History & Archaeology Thread

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by StuBoy, Sep 22, 2020.

  1. BigRossLittleRoss

    BigRossLittleRoss First Team

    Both Roman and Grecian cultures were built on multiculturalism , at least to an extent .

    Its almost an imperative feature of any expanding , technologically superior culture because its society and economy outgrows the level that its indigenous population can support alone .
     
  2. BigRossLittleRoss

    BigRossLittleRoss First Team

    The British and the Americans especially, under Woodrow , were anti reparations because they foresaw the potential implications.

    Unfortunately the French government didn’t see it that way and their opinion held sway on this because they bore more of the brunt of German aggression .
     
  3. AndrewH63

    AndrewH63 Reservist

    In 1919 the French were still scarred after the humiliation of their defeat in 1870. They declared war and got walloped in less than a year by the Prussians, resulting in a unified Germany and a weakened France. You could argue it was French aggression in 1870 that set in motion the circumstances that led to WW1.
     
  4. Filbert

    Filbert Leicester supporting bloke

    An incredible Roman mosaic in what is thought to be a 4th century villa has been uncovered in a farmer’s field in Rutland. Lots more work to be done to find the full footprint of the villa so there could be more to come.

    It’s the first Roman mosaic found in Britain to depict scenes from the Iliad. Hopefully they can open it up to the public one day because it’s only half an hour from me.
     
  5. Agree. The French were as much a cause of ww1 as any other nation.

    And Britain should have kept out of it and left France v Germany to round 2.
     
    folkestone orn likes this.
  6. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    Although UK was getting increasingly worried by the threat posed by an economically dynamic unified Germany both in Europe and, probably more significantly, on the resources of the UK's global empire.
    Would have been better to stay out, but there was real concern over the threat posed by 'aggressive, expansionist Germany'. Obviously the irony in that attitude was missed somewhat.
     
  7. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member

    Bismarck was also a war monger and active in creating and then trying to preserve his Second Reich. He created three wars against the Danes, Austrians and French. Loved imperialism harking back to Rome and then brought a nutjob to the fore in the Kaiser whom he could not control. Militarism and all it's Prussian antecedence was all the vogue in the new Germany. I think he deserves a great deal of the blame. Napoleon III was worried with good reason. He had tried and failed to accommodate his neighbours in his own bid for expanding French territory and was then undone by a constitutional crisis relating to the Spanish throne which gave Bismarck his excuse. Iron and blood was Otto's motto.
     
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  8. Mazzereth

    Mazzereth Academy Graduate

    I've just started watching old episodes (from series 1) of Time Team during my luxury 1 hour WFH lunch break. Robin Bush was such a wonderful man.
     
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  9. I Blame Pozzo

    I Blame Pozzo First Team

    The Greeks. A Global History by Roderick Beaton is a very good read.

    I'm on Alexander the Great who quite probably was behind the murder his father Philip II at his wedding to his seventh wife.
     
  10. I Blame Pozzo

    I Blame Pozzo First Team

    I had my first Ancient Greek tutorial yesterday on Zoom with James,a second year classics student at Jesus College Cambridge.
    Exhilarating!
    I'm off to practice my definite article!
     
  11. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Dikaeopolis said 'go to the crows'

    That's all I remember.
     
  12. I Blame Pozzo

    I Blame Pozzo First Team

    I'm reciting out loud the singular and plural definite articles in four cases.
    I am getting some odd looks but no more than usual!
     
  13. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Do you use Athenaze?
     
  14. I Blame Pozzo

    I Blame Pozzo First Team

    No,I have numerous text books from JACT and others and the Word document James sent me.
    Is it good?
     
  15. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Dunno, it was 27 years ago.
     
  16. Mazzereth

    Mazzereth Academy Graduate

    I'm now on series 5 of Time Team, no sign of Robin Bush.
     
  17. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    No; euthanasia.
     
  18. I Blame Pozzo

    I Blame Pozzo First Team

    No time in the world of Ancient Greece!
     
  19. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    Not sure if it's still of interest to you, but I've just read some more current works on this topic.

    Guy Halsall: Worlds of Arthur, Facts and Fictions of The Dark Ages
    Rory Naismith: Early Medieval Britain c500-1000
    Susan Oosthuizen: The Emergence of The English

    All three address more recent research that modifies the whole concept of 'The Coming Of The Anglo-Saxons' resulting in a picture that is more complex suggesting that the emergence of 'The Anglo-Saxons' was more organic and included a greater degree of continuity than earlier works had allowed. (This was always likely, considering the foundation myth of Wessex looked back to a founding king, Cerdic, who had a clearly Brittonic name).

    None of them really bottom out the linguistic element relating to density of Germanic settlers, with various ideas floated as to how Old English came to be the dominant tongue of much of 'England'. The style of the first two is less overtly 'academic' than the older tomes you read, but Oosthuizen's is more dense, but also much shorter.

    With regards to our favourite 'bete noir' I thank you for your kind advice on how to 'ignore' him, but to some extent I suppose I have an almost morbid fascination to see exactly how tightly he's willing to tie himself up via his episodes of 'doubling-down'. Some of my posts are designed to see how far he will go and very few of his ever really annoy me; only the ones when he blatantly misrepresents what I say. I took a bit of a rest from some language study after January and that, coupled with the Ukrainian crisis, means I seem to find myself on the Politics section more often than before, which means I see more of what is said. Maybe it's a case of 'back to study'!
     
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  20. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member


    In The Shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral: The Churchyard that Shaped London

    The history of the area surrounding the old and new St.Pauls Cathedral. From the earliest printing presses, the foreign merchants, the shops, a centre of protest and the changes throughout the centuries. A fascinating read.

    The Great War: A Photographic Narrative

    They say a photograph conveys a thousand words. This large book does that covering the start of the war right through to the Armstice. I must say there are some familiar images as well as new ones but I do think it's a bit sanitized. Perhaps they should have shown some of the photographs which may churn the stomach but linger in the mind and really do bring home the horror of mechanized warfare.

     
  21. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

  22. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member

    Is he referring to Tacitus and Cassius Dio ? One is more closer in time to the actual events and had first hand accounts of people who were actually involved the other is looking from two centuries later and whose style is pretty vague as to actual facts like numbers for instance. Yes given that large sections of both historians works have perished some crafty nerk could have falsified some of the histories. Of course the works hold personal biases which historian even now does not ?

    But it's a bit fanciful to claim it's all a fake although as a disclaimer I've not come across this book before. The bits about Britain being backward. Well for years we have known that the tribes outside of the Empire were not dumb. They had their literate classes, were skilled artisans, fierce warriors. And many traded with their fellow Celts and indeed the rising Roman Republic. Some even were already fashioning themselves in Roman styles so that news is hardly revelatory as when that was discovered years ago.

    Indeed at many borders of the nascent Empire there was thriving trade and cross cultural influences.
     
  23. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Dunno anything about the book except this review on the ARRSE:

    The author's not an academic and the book appears to be an expansion of his undergrad dissertation.

    I have some sympathy for his viewpoint as the mass graves which would have resulted from the 'hostile' Roman 'invasion' have never been found (AFAIK, especially at well investigated places such as Maiden Castle in Dorset).
     
  24. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    The Romans were not interested in 'conquering' and then absorbing into the Empire any regions that were not sufficiently developed to generate adequate return on investment. There is a reason why the effective northern border of the empire was set at Hadrian's Wall; even the short term inclusion of the area between that and the Antonine Wall (along the Forth-Clyde line) was quickly abandoned as not worth it. The clear corollary is that regions the Romans were determined to absorb and fully control must have had plenty to offer, and the Romans knew what that was before they decided to garrison those regions, as opposed to the series of punitive 'special military operations' they launched beyond their established frontiers. Following a law of diminishing % ROI the further away from the centre of the Empire (at least until its 3rd Century Crisis), the Romans followed a policy that allowed them to enjoy economic fruits of such areas as 'Germania' by establishing semi-client polities along the frontiers through which the flow of products could safely pass, to the benefit of both Rome and those 'friendly' polities. Should one of them be seen to be 'getting above their station', or come under threat from a more hostile grouping further away from the frontier, Rome would 'remind' them of exactly who was in charge by means of military actions designed to re-establish the required conditions, but stopping well short of any type of permanent occupation that would not make economic sense. (Not that this policy was free from risk, as Varus found out in the Teutoburg forest in AD9).

    As Rome was extremely determined to fully occupy & control 'Britannia' (as can be seen by the fact that almost 15% of the imperial troops were stationed there), it can be inferred that the ROI was most definitely worth it. Rome was also not in the game of 'opening up virgin territories', so the further inference is that 'Britain' was already significantly developed before the Julian & Claudian operations. If the book in question seeks to debunk the view of pre-Roman Britons as being 'savages', I'm not sure any such viewpoint still exists to be debunked.

    The way the Romans used the term 'barbarian' did not carry the same connotations as it does today. Yes, they obviously viewed those 'barbarians' as lesser beings than 'Romans', but a lot of the descriptions of 'barbarians' in the works of Roman historians can be viewed as almost stylised listings of attributes considered to be non-Roman. In this way, Roman depictions of 'barbarians' should really be seen as part of the rhetoric used to establish and underpin the essential characteristics of true 'Romanitas'.
     
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  25. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Yeah, but what have they ever done for us?
     
  26. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player


    Indeed, it was not standard Roman practice routinely to massacre those people they hoped would be useful in generating profits for them. They would do it when faced with persistent and determined opposition; they would sometimes do it as matter of realpolitik 'pour encourager les autres', or a particular general (eg Julius Caesar) would be willing to do so to further their domesic political careers, but they much preferred a smaller stick and bigger carrot, proving their military superiority and then offering the local elites the 'benefits' of peaceful co-operation. This is probably what happened in Britain, where tribal kings such as Cunobelinus, Togodumnus & Prasutagus had strong contacts with Rome prior to AD 43, so there was little need for slaughter.
    Budiga's uprising was caused by the local Roman officer deciding not to allow her to inherit her father's position as 'friendly client ruler', and then allowing his troops to rape her & her daughters when she objected.
     
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  27. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    Effectively establishing the England-Scotland border?
     
  28. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member

    Mortimer Wheeler put two and two together and came up with five. Rome knew about this island through Celtic connections to tribes in Gaul and northern Italy and long established trade links. As more and more archaeology is looked at it's clear far from being a bunch of peoples living in defined areas without much interaction or 'civilization' cultures from the La Tiene and Halstatt were advanced and individuals wandered about and there was extensive travel by sea along with trade. The problem for a long time has been the loss of perishable items that define structures like boats and buildings.
     
  29. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Pah what a lightweight! A true fraud academic historical radical would be like Marija Gimbutas who is the absence of any historical evidence "made it all up" came to her own conclusions.
     
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  30. Robert Peel

    Robert Peel Squad Player

    Fast forward in time a few centuries... I'm in Mostar on holiday at the moment. Yesterday I had a wander to the World War 2 Partizan cemetery in the city. It's a proper brutalist architecture job.

    https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/mostar

    Fallen into disrepair after the Bosnian war, but some people have been trying to restore it. It's on the Croat side of the city and the Croats of Herzegovina are probably the most openly right wing people in the world and see their time as an independent nation in WW2 as a Nazi puppet state as the pinnacle of their history. Anything to do with Yugoslavia or the other nations in it is seen as terrible. It's next to the stadium of Bosnian champions Zrinjski Mostar, Croat Catholic rabid nationalists and probably the most neo nazi fans in existence. They were banned after 1945, but reformed in 1993 and stole the ground off Velež Mostar during the war.

    A few weeks ago, some of the smashed over 700 headstones there. Mind blowing.

    Tomorrow going to see the Battle of Neretva site and museum in Jablanica.

    So much history at every turn in the Balkans, a lot of it very recent and raw. Absolutely love this part of the world.

    And there's an essay I wasn't planning to write.
     
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  31. I Blame Pozzo

    I Blame Pozzo First Team

    Lord Vaizey chairing a group regarding the return of the Elgin Marbles.

    Give them back Ed,they belong in to Greece.

    He mentioned loaning them back for a fee.

    That'll go down well!
     
  32. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    When I uised to play marbles it was "No Backsies"
     
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  33. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    If you read this Moog you might learn a great deal about the Macdonian empire.

    If
     
  34. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    As a Bubble, I'm torn. Like, yeah they're Greek and I'm Greek, but I didn't make them, my dad didn't, his dad didn't. It was some slaves thousands of years ago. Do these things really belong to a country? I dunno.
     
    sydney_horn likes this.
  35. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    I've often suspected you have lost yours..
     

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