Friday Varia and Quick Hits

A freak blizzard granted us a day off from school the first week of the semester. This is both good (in that I got stuff done) and bad (in that I’m behind inmy classes already). Oh well, it’s better to be behind the first week of the semester than the last.

And this coming week will be exciting with the 5th annual (or is it 6th?) Cyprus Research Fund Lecture. For those who missed it, this year’s talk is by Dr. Sarah Lepinski and titled Archaeologies of Décor: Interiors in the Roman East. For those in the Northern Plains, the talk is at 4 pm on Thursday January 23rd in the East Asia Room of the mighty Chester Fritz Library. More information is here or here. We’ll stream the talk and post a URL for that when it’s available.

While you get excited about Sarah’s talk and celebrate not living in Grand Forks, you can peruse this list of quick hits and varia:

• Both Chasing Aphrodite and Looting Matters and following what is being called “Fordham’s Folly.” This is Fordham University accepting a gift of some 6th century mosaics “from the neighborhood of Apamea” in Syria. Considering the large-scale destruction and looting of Syria’s antiquities during the present civil war, this seems in bad taste at best and unethical at worst. (Check out Michael Peppard’s concerns in the comments of my blog. It’s interesting that he refers to the authors of the two blogs as “bloggers” when he knows that Chasing Aphrodite is authored by two investigative journalists of high standing and Looting Matters is authored by David Gill, a scholar of significant reputation. Moreover, I suggested that Fordham’s behavior might just be in poor taste or unethical (by the standards of the field of archaeology) which I’m not sure are properly slanderous. That kind of thing makes Peppard’s comments seem unimpressive.)

• The Joukowsky Institute at Brown is running a contest for Accessible Archaeological Writing. The top prize is $5000 and the best papers will appear in an edited volume.

• While it is not unusual for American Evangelical churches to have espresso or coffee bars, it might be a bit more unusual to discover that coffee maker Lavazza’s headquarters has its own Early Christian Basilica.

• R.I.P. Halet Çambel.

• The photographs of Ara Güler show the hidden and historic corners of Turkey and are on display at the Sackler Gallery in D.C.

• Apparently press agencies plagiarize one another even when it involves giraffe eating at Pompeii. Who would have guessed it?

• Andrew Reinhard beta tests Elder Scrolls online with his archaeological sensibilities intact. 

• Sutton Hoo Conference to mark the 75th anniversary of excavations at the site.

• Portable souvlaki grills from the Mycenaean Bronze Age on Greece.

• What to be the next managing editor of the Loeb Classical Library?

• Natalie Zemon Davis shows us how to read a primary source.

• The BBC looks at the abandoned resort of Varosha on Cyprus that is in the U.N. Buffer zone. 

• The Victoria and Albert Museum will publish online the catalogue of 16,558 pieces of Nazi Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) decommissioned from German museums in late 1930s.

• Melting glaciers reveal WWI corpses. Grizzly.

• Help mark up WWI British war diaries.

• It’s interesting to contrast Lee Lozano’s final resting place with the place of her art.

• Azimov on 2014.

• More on the North Dakota oil boom in the New York Times.

• What I’m reading: J. Haldon and L. Brubaker, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, c. 680-850. Cambridge 2011.

• What I’m listening to: Velvet Underground, White Light/White Heat.