu da Vinha, a member of the Versailles Research Centre and the book is called In the Service of the King : behind the scenes of Versailles .

On the contrary of other books on Versailles it does not focus on the kings and queens or the nobility that made Versailles famous but more on those who made Versailles in secret --> the thousands and thousands of people who worked there. The books follows the story of people and families who built Versailles, worked as pages or musicians,...Etc

Fascinating ! Da Vinha wished ( and I think he does it well ) to show us that Versailles was its own society with people who managed to create their own name from scratched thanks to their skills. There are families that were extremely tied to Versailles and they became ( thanks to good marriages for example, not so different than aristocratic or royal families ) dynasties inside Versailles. From the lower valet to the guard, these men and women sometimes grew very high and very powerful and participated in the mechanic of Versailles.

I also saw a book that looks very interesting, it is quite recent ( and I don't think it has been translated, yet ) : Blue Blood in the Trenches by Bertrand Goujon. It tells the story of the French aristocracy during the First World War, I don't think I have seen a book on the subject before. Here is the synopsis :

" Welcoming with optimism the mobilization of August 1914, nobles from all ages volunteered to serve, in particular in the cavalry, infantry and aviation. But during the first months of fighting, a great gap was born between their ideal of the warrior inherited from a prestigious military tradition and the brutal reality of war where technological advances, waiting and inaction crystallized their fear of an inglorious death. Coming from a world where individual feats, sacrifice and transcendence are valued, the French nobility went through a bitter disillusion and stayed most of the time outside the "trench fraternity " . Over the years however, these soldiers from all grades met, with incomprehension, condescension and goodwill , compatriots they never knew. This experience of otherness that shook the prewar hierarchy is even more destabilizing that between 1914 and 1916, around a quarter of the 5,870 aristocrats that volunteered lost their lives. A carnage for a social category already weakened."

Goujon, a young historian used many letters and testimonies from these soldiers, often found in private familial archives that have been untouched ( and sometimes simply forgotten by historians ) for a long time.

This book looks very unique and interesting, certainly in my next to be read list !

So, in the hope of preparing myself for my Greek reading exam, I recently started compiling a primary sourcebook of Byzantine/Ancient Greek texts on eunuchs. (After chugging through a good deal of late Antique/Byzantine medicine for this project, I now have the best party factoids. Did you know: eunuchs, like women and children, do not have wisdom teeth? It's not like there were plenty of them around that you could have just, you know, asked.) In my previous life as a classicist, though, I was actually a Latinist, so I'm pretty unfamiliar with ancient Greek...things in general, really. Here's what I've got so far:

I. Science and Medicine

• Aristotle, Generation of Animals (selections - 2.7, 4.1, 5.3)

• Galen, On the Composition of Medicines p. 622

II. Culture and Society

On Attis

• Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.19.9-12

• Ovid, Fasti 4.222 (?)

• Nonnus, Dionysiaca 25.310

• Catullus 63

On Earinus (Eunuchs under the Flavians)

• Martial 9.5, 9.7, 9.11-13, 9.16-17, 9.36

• Statius, Silvae 3.4

III. Philosophical Works

• Philostratos, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 1.37

I know (or at least I think) there's a certain amount of overlap between Greek/Roman culture in the early centuries CE, so I'm not really opposed to Latin in theory - I just have mostly Greek stuff on here because, like I said, this was for a Greek exam. I suspect however that I'm missing quite a bit on both fronts - any suggestions?

Can anyone recommend any reliable sources for the history of the Republic of Ragusa, or on Dubrovnik in general?

I'm currently reading a Time Life book, This Fabulous Century 1870-1900. It's certainly not very in depth, but it touches on a lot of interesting topics, and the articles and photographs are helpful. After that I'll be starting on Women at Home in Victorian America: A Social History by Ellen M. Plante.

Have no idea what it's going to entail, but it looks interesting.