PhD Life and the Pandemic

I sympathise with all PhD students out there who have to navigate the current pandemic landscape and finish their dissertations. Some useful words of advice and (possible) encouragement on the process may come in a post from Michael Shanks, arguing for a “pragmatic basis of evaluation.” Given the current conditions, this seems more relevant than […]

A Break

The “Byzantine Esplanade” at Caesarea Maritima, Israel, discussed in one of the articles below. Photo: TMK, June 2009. Things have been slow on this blog, not only recently, but for a while. This will not change in the near future (although posts may randomly appear), due to a little thing called Dissertation. Instead, I will […]

University Branding in the 21st Century

My university’s website has for as long as I remember been a rather poor affair, run on the inflexible and altmodisch CMS known as ‘SIAB’ (Site-in-a-Box). Besides the logo itself, the only graphic element has always consisted of a banner image with very poor pixel quality… In short, it looks horribly outdated. That is apparently […]

Are Roman Slaves Visible in the Archaeological Record?

The latest volume of Journal of Roman Archaeology is out. It has no less than six papers on slavery in the Roman world (five from a 2001 conference in Rome), a topic that previously has been somewhat overlooked in archaeology because of the perceived invisibility of slaves in terms of material culture and purpose-built monuments. […]