Friday Varia and Quick Hits

Spring time is complicated here in North Dakotaland. On the one hand, we had a lovely 55° day yesterday, while, on the other, it might snow or drop to single digits with only a moments notice. In other words, this weekend will be fine.

This weekend is the annual festival of basketball in the US with NCAA Men’s and Women’s tournament games. The Mighty Spiders’ women team plays at dinnertime tonight against Georgia Tech in an 8/9 game! Go Spiders. The Formula 1 guys are in China with a Sprint Race weekend. The NASCAR circus is in Miami. And the Indycar teams are at The Therma Club. It should be a hoops and racing filled weekend!

All other time will be spent trying to take care of a stack of manuscripts sitting on my desk demanding critical and editorial attention. And, I’m not complaining about this one bit!

In the meantime, here are some quick hits and varia:

• Pasts Imperfect.

• Two new books:

Emily Gowers, The Small Stuff of Roman Antiquity. 2025. (H/t to AWOL Online)

Thomas Kiely, Anna Reeve & Lindy Crewe, eds. Empire and Excavation: Critical perspectives on archaeology in British-period Cyprus, 1878–1960. 2025.

• Two articles (one read and one not read yet):

Martina Cecilia Parini & Martijn van Leusen, “Analyzing Low-Density Assemblages from Fieldwalking Surveys: Hellenistic and Roman Land Use in the Sibaritide (Calabria, Italy),” Journal of Field Archaeology (2025).

Michalis Karambinis, “The Gladiatorial Spectacles in Cyprus and the Enigma of the Amphitheater at Salamis,” American Journal of Archaeology 129.2 (2025). 

• Grand Forks Greenway: A landscape changed.

• Marian Underground.

• ASOR Spring Book Sale.

• What I’m reading: manuscripts.

• What I’m listening to: Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith, Defiant Life. (2025)