#journal of roman archaeology
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my preference for physical copies of essays vs journals' insistence to charge five million dollars for a single copy
#and then the journals are 90% roman or greek or anglo saxon archaeology reaearch when all i want is a single essay on something that is#absolutely none of those
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Archaeology L but I was reading a concise archaeological report for Tel Dor and the author refers to its "Hellenistic" (3rd-1st century BCE) as being located in "ancient Palestine", long before that name was even given to the land of the ancient Israelites by the Romans, and later they refer to a structure there as "the biggest in the country." What country? ISRAEL, you mean? Absolute clown shit.
I'll let u in on a secret: it's done because academia, especially the humanities, is obscenely antisemitic and not a single journal will let you publish an article that refers to this mysterious country as "israel". I avoid it by just using 'southern Levant' which is imo the most accurate term to use for this area pre both Israel and provincia palaestina
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i’m sorry but this is the FUNNIEST THING i’ve ever read… a bunch of academics peering at this wooden dildo and having Intense Discussions about it
GUARDIAN - Archaeologists believe they may have found the only known lifesize Roman dildo, discovered in a ditch in what were the farthest northern fringes of the empire.
If it was not used as a sexual implement then the 2,000-year-old object may have been an erect penis-shaped pestle, or it could have been a feature from a statue that people touched for good luck.
What it definitely is not is what it was catalogued as after its discovery at the Roman fort of Vindolanda in Northumberland in 1992: a darning tool.
“I have to confess,” said Newcastle University archaeology senior lecturer Rob Collins, “part of me thinks it’s kind of self-evident that it is a penis. I don’t know who entered it into the catalogue. Maybe it was somebody uncomfortable with it or didn’t think the Romans would do such silly things.”
If they did think that, they could not be more wrong given that two- and three-dimensional representations of phalli were ubiquitous in the Roman world, whether in mosaics, frescoes, pot decoration or pendants worn around the neck.
The Vindolanda phallus is 16cm long but, researchers say, was probably larger because archaeological wood is prone to shrinkage and warping.
It has been examined by researchers at Newcastle University and University College Dublin. The analysis has revealed it to be, at the very least, the first known example of a disembodied phallus made of wood recovered anywhere in the Roman world.
The phallus was found in a ditch along with dozens of shoes and dress accessories as well as craft waste products such as leather off-cuts and worked antler – perhaps one reason for it being seen as a darning tool.
“What makes this a first is that it is not a small, miniature phallus,” said Collins. “It’s lifesize. It’s also important because wood just doesn’t normally survive … we couldn’t find any parallels.”
The size and uncertainty of function was fascinating, he said. “Often in archaeology when we find an object we can tell what it was used for or deduce what it was used for. That wasn’t the case for this object. We have had to cast our nets wide in thinking what would a six-and-a-half-inch wooden carving of a phallus be used for.
“We had some very interesting discussions.”
Ancient phallic objects were often used for warding off evil. The analysis showed the Vindolanda phallus had notably smoother ends, indicating it was used for something over a period of time.
The team has alighted on three possible theories, all of which are outlined in a detailed discussion paper published in the journal Antiquity.
One theory is that it was used for sexual reasons. That could mean it was a sex toy although some caution is needed, said Collins.
“Sometimes they [dildos] weren’t always used for pleasure … they can be implements of torture so I’m very conscious of using the term sex toy. Hopefully that is what it was used for. That is the most exciting and intriguing possibility.
“If that is the case it would be, to our knowledge, the first Roman dildo that’s been encountered from archaeology. We know from Greek and Roman poetry and Greek and Roman art that they used dildos. But we haven’t had any archaeological examples found which is intriguing in itself.
“If it is that and it is found up here on the northern fringe of the empire and not down in the rich heartland of Roman Italy … it is kind of astounding.”
Theory two is that the object was used as a pestle, either for culinary purposes or to grind cosmetic or medicinal ingredients. Its size would have made it easy to use and the shape would have imbued the food or ingredients with perceived magical properties.
The third option is that it was meant to slot into a statue which passersby would touch for good luck or to absorb or activate protection from misfortune – which was common throughout the Roman empire.
If that was the case, the statue would probably have been located near the entrance to an important building but the evidence indicates that the phallus was either indoors or at least not in an exposed position outside for any length of time.
Researchers hope the Vindolanda phallus will prompt a search for similar objects in other collections. In the meantime it has gone on display at the Vindolanda museum.
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Dating to the third century, the bronze sphinx statue originated from Dacia, a Roman province that largely corresponds to modern-day Romania.
After being discovered in the 19th century, the statue was stolen from a European count sometime around 1848, Revesz said.
While it was never recovered, a detailed drawing of the sphinx remained. In the drawing, the inscription — composed of a handful of characters — can be seen on the base of the statue.
Translated into English, it reads: “Lo, behold, worship: here is the holy lion.”
Photo from the journal Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry
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Imperfect Moments - Chapter Fourteen - The Final Chapter
a/n: Here it is, the end. I am already so sad that this story is over. Thank you for your patience, and thank you for reading 💕
Series Masterlist
pairing: Jakexfemale!reader
word count: 9.2k this chapter
final summary: It's really just been a series of imperfect moments that led to this.
warnings: 18+ minors stay far away, mentions of sex and sexual situations, language, mention of drinking, mushy fluff, graphic sexual content, unprotected penetrative sex, little bit of cum play, oral sex (m. and f. receiving, lots of it), biting as always, pneumonia sorry
“I really do love it, darling. It’s perfect.”
Josh is doodling on one of the pages of a leather bound journal, adding notation that you can’t read from your seat across the aisle. You wish you could say you’d come across it at some quirky boutique, but you’d known what you wanted and ended up ordering his Christmas present online. It was hand-crafted and you’d had it personalized with his initials stamped into the Napa.
To your left in the window seat, Jake is flipping through the pages of a worn paperback. His gift had been significantly less expensive than Josh’s, and you’d serendipitously come across it at a thrift store. You’d watched a glimmer of recognition pass over his features as he’d torn into the wrapping paper and revealed the title.
Treasure of the Atocha: A Four Hundred Million Dollar Archaeological Adventure
Insecurity had set in as he lifted it to show his family, prompting you to mumble an explanation.
“You know, that one necklace. The, um, silver one you wear sometimes? It’s an Atocha coin- you know that already. The book, it’s about the search for the treasure. From the shipwreck. I saw it and thought of you…”
You’d trailed off as he’d stared at you, your cheeks and chest warm with self-consciousness but it wouldn’t last long. Before you could say anything else, he’d reached out and pulled you in with a hand wrapped around the back of your neck, kissed you so hard you could barely breathe. Unconcerned about his parents and siblings in the room and reluctant to let the moment end, he pressed his forehead to yours.
“Thank you.”
Remembering that morning now, you lean back in your seat and smile to yourself. It really had been pretty perfect, but you’re happy to be headed home.
The new year came and went, celebrated with a relatively tame get-together at the twins’ house, that still managed to end with you and Danny carrying Josh to bed before fighting a bottle of tequila and a Roman candle out of Jake’s hands. Sam remained blissfully unaware and unhelpful, passed out on the living room floor by the time you had Jake leaning heavily into your side as you guided him up the stairs.
Life was busy in the following weeks, but mostly for the guys. With a huge tour looming and new music already being written, you spent a lot less time with them than you’d grown used to, and your time together seemed to move too quickly. Jake never forgot his promise though.
I’m all in.
Jake K: We’re gonna be here late, I can tell
Me: ☹️☹️☹️
Me: It’s ok, I figured you would be
Jake K: I’m sorry love. Can I still come over after?
Me: I HAVE to get some sleep, work in the morning
Jake K: You can go to bed, I’ll be quiet. I just wanna sleep next to you
You’d given him a key. It had worked out in his favor so far, and it was almost worth going to bed alone to wake up next to him in the morning.
“Mm, just call out… fuck, keep doing that.”
He’s got one knotted handful of your hair and the other one is white-knuckling your sheets. You can’t reply with words, your mouth otherwise occupied with his dick throbbing against your tongue that’s dragging up the length of it from the base.
“We can stay in bed today, don’t go to work.” You watch through your eyelashes as he swallows, his head thrown back and sunk into your pillow, throat exposed to you. When you pull off of him with a final flick of your tongue to the head, he groans and cracks an eye open.
“Why are you stopping, pleasepleaseplease don’t stop.”
“Jake…” Your lips pressed to the soft skin of his stomach. “You have to work today too.” Another wet kiss, just above his navel. “But…” Crawling further up his body, another kiss, right over his heart before you’re nose to nose.
“…You sound so pretty when you beg.”
A growl rumbles past his lips before they’re on yours, hard and fast and then he’s got you flipped onto your back. You’ve hardly caught your breath before you feel the tip of his cock pressed against you, still slick from your mouth and slipping through your own wetness. He practically moans his next words into your ear, sliding inside you slowly.
“Please call out today, sweetheart. Stay with me.”
He’s laying it on thick, meekness and desperation in his tone, his bottom lip poked out in a pout when he pulls back to look into your eyes. For good measure, he adds a soft I miss you and his best puppy dog eyes.
“Pffft!” The laughter bursts forth without restraint and he joins you in it, a quiet chuckle and sly tilt to his lips even as he props himself over you and starts to roll his hips. Your giggles catch in your throat on a sigh.
“Ohh… you know I can’t. Makes me feel guilty.” Even as you’re rejecting the idea, your hands are roaming the warm skin of his back and your legs are circling themselves around his waist.
Determined to get his way, he brings one of his own hands to the outside of your thigh and squeezes, drawing them tighter to his body as his thrusts pick up speed.
“Fuck that job.” He feels your nails sink into his skin. “Quit.” A heel digs into his ass, the sound of his hips colliding with your thighs gets louder. “I’ll just be your sugar daddy.”
“Jake!” His eyes light up, bright and warm as the notes of your laughter float up to him from the mattress.
“You think I’m joking, but you like that idea.” Leaning close again, you can feel his breath across your lips so you pucker them, a silent request. “I felt your pretty cunt squeeze me, you want me to spoil you, love?” He captures the kiss you’re offering and absorbs your hum of confirmation. His hips slow until each stroke draws its own gasp or whimper from you, playing composer and instrumentalist of the music you’re making for him.
Forehead dropped to yours, he lets his gaze fall between your bodies, zeroing in on the skin just below your hip bone. There’s a crease there at the joint, where your legs are spread wide and wrapped around him. He releases his grip on your thigh to move higher and slide his thumb through the soft fold. His cock pulses inside you.
“Fuck babe, I’m gonna cum-“ It’s a warning just a heartbeat before it happens, you can feel the beginnings of your own orgasm fade away as his hips stutter and then still. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, not before-“
You reach up to tuck strands of his hair behind his ear and rest your palm against a rosy cheek. “It’s okay, baby. I need to get ready for work anyway.” He slips out of you and shifts like he’s going to let you out from beneath him, but his arms keep you caged in and he shifts down your body instead, landing on his stomach between your thighs. “Jake, no we don’t have time-“
“Give me two minutes.” You’re not allowed to argue, his mouth already attached to your cunt. A man of his word, he focuses his attention to your clit, sensitive and already swollen. Hands shooting to the back of his head, you hold him there as your muscles constrict and your back arches. You can feel his release begin to leak from you, picturing the pearlescent liquid moving over your pink flesh in your mind.
“Fuuuck, keep going keepgoing!”
A grunt against your skin and then his lips open over you and suck you in, a lewd slurp of your juices… and his. You think he’s going to stop when he realizes what he’s done, but when you lift your head to look at him, his eyes are already on your face. With a knowing lift of his eyebrows, he licks a long, slow stripe through the mess he’s made. It ends with a flick to your clit, and you can see it there, glistening on his tongue.
The moan that rolls out of you is animalistic, feral.
He does it again, dipping inside you for more this time before pulling his face away.
You haven’t taken your eyes off of him, but he makes sure you’re watching.
His lips open, pink and slick and you can just barely see his tongue move behind them before he purses them, and spits it directly onto your clit.
“Fuck Jake!”
You’re plummeting over the edge before he even buries his face back into you, sucking and lapping at you sinfully until you have to push him away. When his head pops up from between your legs, the lower half of his face is a mess, he drags the back of his hand across his grin just before you’re grasping at him and pulling him back up to you.
His kiss tastes like him. And you. The mixture is heady and improper and your tongue is greedy for it as it swirls against his. You stretch out your shoulder from beneath his weight, searching blindly for your phone with one hand as he breaks away.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling out of work.” Your fingers are already moving over the screen, typing up an excuse. “Not quitting, but I’m definitely not going in today.”
His laugh cracks out and bounces off the walls of your tiny bedroom, his head thrown back and the smile on his face stretching wide as he props himself up to lean on an elbow.
“That’s my fucking girl, I love you.”
He’s still shaking with laughter, you’re still typing. “I love you too, baby.”
Your thumb lands on the arrow, message sent before you realize. His body stills beside you. Slowly, you turn your head to face him over your shoulder. He’s already looking at you, eyes wide.
“What did you say?”
“What did you say?”
He breaks first, in slow motion you watch the corners of his mouth tug upward and curl, smile lines sinking deep as he beams at you. Oh, how long he’s been waiting for this. Scrambling to sit up, his legs fold under him and he pulls you up too. When your eyes are focused on him, he reaches forward and gently picks up both of your hands to hold in his, and he says it again.
“I love you, sweetheart. I’m sorry it took me so long-“
“Don’t. Please don’t apologize. I’m so in love with you…” A relieved giggle bubbles from your throat. “I love you! Oh my god, that feels good. Say it again.”
He does, over and over, between lingering kisses and long moments spent entwined with you, fingers drawn leisurely over the dips and curves that make up his favorite parts of you. With nowhere else to be, it’s a long time before you leave the nest of your blankets.
It’s already early afternoon when you’re both seated at your pub table, sharing love-sick glances over the rims of your coffee cups. You’re still naked aside from Jake’s tan button up hanging loose and open over your frame, Jake had opted to simply pull the sheet from your bed and wrap it around his waist.
“Can I ask you something?”
Jake nods as he swallows a sip and places his mug on the table.
“When did it happen?” You begin to pick nervously at your nails, knowing that whatever he says is probably not going to be what you expect.
“When did what happen, love?”
“Ya know, when did you… know?”
He remembers being in almost this exact position before. Having a drink with you, at this table, considering his next move. Instead of an abbreviated version of the truth, he gives you the entire story as it’s written in his mind.
“Well… by April, not this past April but the one before, I knew that I wanted you.” He’d been a month or so deep into the façade of hating you at that point, and he can see that realization move across your expression. “It was a really small thing at our place, for our birthday. I used to try and avoid you when you were there most of the time, but I watched you that day, fawning over Josh. I could see it in your eyes, that you had feelings for him. You were really very obvious about it.”
You groan and drop your face into your hands, a little ashamed of your naïveté. Jake waits patiently for you to look back up at him, which you do sheepishly.
“I knew that day that he wouldn’t reciprocate those feelings, whatever it was that you wanted from him. He wasn’t gonna give it to you. I knew that if I were him, I would’ve taken the opportunity you were presenting on a silver platter. I would’ve had you in my bed every night, looking at me like that.”
Your head is nodding absently, an almost forlorn look on your face that’s pulling the corners of your lips into a barely there frown. All of that time, wasted. His intention isn’t to make you sad, he keeps talking.
“It sort of just… went on like that. For a while. Me wanting you, you snarling or frowning or rolling your eyes at me anytime I dared to speak. But you came to watch us play, and you smiled up at me on purpose. I could tell it was some kind of power move, so I upped the ante. I’m sorry about that, by the way. What I did backstage.”
You laugh it off. “Don’t be. I think it turned out okay.”
He smiles in response. “It did. Still, it wasn’t… nice of me. It was mean, and intentional, but after I’d gotten my hands on you I knew once wouldn’t be enough. I dreamt about fucking you that night, jerked off thinking about you the next morning.”
He chuckles when your cheeks turn pink.
“The next night, at that party, I suppose I had hoped I could shock some reality into you. That you’d just see that I was better for you. But you started crying and it broke my heart. Right before I kissed you, that was when I knew that sex probably wouldn’t be enough for me, but it was what you were willing to accept.”
Your smile is soft, remembering what had been one of the worst nights of your life as something more hopeful. The way he tells it from his perspective is addicting, it’s rare to pull this many words from him at any given time and his voice is quiet, his tone thoughtful. You reach a hand out over the surface of the table to place it over his.
“I do realize that none of that is an answer to what you asked. I just thought you should know.”
He smiles with that, your favorite one, just for you.
“Keep going…” Your own voice is not much more than a whisper.
“I’m getting there. Ya know, there’s a handful of these like… just almost perfect moments that stand out. Really good moments that I’d somehow fuck up, or almost fuck up. Times that had me thinking about every word before I said it, because I knew I was going to embarrass myself. Because I knew I was undeniably and irrevocably in love with you, only four days after I left here for the first time.”
“Jake!” He just grins at you, pleased with his admission. “That’s not true!”
“It is. I swear on Josh’s life. And he’ll tell you himself, I think he knew way before he ever asked me about it. Way before I’d admit it, even to myself.”
You can feel your jaw hanging slack, mouth ajar in disbelief. “I… don’t even know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything, please don’t tell me when it happened for you. I’ve embarrassed myself enough, I think.”
Silently, you stand from your chair and slide yourself onto his lap, looping your arms loosely around his neck. His hands keep you secure there, wrapping themselves over each hip as he looks up at you.
Brushing a thumb over it lightly, you ask him, “Did you know I love it when you do this little grin?” Your words cause it to stretch, just a little wider. “You looked just like this when you smiled back at me, on stage, in front of all those people but it was just for me.”
“There is only ever you, for me.”
He’d made love to you again in the shower, unable to wait until the suds had even been rinsed from your body. Slipping against you, your face and tits pressed into the tile with fingers grasping to find purchase on the slick surface, his hands and hips kept you where he wanted you. His teeth worked to coax fresh rosebuds to the surface of your skin, nipping across your shoulder, soothing each one with a kiss and breaths of hushed words.
Mine. My love. I love you.
The sun had eventually disappeared from the sky, replaced by moonlight as you were stretched out over the length of your couch with your head in Jake’s lap. About halfway through The Goonies, which he’d described as “one of the greatest films about pirate treasure of all time”, he called out your name quietly. Your actual name, not love or sweetheart.
You turn your face up to him and find him looking very serious.
“What’s wrong?”
“Absolutely nothing, my life’s pretty perfect at the moment.” He looks around the room and back down to you, confirming that he’s right, it’s perfect. “I was thinking though… wouldn’t it make a lot of sense if you just moved in with me?” When your eyes nearly bulge out of your skull, he adds, “Me and Josh, into our house.”
You shoot up from his lap and twist until you’re cross-legged on the cushion next to him. “What?”
“Hear me out, and I mean this, we’re leaving soon and we’ll be away more than we’re home. For a while. Wouldn’t you rather have our whole house to yourself than be here, alone?”
Ouch.
It’s a harsh truth and it’s coming your way, quickly. You know that.
“You can stop paying rent. You could work less and fly out with us sometimes. You could be around all of our stuff, sleep in Josh’s bed when you miss him more than me.” He’s trying to keep it light-hearted, but you can still feel the sincerity rolling off of him. He’s serious.
It’s your turn to survey the room. You know it’s kind of a shithole apartment, with your entire life packed into its six-hundred or so square feet.
But that’s not true, is it? The best parts of your life live outside of these walls.
“Okay.”
“Okay. Okay?”
“Yes. You’re right, it kinda makes sense. I can’t do it right away, I have to give notice here. What am I gonna do with my furniture? It’s all secondhand, it’s not super important to me but I have to figure out how to get rid of it. Pack and move everything else. Would you have time to help me? Maybe we can ask the other guys- What?”
He’s just been watching you ramble, watching the gears turn in your head and the words spill out as you think of them.
“You’re sure? I was expecting you to have to think about it…”
“I’ve thought about it.”
“Maybe not enough?”
“The last time I thought about something, maybe not enough, I ended up with you.”
Half of his mouth curls up into a smirk. “Fair point.”
“Shouldn’t you… I dunno, talk to Josh about this though?”
He tugs you back to his cushion on the couch and tucks you under his arm until you’re curled into his side, turns his face back to the movie.
“It was his idea.”
You’d started planning and packing the very next evening, notice given to your leasing office and less than two months before the guys leave for Michigan again. Within two weeks, most of your earthly possessions had found new homes in the twins’ house and your furniture, left behind in an otherwise empty apartment, was sitting there waiting to be sold or donated.
It had been strange at first, spending all of your time there, falling asleep and waking up there every day. Most of your time with Jake had been spent in your space, but you figured that this was your space now. It would take some getting used to.
More than once, Jake had stopped you on your way out of the bedroom.
“You don’t have any pants on, sweetheart.”
It was nice though, being with Josh. They were both busier than ever, so much of their time poured into their music, their upcoming performances, but at the end of the day they both came home to you.
You had missed him more than you’d realized.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come back to Michigan, darling? It’s still snowing up there. We could go ice skating again.”
“I can’t take the time off, Josh. Not yet. Also the entire state is going to be crawling with Greta Van Fleet fans, we’re not going ice skating any time soon.”
“I suppose that’s true. So, when are you planning to fly out to us?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t even told my job that I’m planning on cutting my hours yet. All of this happened so fast.”
“You should’ve just quit. I know you care about your job, in the way that any of us care about responsibility, obligation and money… but you don’t love it. You’d be fantastic at artist management, actually. Look how well you keep the two of us in line, we’d be lost without you!”
He’s joking, you think, but he’s not entirely wrong. You don’t exactly have a passion for what you do, you’ve just been doing it for so long. And quitting without a plan is just not in the cards.
They flew out two days later for a solid three week stretch of shows, dates scheduled back to back for most of it. The twins had FaceTimed you after the first one, still high on adrenaline, Sam’s distinct laughter loud in the background. The next day, a day off, Jake had tucked himself away in his bunk on the bus and called. Your conversation was subdued and unhurried, knowing that you wouldn’t have many opportunities like this in the coming weeks.
“I’m so proud of you, baby.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. I love you so much.”
You don’t hear from them much in the next couple of days, a few texts when they have a moment, updates when they can. Jake calls on their days off, waiting until he knows you’re home from work. You’re not expecting it when Josh texts to tell you that he and Jake both had woken up feeling under the weather, only six days in, two shows canceled and rescheduled. Just like that. Neither of them answer your calls, undoubtedly heartbroken over disappointing their fans. Jake sends you one text that day, knowing his brother had broken the news to you.
Jake K: I hate this. I wish you were here.
You cry yourself to sleep, their pain is your pain.
The abrupt ringing of your phone wakes you up. 5:17am.
“Josh?” You have to clear your throat and try again. “Josh, it’s early, are you okay?”
Even through the fog of sleep you can tell he’s upset. “I’m fine, better, actually. Um, darling… it’s Jake.”
Your stomach twists into a knot instantly, you’re shoving the comforter away and moving to stand.
“We had to take him to the hospital.”
The air leaves your lungs, you couldn’t stand if you tried.
“What?” It hardly passes your lips as more than a squeak.
He goes on to tell you that Jake had woken himself up coughing, unable to catch his breath, in pain. The doctors hadn’t been able to diagnose him yet, but they’re trying.
You’d cut him off there, told him you were coming.
He’d stopped you, told you to wait until they figured out what was wrong.
The following hours passed slowly as you waited for information. Jake, still having difficulty breathing, wasn’t able to call. His texts to you were dismal, sad and infrequent as he waited for a diagnosis that turned out to be pneumonia.
Four days. Four days he’d lain in a hospital bed, struggling to breathe and Josh had refused to fly you out, day after day.
“Darling, we’re bringing him home as soon as they let him out. He seems to think he’s going to be able to play, but it’s not happening.”
He’d come home a little thinner, pale, still coughing and short of breath. It had taken weeks for him to feel well enough to even leave the house, you and Josh there to answer to his beck and call, though Josh had tired of it after about a week.
“He’s a grown man, he can walk himself to the kitchen if he wants a damn popsicle.”
“Joshua. He would do anything for you if you needed him. Have some empathy.”
You’d taken Jake the popsicle and found him sitting at his desk, an ostentatious antique with an even more pretentious wingback chair to match, scribbling on an unlined sheet of paper.
“Baby? What are you up to?”
He delicately finishes a sentence, the sound of the pencil’s lead moving over the paper hits your ears before he drops it to the desktop. “Writing them a letter, they deserve to hear from me.”
They. His fans, disappointed but concerned for his health, had shown an outpouring of love and well wishes for him online that hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Looking over his shoulder, you find about half a page of flowery words explaining the progress of his recovery, rescheduled dates, and his thanks.
“They’ll like this, I think. It’s way better than those ugly blocks of texts you guys use to deliver bad news… They’re kind of impersonal, ya know?”
He coughs into the crook of his elbow before answering, a dry sound, already much better than the thick, painful sounding cough he’d come home with.
Clearing his throat and taking a deep breath, he answers you, “I know, and I hate doing that to them.”
You watch him pick up the pencil again and finish it off with a line about their long awaited reunion, dropping lower and signing off with his name. He scans his own words for a second before peeking up at you and finally snatching his popsicle from your fingers. “It’s pretty good, right?”
“I think it’s very good, Jake. All of your love, huh?”
You’re referring to his sign off, heartfelt and dramatic, as he’s been known to be.
All My Love,
Jake
“Jealous, sweetheart?” There’s a playful sort of twinkle in his eyes as he grins up at you, that you’re grateful to see after so many days of the sadness that you’ve found there.
“Shut up and eat your popsicle.”
You treat him like he’s fragile until he can’t take it anymore, but the first time you’d tried anything physical since he’d come home, he came so violently down your throat that it sent him into a coughing fit that left him red in the face and unable to breathe. He’d tried in the days and weeks since, more than once you’d awoken with his hands moving over you, sometimes already rubbing soft circles into you over your underwear. He would beg you to let him make you cum, and you would, but only with his fingers.
Eleven days before they were scheduled to leave for South America, he jumped you as soon as you got home from work. Cleared with a clean bill of health, excited to get back on the road but desperate for you, he attached his lips to yours, wrapped his hands around your waist and lifted you off the ground. With your ankles locked behind his back, he carried you blindly up the stairs without breaking from your kiss.
He’d fucked you, fast and dirty, bending you to his will and tossing you around the bed. Simply because he could. You’d cum hard at his command, the orgasm ripping a scream from your lungs that he’d been aching for, triggering his own that pulled a sound akin to a roar from his mouth.
Sweating, chests heaving and bodies sprawled across the sheets, you’d come down silently aside from a pleased chuckle from Jake.
From the hallway outside the bedroom door, Josh’s voice had rung out, coming in and then fading out as he’d passed and headed down the stairs.
“So glad to hear you’re feeling better, but that was absurd. Keep that shit to yourselves!”
You almost felt bad but for the next week, the sex was savage. And loud. On their birthday, Josh had presented you with what he referred to as “a gift to myself.” He pulled up an email confirmation on his phone and flipped it around, dropping it into your hands.
“You’re staying in a hotel tonight?”
“No, you two animals are staying in a hotel tonight. I will be sleeping soundly in my bed. And it will be quiet.”
You didn’t argue, just sighed and wrapped your arms around him. He stopped you when you started to apologize for the noise.
“I knew what I was signing up for when I floated the idea of you moving in, darling. I also know that you’re still wrapped up in this little honeymoon phase, and it’ll pass. Now get out, enjoy yourselves and leave me in peace!”
You’d run upstairs to pack a small bag before telling Jake what your new plans for the evening were. Digging through what was now your underwear drawer, looking for something worthy of the birthday boy, it had dawned on you.
All you packed was a change of clothes for the morning, and the oversized black band tee. His band.
Ultimately, Jake had been correct about a few things. You were ecstatic for them to be going back to South America and Mexico, to be performing again with arguably the biggest rock band in the world, their excitement had been contagious but it didn’t take long for you to miss them, and being in a house full of their things actually did help. Some. There were even a couple of nights spent in Josh’s bed, but not exactly because you missed him more.
You missed Jake so badly that it physically hurt, the scent of him in your shared bed made your chest ache, sometimes so deeply that it prevented you falling asleep. On one of those nights, tucked under Josh’s comforter, you were scrolling mindlessly through the Greta Van Fleet tag on Instagram. Already knowing that some of the things you would find there would be… odd, you scrolled and scrolled. From experience, you also knew you would find fan photos, people who’d met them or seen them out and about. Jake had told you that they were meeting people everywhere they went, and you found the evidence of that just like you’d easily found the picture of yourself in the Christmas store.
Both of the twins had been sending you their own pictures as they made their way through Chile, Argentina and Brazil, usually of distinct landmarks, exotic flowers, or beautiful blue bodies of water. But you’d started a collection of saved photos, the few that they’d sent of themselves, or each other.
As you scrolled, shifting from Instagram to your camera roll, you noticed something. Back to Instagram, you search for the band’s account and look closely at everything posted since they got to Chile. Pinch, zoom, yep. There it is. Back to your camera roll. Every picture Josh had sent you of his twin, knowing you needed them, many times taken without his knowledge.
The silver necklace, the coin. It would appear that he hasn’t taken it off since he’s been gone. It’s curious, and you’re not sure why it had caught your eye aside perhaps from the fact that it simply hasn't been his regular jewelry of choice since you’ve known him. You’re fairly certain that you understand his mind pretty well at this point, and you decide that this is deliberate. You make a mental note to remember to ask him about it before a fatigued yawn grips you.
With your eyes squeezed closed, you can feel how you’ve strained them staring at your phone in the dark of Josh’s room. Before you lock the screen for the night, you open your messages and choose the thread at the top.
Me: I love you baby
You had said your goodnights hours ago, intending to go to sleep and failing. You’re not expecting a response, but you keep typing.
Me: Will this ever get easier?
You’re awoken in the morning, entirely too early, by the ringing of your phone. Startled into consciousness, the fear hits you first, the memory of Josh’s call from Michigan still fresh in your mind. You scramble to reach for it, noting the time is actually after nine, and the name and photo on the screen are Jake’s.
Nervously, quietly, you answer. “Hello?” Met at first with silence, you try again. “Jake?”
His voice bleeds from the speaker, low in volume but directly into your ear, and as soon as you hear it your vision blurs.
“I can’t promise that it gets easier, sweetheart. I don’t know the answer to that. But I can promise you that whatever you’re feeling… I feel it too.” He waits for your response, but the soft sound of your breath hitching comes over the line. “Please don’t cry, baby, you’re breaking my heart over here.”
He listens to you weep, a melancholy mixture of quiet sobs and sniffles, offering you words that he hopes are comforting and wishing he had you in his arms.
“I- I’m sorry. You don’t need this right now, I didn’t mean to-“
“Don’t be sorry, love, just.. do me a favor?”
You sniffle again, swiping your fingertips across the wet streaks left on your cheeks. “What?”
“Tell me you love me, tell me you’re all in.” You repeat his words back to him, and you mean them. He smiles to himself, a grin that you can’t see. “That’s all that matters. I’ll be home in a week.”
Seven days and thirteen hours later, he’s on his knees between your legs, wrinkled linen shirt discarded somewhere on the floor nearby and quickly joined by your leggings. He’s working on your panties, his hands are impatient as they drag the lace past your hips and down your thighs, his lips are hungry as they follow the trail of goosebumps left behind by his fingers.
From your seat at the edge of the bed, leaned back on your palms, you watch him move. The apples of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose are faintly freckled from the Mexican sun, the first thing you’d noticed when you’d cupped his face in your hands this morning, as soon as he’d unfolded his frame from the car in the driveway. There’s also a distinct V of tanned skin down the center of his chest, his shoulders and arms still pale. The silver necklace still hangs there, apparently his new favorite.
When your underwear are slipped free from your feet, you watch him bring them to his face, balled in one of his fists. His eyes meet yours just as he buries his nose into them and breathes you in.
You don’t bother with an objection because his eyelids flutter and the honey of his irises disappears as his eyes roll back, and you feel your pussy pulse in response. When his eyes open and refocus on you, they’re nearly black.
He tosses the panties over his shoulder and skates his fingers up the backs of your legs, up your calves and settles his palms onto your knees.
“Y’know those dreams that are so… vivid that you can smell them?” His hands slip inward and slowly push your knees farther apart as you hum in acknowledgment. “I had dreams like that when we were gone, I dunno what’s in the air down there but I think it was affecting my brain.” Spreading your legs as far as they’ll go, his hands continue their journey up the insides of your thighs and he watches you open to him, revealing your arousal glistening between the folds. “I could smell your shampoo, the lotion on your skin.” He brings his face closer to your core, close enough to feel the heat rolling off of your body, closing his eyes and taking another deep inhale through his nose. You run a hand through the hair falling over his ear and sink your fingers into the tresses, guiding his face up to look at you again. “I could smell your cunt, I swear I could taste it. I’d wake up with my mouth watering and my dick pounding.”
Lost for words, all you can manage is a whisper. “Stop teasing.” You use your grip against his scalp to pull him into you, his soft chuckle rippling over your already sensitive flesh.
He savors you, his movements slow and intentional as his tongue drags over every inch of you, your lips sucked past his own as the flavor of you coats his taste buds.
With a hand lifted and placed to the center of your chest, still covered by the soft cotton of one of his old t-shirts, he pushes you gently to lay back for him. As soon as your back hits the sheets, your hips are writhing against his mouth, searching for friction, searching for more, desperate to reach this first peak and get him inside you.
He lets you squirm, taking what he needs from between your thighs while your body begs him to take you higher and push you over. Knowing he’ll never truly get his fill, he’ll never actually get enough, he gives in to the demand of your hands, both now tangled in the hair at the back of his head and trying to coax him to where you need him. He sucks your clit into his mouth and rolls his tongue over it.
Your hips still and your back bows, a perfect arch over the mattress. He likes your reaction, loves it even, but something’s missing. Popping off of your pussy, he shakes his head at you.
“Let me hear you, love. I’ve been missing all those filthy sounds you make for me.” He leans in a flicks his tongue over you, pulling an airy whine from your throat. It’s not good enough, so he abandons his work and moves to trail kisses down the inside of your thigh instead.
With a bratty huff of frustration, you lift your head and find him watching you from the corner of his eye, lips still moving over your skin. You let your head drop back to the bed, annoyed.
Laced with attitude, you spit out, “Jake, come on.”
Rather than respond, or comply, you feel his tongue slip over the tender skin high inside your thigh just before he opens his mouth wide and then closes his teeth around it. Hard.
“FUCK Jake!”
That’s better, his dick jumps in his pants at the sound and he drops a hand to his lap to run it over his length. He’s painfully hard already, straining against the material but prepared to wait until he gets what he wants from you. He keeps running his lips, tongue and teeth over your thigh until he does.
“Baby please, I need you.”
“And I need you, but you’re holding back on me. Why?” When you stay silent for a beat too long, he pries further. “Tell me, or you can go to bed now, wet and aching.”
You know he’s bluffing, or you hope he is, but there’s no possibility that you’re going to test that theory.
“Josh…”
Just over the mound between your thighs, you see his brows lift, eyes burning into yours. “You better explain that, sweetheart. Now.”
“He’ll hear us.”
His features relax as a slow grin pulls one corner of his mouth upward. “So what?” Moving in close, he extends his tongue and swipes it over your clit with a pointed flick that jerks a yelp past your lips. “He doesn’t care.”
“He does, and we’ve been pretty terrible roommates so far, Jacob.”
The admonishing tone combined with the use of his full name grabs his attention. “Oh she’s serious.” He drops a kiss to the soft sprinkling of hair just above the throbbing and neglected bud between your legs. “You’re such a sweet girl, aren’t you?” Another kiss, this time with his lips puckered and placed directly over your clit. You sigh quietly at the contact. “How could I deny my sweet, perfect girl anything that she wants? Just let me hear you, make that pretty music just for me.”
Finally, he sucks you onto his tongue again, swirling it over you until your barely restrained gasps and soft moans of his name are filling the room, bouncing against these four walls. Your hands keep him pulled tight against you, muffling his own satisfied grunts and when you feel the tips of his fingers dip into you, your hips rock against them until they’re sunk in deep, until you’re fucking yourself with them. With just one curl sending them brushing over that hidden spot inside, you begin to unravel around them.
“I’m gonna cum, baby, I- oh god!”
He doesn’t stop when your legs attempt to clamp shut around his head, lapping at your release as it rushes out of you and soaks the fingers that he’s still pumping into you. He’s drawing it out, swallowing down everything that you’re giving him as if he’s been shipwrecked, stranded on a deserted island, finally presented with enough precious liquid to save his life. When your muscles go lax and your legs fall open, he slips his fingers from you slowly, careful not to waste a drop, licking a final stripe over you before popping those fingers into his mouth and sucking them clean.
Unable to will your muscles into motion, you call out to him from your position, limp and splayed out over the bed. “Pants off, now.” You don’t hear him spring into action, so you crack an eye open and lift your head enough to look down at him. He looks drunk, his eyes dazed and unfocused but still trained on your pussy. You try to prop yourself up but your limbs feel useless, so you force your other eye open to see him better and that’s when you catch it. The ends of his hair, hanging forward over his collarbones, are wet. There’s a drop clinging to his chin, catching the light as it quivers there and then falls, dripping to the floor.
“Jake, what-“
Your voice breaks through the haze and his eyes snap to yours. “I think… I’m pretty sure you just squirted.”
The word alone makes you groan, your arms finding the strength to lift and fold over your face, hiding the flaming heat turning your cheeks red. This finally has him moving, off of his knees to kneel on to mattress and hover over you, tugging your arms away to reveal your embarrassment.
“Whoa whoa, what’s wrong?”
“Don’t say that!”
“What? ‘Squirt’?”
You slap your hands to your face, hiding it from him again. “It’s gross!”
With a gentle touch, he peels your hands away and pins them to the mattress, fingers linked with yours. Your eyes are squeezed shut as he brings his face closer. “Look at me.” You do as he asks, his tone delicate and soft as a summer breeze. “It’s not gross, nothing about you could ever be. It’s probably the hottest thing you’ve ever done, right above the first time you asked me to fuck your mouth.” He’s flooded with relief when a tinkling giggle slips from between your lips, now turned up into a timid smile. “Here, feel this?” He guides one of your hands down between your bodies and places it over his cock, sucking in a hiss through his teeth when you squeeze it. He’s hard as stone, and you can feel the heat coming off of him even through his pants.
In awe of your effect on him, you whisper, “Does it hurt?”
“Mm, a little. Feels like I could explode any second.”
“Show it to me, let me see.”
He presses a fast kiss to your lips and stands from the bed, stripping himself quickly of his pants and taking his briefs with them. Completely bared to you, he watches you sit up for a closer look and wraps a hand around the base.
His cock is swollen and flushed a deep pink, the tip nearly red and leaking as he pulls his fist to it. Your brain is screaming at you, yelling for you to lean forward and taste it, but the walls of your cunt are pulsing, clenching around nothing, greedy for him. He continues to stroke himself slowly, in front of your face, wincing through the near pain of it and silently challenging you to make the next move. Whatever you want, it’s yours.
Your original need wins out and you turn away from the sight of him, beautiful and brazenly pleasuring himself inches from your lips. You crawl up the bed and place yourself comfortably upon the pillows, finding him eyeing you intensely once you’re facing him again. His hand stills on his dick as you bend both legs at the knee and let them fall open wide.
“Get over here.”
He’s on the bed in an instant, yanking the hem of your t-shirt up and revealing your breasts, pulling a nipple into his mouth as he lines himself up, lavishing it with his tongue as he crashes his hips into yours.
Unable to stop it, you scream when the head of his cock slams into your cervix. Rather than slow his pace, he takes the fistful that he still has of your shirt and shoves it into your open mouth. He’s pleased with its efficiency, the primal sounds that you’re making are pretty effectively quieted as you bite down on the cotton. Just to make sure, he pops off of your nipple and takes the other between his teeth. Your muffled mhmm, mmhmm has him driving them into the skin. Your muted squeal has his hips pistoning, jolting your body as he races to his finish.
Almost there, dangling over the edge, he lifts his face from your chest to check on you, a visual assessment that finds a sheen of sweat across your brow and your eyes rolling back in your skull.
On a ragged breath, he calls for your attention. “Babe…”
You roll your eyes forward and find him dripping with sweat, it’s rolling down his neck and traveling over his chest. The pendant of his necklace, the coin, is swinging over your face as his rhythm begins to falter.
“I’m gonna cum, fill this pussy up, you want it?” His jaw is clenched, he’s barely hanging on.
You release the shirt from between your teeth and spit it out.
“Give it to me, I want it all. Do it, Jake!”
With a strangled call of your name, your actual name, he lets go. You can feel the heat of it spilling inside you and he groans, sounding again like it’s physically painful as he fills you until his release is overflowing from your cunt, while he’s still fucking more into you. His body shudders as it finally ends, he sinks to you, hot and sticky and completely drained. Into the damp skin in the crook of your neck, he murmurs a drowsy I love you.
Hands running through the sweat-soaked strands of his hair, you say it back. He breathes into a kiss placed to that spot on your neck before rolling off of you.
He’s already slipping into sleep, you know he’s exhausted from travel and you can see it now in his features. There are soft purple shadows under the fans of his eyelashes, resting over his cheeks. You also know that he’ll wish in the morning that he had showered, washed the film of sweat and sex off of his body before passing out, but you can’t bear the thought of forcing him from the bed now.
You let your fingers trail over his chest, moving steadily with the rhythm of his breathing that’s evening out as he drifts away. Drawing a circle over the cool metal of his necklace, you whisper up to him before he’s completely gone.
“Have you been wearing this since you left?”
Barely conscious, he lifts a hand and wraps his fingers around yours that are toying with the coin.
“Mm, yeah. Haven’t taken it off.”
“Is there a reason?” You know there has to be, everything he does has a purpose, even if he doesn’t know exactly what it is.
“Finished the book you gave me for Christmas. I read it three times while we were gone. Necklace reminds me of you.”
Oh.
He’s snoring softly before you can respond. You move away from him slowly, rolling to grab your phone but not finding it on your nightstand. Quickly and quietly, you tiptoe around the room and don’t find it anywhere, so you slip your leggings back on, up and over your hips and sneak out the door.
You head first to use the bathroom, then to Josh’s bedroom door but find it slightly ajar and the room dark. After slinking down the stairs, you’re met with a dark kitchen but a soft blue glow coming from the living room. Josh is there, nearly asleep himself but still upright on the couch in front of some black and white film that doesn’t seem familiar to you. He startles only slightly when you step into the room.
“What are you sneaking around for, darling? I didn’t even hear you come down the stairs.” He pats the cushion next to him, an invitation that you accept.
“Jake’s asleep, I didn’t wanna wake him. What are you still doing up?”
“I could ask you the same, shouldn’t you be cuddling your beloved or some shit? You reek of sex.” There’s no fire behind his words as he teases you.
“I need to talk to you. I need your help.”
Just over two weeks later, they’re packed to leave again. They both pack infuriatingly light for a month-long journey through Europe, but you know they’ll cycle through five outfits, max, between the two of them
Jake saunters into your bedroom as you’re frantically sifting through your closet, tossing things out into the room as you go. He moves through the space, taking note of the open suitcase laid out on the bed as he steps toward the closet door, where a denim jacket slaps him in the face and wraps itself around his head. You haven’t even noticed and continue to throw things in his direction. He pulls the jacket free and drops it to the pile you’ve created at his feet before scaring the shit out of you.
“Running away, sweetheart?”
“Shit Jacob!” You’ve nearly jumped out of your skin, but gather yourself quickly and keep moving through your hangers. “How do you guys pack so easily, how do you know what to bring?”
“It’s simple, love, we never change our clothes. Mind if I ask, again, where you’re going?”
You push past him in the doorway and move to start folding things to put in your suitcase. He turns and follows you with his eyes as you continue to ignore his question. Crossing the room, he steps in behind you as you’re leaned over the bed and reaches around you to stop your hands from shoving another pair of jeans into the case.
“Stop, before you piss me off.” Your back stiffens at that, the authority in his tone sending a shiver down your spine that makes your toes curl. He slides his hands from yours, slowly up your arms until he’s spinning you around by your shoulders. Curiosity is lifting one of his eyebrows, the other drawn down and creasing the skin between them.
You’ve been waiting for this confrontation, thought you were ready for it but now that it’s happening, your palms are clammy with nerves. You try to wipe the anxiety from your expression, offering him your own quirked eyebrow and a sly smile.
“I’m taking a trip to Denmark.”
You watch a range of emotion flash across his face in just a few seconds, surprise, then confusion, followed by the dawn of understanding. Finally, excitement is alight in his eyes and you start to feel it too before the corners of his mouth pull downward.
“You’re coming with us. You can’t just up and come with us, this shit takes planning babe, scheduling, flights. We have a whole team that travels-“
“It’s taken care of.”
He’s still confused, understandably. “How?”
“Josh took care of it. I asked him to.” The nerves are back, sensing that he has more questions before he accepts this as truth.
He considers what you’ve told him so far, which is next to nothing, with his arms folded and a hand under his chin, running his finger over the small dimple there.
“For how long?”
“A month.”
“Baby, that’s the entire time we’ll be in Europe. What did you tell your job?”
“I quit.”
“You quit.”
“Two weeks ago. I put in my notice after Josh said he would handle the arrangements. Yesterday was my last day.”
You let him process it, not daring to move from your place in front of him, terrified that he’s going to tell you you’ve made a mistake. Your heart’s beating so rapidly that you’re sure you’re about to pass out, just before he unfolds his arms and takes both of your hands in his.
His voice is soft, sweet as cotton candy and spun up with the dreamy quality of disbelief. “You’re coming with me?”
Your fingers squeeze his, helping to ground you both in the reality of this. “I am. For as long as you’ll have me. I’ll look for a new job when we get back to the states, if that’s okay. I’m not sure wh-“
His kiss punches the air from your lungs and any other words from your brain, his hands thrown into your hair then sliding down your body until he hauls you off your feet. Arms and legs wrapped around him, you throw your head back and laugh until you truly can’t breathe. He watches from below, and he knows.
When you drop your forehead to his, he smiles back at you, that one that he now knows to be your favorite. He’d almost fucked this up, this moment that he’ll tuck away into his memory, but he’ll recall it later and it’ll be perfect.
“Forever. I’d take you with me forever, to every horizon.” Another kiss pulled from your lips, one of thousands, millions even. “I don’t give a shit if you never work again. I knew you wanted me to be your sugar daddy, sweetheart.”
The End 💔💔💔
Taglist:
@lightmylove-gvf @spicedandicedtea @weneedsomehealing123 @milkgemini @why-ami-on-here @gretavanbitches @twistedmelodies @wildflowerxx-x @dannythedog @blissfulbellss @averagemisfit03 @dharmasdivine @thetroublegetssoloud71 @lucimoo @toxbexannouncedx @dig0930 @maddie-van-fleet @friska101-cg @welllauragvf @gretasimp @objectsinspvce @writingcold @gretavangroupie @sweetybre @gretasgoose @gvfjess @josh-iamyour-mama
#greta van fleet#gvf#greta van fleet fan fiction#greta van fleet fic#gvf fic#jake kiszka#jake gvf#greta van fleet smut#gvf smut
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Spy Satellite Photos Reveal Hundreds of Long-Lost Roman Forts
Declassified photos captured by United States spy satellites launched during the Cold War have revealed an archaeological treasure trove: hundreds of previously unknown Roman-era forts, in what is now Iraq and Syria.
Many of those long-lost structures may be gone forever at this point, destroyed or damaged over recent decades due to agricultural expansion, urban development and war. Nevertheless, the discovery of the forts’ existence challenges a popular hypothesis established in the 1930s about the role of such fortifications along the ancient Roman Empire’s eastern border, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Antiquity.
Based on the satellite views, the high number of forts and their widespread distribution hints that the forts may not have been erected to keep enemies out, as the decades-old theory suggested. Rather, the structures were likely built to ensure safe passage for caravans and travelers along routes that saw plenty of nonmilitary traffic. These forts, according to the study authors, were outposts and havens, not hostile barriers.
High-resolution images analyzed in the new study were taken during flyovers by multiple satellites belonging to two US military programs: the Corona Project (1960 to 1972) and Hexagon (1971 to 1986). Corona’s images were declassified in 1995, and Hexagon’s photos were released to the public in 2011.
Images from Hexagon and Corona are invaluable for archaeologists because they preserve snapshots of landscapes that have since undergone significant disruption, said lead study author Jesse Casana, an archaeologist and professor in the department of anthropology at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
“Agriculture and urbanization have destroyed a lot of archaeological sites and features to a shocking degree,” Casana said. “This old imagery allows us to see things that are often either obscured or no longer extant today.”
Spy satellite photos vs. the Poidebard survey
Satellite images are especially helpful for searches across the northern part of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East — from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to western Iran — because of the area’s archaeological importance and high visibility of the ground in photos, Casana added.
The research team pored over the images for signs of Roman forts, which have a distinctive square shape and walls that usually measure about 164 to 262 feet (50 to 80 meters) long. The scientists began their search using reference maps from an aerial survey of the region conducted in the 1920s and 1930s by French archaeologist and Jesuit missionary Father Antoine Poidebard. That survey was among the first to photograph archaeological sites from the air, and in 1934 Poidebard reported finding 116 Roman forts.
It was an unprecedented achievement. But nearly a century later, mapping Poidebard’s forts to satellite photos was challenging. Because his map wasn’t large-scale, it contained numerous spatial errors, Casana said. Poidebard also did not provide names or numbers for most of the forts he found, identifying them instead by their proximity to geologic features.
Those forts were aligned north to south along what was once the easternmost boundary of the Roman Empire, according to Poidebard. This arrangement, he claimed, was surely intended to guard against invaders from the east.
But Poidebard’s survey provided only a partial view of Rome’s ancient infrastructure, the researchers found. What he overlooked — and what the satellite photos revealed — was that the north-to-south line of 116 forts was actually only a narrow sliver of a cluster spreading from east to west and containing 396 fortified structures.
The forts spanned approximately 116,000 square miles (300,000 square kilometers), “extending from Mosul, on the Tigris River in Iraq, through Ninawa province, across the Khabur and the Balikh valleys, continuing to the semi-arid plains west of the Euphrates River, leading to western Syria and the Mediterranean,” according to the study.
Oases of safety for ancient Rome
When the archaeologists performed a second survey of an image subset, they found 106 more fortlike structures, hinting that further investigations will yield many more Roman forts. Based on excavations of other Roman sites in the region, the scientists estimated that the forts were built between the second and sixth centuries.
While Poidebard’s row of forts along the Roman Empire’s eastern front looked like a military fortification, this new evidence suggested that the forts collectively served a different purpose. Rather than presenting an impassable wall on a violent frontier, they provided oases of safety and order along well-traveled Roman roads.
Borders in this world “were places of dynamic cultural exchange and movement of goods and ideas,” not barriers, Casana said. And perhaps that perspective holds a lesson for the modern era, he added.
“Historically, as an archaeologist, I can say that there have been many attempts by ancient states to build walls across borders and it has been a universal failure,” Casana said. “If there’s any way that archaeology contributes to modern discourse, I would hope it is that building giant walls to keep people out is a bad plan.”
By Mindy Weisberger.
#Spy Satellite Photos Reveal Hundreds of Long-Lost Roman Forts#unknown Roman-era forts#iraq#syria#Roman Empire’s eastern border#ancient artifacts#archeology#archeolgst#history#history news#ancient history#ancient culture#ancient civilizations#roman history#roman empire#Qasr Bshi
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i learned about Janet Stephens, a hair stylist turned hairstyle archeologist. She visited a museum in 2001 and realized historians were wrong about hairstyles on Greek and Roman statues being wigs. She recreated the styles and published her findings in The Journal of Roman Archaeology (x)
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I know ten years ago is a while but if you ever stumble upon the Roman chicken article please link me to it that sounds fascinating
I knew I had this article somewhere on my computer because it HAUNTS me. Zooarchaeologists are wild --
Sykes, Naomi. “A Social Perspective on the Introduction of Exotic Animals: The Case of the Chicken.” World Archaeology 44, no. 1 (2012): 158–169.
Sorry, it is in fact an actual academic article from a journal rather than something I can link to. It should be on JSTOR, if you've got access.
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Thracian Tattoos
"Thracian Woman killing Orpheus"
Pistoxenos Painter, circa 470-460 BC. NAMA nr. 15190.
Earlier this year, during an excursion to Greece, I came across this fragmented cup at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. It bears the image of the murder of Orpheus by a Maenad (or at least a Thracian, more on that later). What piqued my interest, however, was what seemed to be a tattoo of a grazing animal on the right arm, as well as geometric designs on the wrists.
At the time I deemed it a solitary case until I came across the image below.
"Death of Orpheus"
Black Fury Painter, circa 400-375 BCE. APMA nr. 02581.
Print by K. Reichhold.
Here, the murder is depicted with a much larger group of Maenads/Thracians. Orpheus, his person largely missing, can be identified in the middle with his left hand clinging to the lyre. Additionally, he is the only one in this group lacking body art on the exposed limbs.
The assaulting group bears rocks, knives, and other weapons, while their arms and legs are covered with simple line drawings of animals resembling deer, as well as abstract geometric patterns. To draw comparisons with the upper cup drawing would not be out of the question.
I was hesitant to call them tattoos at first, but an article by C.P. Jones more or less confirms that they were, based on various historical sources. Tattoos (Or stigma from στίζω: to mark. Not to be confused with the English use of the term) for decoration were a rare occurrence in antiquity, but there seems to be an exception for Thrace, where tattoos on women were a sign of esteem.
Recommended reading:
Jones, C. P. “Stigma: Tattooing and Branding in Graeco-Roman Antiquity.” The Journal of Roman Studies 77 (1987): 139–55. https://www.jstor.org/stable/300578.
(See section VI for the specific case of Thrace).
Schildkrout, Enid. “Inscribing the Body.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 319–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25064856.
(A general overview of tattoos and body art throughout history and in cultures across the world).
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What's Wrong With Robert Graves?
Why are Witches and Pagans so hard on Robert Graves and practically denounce everything he's ever written? It's certainly become verboten in some circle amongst the Craft to cite his book, The Greek Myths (despite its storied use amongst contemporary Classicist), nor the classic academic treatise, The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology for no other reason than he wrote the Introduction! Nevertheless, as a Witch, I must contend with the view that amongst my own kind--due to guilt by association--every book attached to Robert Graves is now viewed as highly suspect and dubious, which is (if you'll pardon the pun) gravely unfortunate.
As a matter of fact, in the criticisms of Graves, I wonder how many of us have overlooked the subtitle of The White Goddess (UK: Faber & Faber/U.S.: Creative Age Press, 1948), which quite clearly calls it a work of "poetic myth." The term, "mythopoetic" is an adjective defined as: Relating to the making of a myth or myths, i.e. Relating to or denoting a movement for men that uses activities such as storytelling and poetry reading as a means of self-understanding.
What's wrong with that? Contribution to one's myths are a wonderful thing. Unless one feel otherwise. I would argue that the strengths of Graves's The White Goddess have been overshadowed by pedantic critics that insist its misinformative. But, from my perspective, it teaches one how to look at folk-lore, archaeology and mythology from a different perspective that I (and others) have personally found invaluable.
Sure, one might belittle the Archetype of the Lunar Triple-Goddess of the Maiden-Mother-Crone as an invention; but rather, it has contributed greatly towards Pagan myth-making and it should be celebrated for that, rather than shunned. Although this should not be cited, as it has been publicly misappropriated, usually as an excuse to denounce the Wica/ "Wicca" as an utterly modern religion with no roots in the past.
We should not, therefore, be quick to pass judgement onto the late English poet and Classicist, Robert Graves (1895-1985 C.E.), as the alleged provocateur who contrived the modern lunar archetype of the Triple-Goddess as Maiden, Mother and Crone since this archetype may be interpreted as a mere reaction to human longevity. Throughout the Greco-Roman world there were numerous Triple Moon-Goddesses, virtually none of whom can be described as older in appearance than the median age of women, which was an average of twenty-five years (Carrieri, Maria Patrizia and Diego Serraino. "Longevity of Popes and Artists Between the 13th and 19th Century." International Journal of Epidemiology, 34:6 (December 2005): pp. 1435-1436.). As a matter of fact, ancient Triple Moon-Goddesses chiefly depict three women of a similar age, which should come as no great surprise since the difference in age between an unmarried female, a bride or mother (if she survived childbirth), and a woman nearing the end of her typical life-expectancy was quite narrow. This is how these ancient goddesses would have been conceived in the popular imagination of antiquity. In fact, Graves seems to have been well aware of this detail when writing his historical novel, The Golden Fleece (Cassell, 1944), in which he describes the fashion in which the Old Religion is practiced on the Spanish island of Majorca:
Maiden, Nymph and Mother are the eternal royal Trinity on the island, and the Goddess, who is worshipped there in each of these aspects, as New Moon, Full Moon, and Old Moon, is the sovereign deity.
As a result, Graves has merely brought to light what was self-evident, thus demonstrating how a contemporary culture would have viewed this archetypal goddess in his own day (and in ours). Remember that between the decades of the 1930s and 1950s, which spanned the years of WWII, one was considered elderly if they had reached the age of forty (Philip Heselton: pers. comm.), which is scarcely how one might define a crone in our own day.
This evident knowledge is underscored by the fact that Graves wrote The White Goddess in response to a conversation with his friend, the English historian Alan Hodge (1915-1979 C.E.), regarding the psychological process of poetic inspiration. Graves then acquainted himself with the works from noted scholars of his day that were especially en vogue, albeit some of which have not aged particularly well in retrospect: The Mabinogion (Bernard Quaritch, 1877), quoted at length, by Lady Charlotte Guest (1812-1895 C.E.); The Golden Bough (Macmillan & Co., 1890), which was meticulously researched by Sir James Frazer (1854-1941 C.E.) [and for more research consult this phenomenal essay]; Celtic Researches (Privately Printed, 1804), an imperfect and somewhat speculative treatise by Edward Davies (1756-1831 C.E.); the ideas of his friend, the anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers (1864-1922 C.E.), who was a proponent of the "mother-right" or matriarchal theory; The Witch-Cult in Western-Europe (Oxford University Press, 1921) by Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963 C.E.), which Grevel Lindrop—Emeritus Professor of Romantic and Early Victorian Studies—described as "scholarship blended with myth-making" (Lindop, Grevel. "The White Goddess: Sources, Contexts, Meanings." Graves and the Goddess: Essays on Robert Graves’s The White Goddess. Eds. Ian Firla and Grevel Lindop. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2003: p. 31), whilst English historian Steven Runciman (1903-2000 C.E.)—who wrote the Foreword to The Witch-Cult when it was reissued in 1971 by Oxford University Press—stated that Murray "has always had solid evidence to back her claims" (Murray, Margaret A. The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. 1921. FWD. Sir Steven Runciman. Reprint, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1996: p. 5), which is not to detract from Murray’s more unfortunate suggestions (e.g., that blue bonnets were worn by the High Priest of the Coven as a headdress); and the masterful trove, The Secret Languages of Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 1937), edited by noted Irish archaeologist, Dr. R. A. Stewart Macalister (1870-1950 C.E.), which was reissued due to its importance amongst the field of Celtic Studies.
It is untenable to imagine that religions do not naturally flux in response to such obvious changes as human life-expectancy, social and political changes. Even the early Christians likely would have affixed in their minds a younger image of the Abrahamic god than that which has swept the popular imagination in our current century. The same is also true of the modern image of the Ancient Greek god, Zeus, who is often portrayed in film and on television far older than he actually would have been perceived by the Ancient Greeks themselves. Even the Virgin Mary of the Christians was probably thirteen or fourteen years of age when she gave birth to the Christ, which was the age when Hebrew maidens became marriageable ('The Blessed Virgin Mary.' The Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent. Web. 13 March, 2023). This may explain why observant Catholics who witness visions or apparitions of the Virgin Mary often describe her resembling a very young maiden.
Therefore, it is my position, that Robert Graves may be forgiven for his axiomatic contribution to the theology of contemporary Witchcraft, and therefore updating the public imagery and understanding of this Archetypal goddess. Yet again, this should not be interpreted, as it has, that Graves directly inspired our concept of the Triple-Moon Goddess through a book that is now lauded as "disingenuous"; and thereby misappropriated as supposed "evidence" that the Wica/ "Wicca" is a fabricated religion by Gerald Gardner that amounts to us virtually LARPing or Cos Playing the fantasies of Margaret Murray under the auspices of "religion."
CODA: It's not as though Graves concealed his speculations and inventive outlooks, which means that we are projecting our misplaced resentment and insecurities onto Graves. As a matter of fact, personal responsibility is one of the hallmarks of the Craft. Indeed, one of the empowering things about the Craft is that is demands personal responsibility and introspection as a code of ethics, rather than a series of divinely ordained proclamations. So, if one feels that Graves had duped or cheated them, then they clearly hadn't read Graves carefully since he was fairly open about this fact. Therefore, any enmity expressed towards Graves and his legacy is best explained the personal projections and insecurities of those witches and pagans who accepted The White Goddess more seriously than the author did.
Graves quite clearly states that he copied his information on Ogham from Roderick O'Flaherty (rather then inventing it himself), and then on the succeeding page he states that he contacted Dr. Macalister who was then the greatest living scholar on Ogham who told Graves not to accept O'Flaherty's ideas "seriously." Graves then writes, "I pass this caution on in all fairness, for my argument depends on O'Flaherty's alphabet, and Dr. Macalister is a very broad back for anyone to shelter behind who thinks that I am writing nonsense"; and how his [Graves's] argument "began with an assumption." Therefore, the fault is our own to shoulder; not his--and we must take responsibility for our own role in this.
Honestly, I see nothing objectionable with people regurgitating Graves anymore than someone doing the same with Ovid and Hesiod. There are many variants of a given myth, which are simply an elaboration onto that which came before--indeed, the Craft follows this pattern. But the strength of The White Goddess is its ability to inspire others in looking at the world, myths and folklore with new eyes filled with wonderment, to enquire philosophical thought, and to make meaningful additions to old myths for a new era. It very much encourages philosophical thinking! The kind that I think any Sagittarius would deeply appreciate.
Of course, one might have a problem with any of this only if they believe that embroidering upon myths is wrong and makes us look foolish to the uninitiated. I do not. If the Craft is a rebirth, then it's core myths "damn well" (to quote an interjection of Doreen Valiente) should have evolved, which should be expected! That is why the MMC Archetype is a benefit to the craft, rather than a deterrent. Anyone who feels shame because the craft isn't a mirror image of an ancient religion--because that is the litmus test being used by historians with which to judge us--clearly don't understand how thriving religions work! Graves just pointed out what should have been axiomatic to us all in terms of the Lunar Triple-Goddess. This isn't to say that there are no examples in antiquity that mirrors the Craft! There are actually a great many historic shards if one knows where to look. But accepting them means accepting that what you thought was true about ancient paganism is much more blurry than you or some scholars have realized. The Old Religion, however, has adapted to meet new social and political stresses on society and the marginalized.
References:
The White Goddess, by Robert Graves
The Pagan Heart of the West, by Randy P. Conner
Lindop, Grevel. "The White Goddess: Sources, Contexts, Meanings." Graves and the Goddess: Essays on Robert Graves’s The White Goddess. Eds. Ian Firla and Grevel Lindop
Carrieri, Maria Patrizia and Diego Serraino. "Longevity of Popes and Artists Between the 13th and 19th Century." International Journal of Epidemiology, 34:6 (December 2005): pp. 1435-1436.
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, by Margaret A. Murray
"The Blessed Virgin Mary." The Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent. Web. 13 March, 2023.
#witchcraft#TheWica#wicca#wiccan history#triple goddess#moon goddess#Gardnerian#Alexandrian#the white goddess#robert graves
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Finally, a real medieval elephant appears! Just not where you might expect.
Katie Hemer, Hugh Willmott, Jane Evans, and Michael Buckley have shown that this ring was made from an African elephant's (genus Loxodonta's) ivory tusk in the fifth or sixth century. It was probably used as a handle on a cloth bag. It was found in a grave in Scremby, Lincolnshire (UK), where it had been buried sometime between around 450 and 550 AD.
And this wasn't the only elephant ivory to show up thousands of miles away in northern Europe: elephant ivory rings have been found in over 70 cemeteries in the area that is now England, and some have been found in the area that is now northern Germany, too. These cemeteries seem to date to the period before the 7th century.
This particular elephant may have originated in the African Rift Valley, and its ivory may have been traded from the Kingdom of Aksum to Europe. The time when it was traded coincided with the political power of the Roman Empire crumbling in western Europe and some (but not all) trade routes being disrupted. Yet the world has always been interconnected: we can't ignore the history of any region or any time.
Katie A. Hemer, Hugh Willmott, Jane E. Evans, Michael Buckley,
"Ivory from early Anglo-Saxon burials in Lincolnshire – A biomolecular study", Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports,
49 (2023), 103943, ISSN 2352-409X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.103943.
Read it here.
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Women’s history just got richer
Iron Age remains found on the Isles of Scilly belonged to a female warrior, according to the authors of a new study that challenges long-held assumptions about the historical role of women in warfare.
Ever since the burial site was discovered in 1999 at a farm on the British island of Bryher, scientists have been at odds as to whether it belonged to a man or a woman. But thanks to a modern technique that involves analyzing the proteins found in tooth enamel, archeologists say they finally have an answer.
"We found that this 2,000-year-old burial — one of the richest burials in the southwest of Britain — was a female, or a woman," human skeletal biologist Sarah Stark told As It Happens guest host Aarti Pole.
"It really is opening the door to this hidden female warrior."
Stark works for Historic England, a public agency dedicated to the preservation of historical sites, which led the study into the Iron Age remains. The findings were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
The sword and the mirror
Iron Age graves with swords usually belong to men, while those with mirrors tend to belong to women, says Stark. But the Bryher burial site contains both.
"This is something that really sets the Bryher burial apart," Stark said. "This kind of tipped us off into knowing that this person — this woman — was of significance."
She and her colleagues suspect she was "someone that was organizing, commanding or leading in warfare at this time."
Stark says there's a lot we don't know about Iron Age Britain before the arrival of Romans — but one thing we know for sure is that violence and warfare was common.
"We see that men and women were engaging in kind of violent activities based on the trauma that we've seen in other bones in surrounding areas," she said. "So it's not out of the ordinary to think that both men and women should be able to defend themselves."
This presence of both a sword and a mirror in the grave confounded researchers for the last two decades. (Historic England Archive)
It's not just the sword that's connected to war, she says, but potentially the mirror too.
"To be able to signal to others through beams of light would be a huge advantage, both in either warning … others your in party of a potential attack, or co-ordinating an attack," she said.
Archeologist Bettina Arnold, who was not involved with the study, cautioned against assuming the presence of a sword means the person was a warrior.
Arnold, a University of Wisconsin Milwaukee professor who studies the Iron Age, says it's not uncommon to find weapons buried with women or various types of leaders. They symbolize that "you are protecting your community," she said.
"It's probably more likely a symbol of authority, and of a particular kind of leadership role," Arnold said. "That doesn't necessarily mean they were actually riding into battle."
These Iron Age human remains from Bryher were too fragmented and deteriorated to obtain DNA. (Historic England Archive)
Mirrors, she said, have also been associated with religious or spiritual roles, including fortune telling.
Arnold says she doesn't doubt the existence of female warriors in history, and that, in fact, men may have also been wrongly assumed to be soldiers because of the weapons found in their graves.
To be certain about any individual case, she says you would require multiple lines of evidence, such as markings on the remains that indicate an individual had been in combat.
Tooth technique a real 'game changer'
The human remains found at Bryher, however, are badly fragmented and poorly preserved. That's why previous attempts to determine sex using DNA failed.
But this time, the researchers turned to the teeth.
"Tooth enamel is the hardest and most durable substance in the human body. It contains a protein with links to either the X or Y chromosome, which means it can be used to determine sex," co-author Glendon Parker, a toxicology at the University of California at Davis, said in a press release.
Analysis of the Bryher remains show a 96 per cent likelihood the bones belonged to a female.
"Given the degraded state of the bones, it's remarkable to get such a strong result. It makes you wonder what could be discovered by re-visiting other badly degraded burials," Parker said.
Aerial view of Bryher island, part of an archipelago known as the Scilly Islands in the United Kingdom. (Dan Turdean/Shutterstock)
The same technique was recently used to reclassify 5,000-year-old remains from an ornate Spanish tomb from male to female.
Arnold called the tooth enamel technique "a total game changer" that's more cost-effective than DNA testing, and more accurate than interpreting objects found in graves.
Stark says it "opens a huge realm of possibilities where we might start, again, uncovering ... more hidden female warriors."
"We might find it's actually quite common," she said. "We've just been kind of missing them."
Changing historical narratives about gender
This study comes as scientists are re-evaluating many long-held assumptions about gender roles throughout history.
In one recent study, published in June, researchers dispel what they call the "myth" that men were primarily hunters and women were gatherers in early human populations.
And in 2017, advanced DNA analysis was used to identify a Viking warrior's remains as female.
In the latter case, some archeologists argued those remains could have belonged to someone who, in today's parlance, would be considered transgender or non-binary.
"That's part of the problem, too, that we're projecting our own ideas — you know, the sort of binary system that we're still kind of tied to, unfortunately — projecting that into the past. And I think you miss a lot that way," Arnold said.
Stark agreed it's something worth considering.
"It's something we want to be quite mindful of when we sort of start to think … in terms of gender and identity, and taking kind of our modern constructs and applying them to the past," she said.
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Study reveals new insights into the origins of Scotland's mysterious Picts
Scotland's Picts have long been viewed as a mysterious people with their enigmatic symbols and inscriptions, accentuated by representations of them as wild barbarians with exotic origins.
But a newly published study by an international team led by researchers at the University of Aberdeen and Liverpool John Moores University is helping to shed new light on the origins of the Picts.
The Picts were first mentioned in the late 3rd century CE as resisting the Romans and went on to form a powerful kingdom that ruled over a large part of northern Britain, in present-day north-east Scotland.
In the medieval period, the Picts were considered immigrants from Thrace (north of the Aegean Sea), Scythia (eastern Europe), or isles north of Britain but as they left few written sources of their own little is known of their origins or relations with other cultural groups living in Britain.
Archaeologists have conducted the first extensive analysis of Pictish genomes and their results have been published today (27/04/2023) in the open access journal PLOS Genetics.
The results reveal a long-standing genetic continuity in some regions of the British Isles, helping to build a picture of where the Picts came from and providing new understanding of how present-day genetic diversity formed. The findings also confirm descriptions by the great English historian Bede of the far-flung eastern origins of the Picts as one of myth and fantasy.
The researchers used Identity-By-Descent (IBD) methods to compare two high-quality Pictish genomes sequenced from individuals excavated from Pictish-era cemeteries at Lundin Links in Fife (Southern Pictland) and Balintore in Easter Ross (Northern Pictland) to those of previously published ancient genomes as well as the modern population.
Dr Linus Girdland Flink of the University of Aberdeen, senior corresponding author of the study, said: “Among the peoples present during the first millennium CE in Britain, the Picts are one of the most enigmatic.
“Their unique cultural features such as Pictish symbols and the scarcity of contemporary literary and archaeological sources resulted in many diverse hypotheses about their origin, lifestyle and culture, part of the so-called ‘Pictish problem’.
“We aimed to determine the genetic relationships between the Picts and neighbouring modern-day and ancient populations.
“Using DNA analysis, we have been able to fill a gap in an understudied area of Scotland’s past.
“Our results show that individuals from western Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Northumbria display a higher degree of Identity-By-Descent (IBD) sharing with the Pictish genomes, meaning they are genetically most similar among modern populations.”
This genetic make-up was distinct from areas of southern England where there is a greater relative degree of Anglo-Saxon heritage.
Dr Adeline Morez from Liverpool John Moores University, lead corresponding author of the study, adds: “Our findings also support the idea of regional continuity between the Late Iron Age and early medieval periods and indicates that the Picts were local to the British Isles in their origin, as their gene pool is drawn from the older Iron Age, and not from large-scale migration, from exotic locations far to the east.
“However, by comparing the samples between southern and northern Pictland we can also see that they were not one homogenous group and that there are some distinct differences, which point to patterns of migration and life-time mobility that require further study.”
The analysis of mitochondrial genomes from Lundin Links has also provided an insight into another Pictish myth – that they practised a form of matriliny, with succession and perhaps inheritance going to the sister’s son rather than directly through the male line.
“In a matrilocal system we would expect to find females staying in their birthplace after their marriage and throughout their life.
“At Lundin Links, diversity in the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA suggests this was not the case. This finding challenges the older hypotheses that Pictish succession was passed along the mother’s side and raise further questions about our understanding of Pictish society and its organisation.”
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Research For What Did People Use Before Toilet Paper?
The reason this post on What Did People Use Before Toilet Paper? came to be was because I wanted to know how in the ancient times did people do their business so that my story would be more accurate.
This of course led me down a rabbit hole and I ended up finding out a lot more. I thought to myself I should make this a post because I might need this info again. It’ll also be convenient to have it all in place. However, at the time I forgot to include sources so I can’t recall all of them exactly.
But I do know that it was a mixed of articles on artifacts, historical documents and old texts, such as literature, personal accounts like journals and so on, because they contained brief mentions of what the people used as toilet paper in them, etc.
Sapien.org - What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
The Washington Post Company - Ever Wondered about the history of toilet paper?
Phys.org - What toilets and sewers tell us about ancient Roman sanitation
Farmers' Almanac - The Hole In The Farmers’ Almanac
Liberty Hall Museum - The Colonial Privy (Toilet) at Liberty Hall Museum [PDF]
University of Nebraska Press: Center for Great Plains Studies - Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition | A Natural History | Chapter 2
North Carolina Cooperative Extension: Hoke County Center - Cowboy’s Toilet Paper
Smithsonian Magazine - These Archaeologists Were Looking for Tombs, But They Were Totally Psyched to Find Toilets
ResearchGate - Toilet hygiene in the classical era [PDF]
The University of Texas at Austin - American Wasteland: A Social and Cultural History of Excrement, 1860-1920 by Daniel Max Gerling [PDF]
Cottonelle - What Did We Use Before Toilet Paper?
Living History Farm - 1930s Farm Life: Indoor Plumbing
Lancaster Farming - Pondering the Privy: A History of Outhouses
National Park Service - Outhouse-Sauer Beckmann Farm [Picture]
Penn State University Libraries - The Greatest Missed Luxury: Scott Toilet Tissue
Ancient Accounts of India and China by Eusebius Renaudot [Book]
Ars Technica - 2,000-year-old toilet paper gives us a whiff of life on the Silk Road in China
Archaeology Southwest - Of Poop, Toilet Paper, and Worms…
The Plumber - Toilet Paper: The History ‘Behind’ It
Medievalists.net - The Medieval Invention of Toilet Paper
World History Encyclopedia - Toilets in a Medieval Castle
Corinium Museum - Roman Toilet Paper
The Vintage News - What Did People Use Before Toilet Paper?
CBS News - Toilet Paper Factoids
Kapiolani Community College - Where’s The Toilet Paper?
Wellcome Collection - How Brits went soft on toilet paper [Pictures]
Smithsonian Magazine - Ancient “Poop Sticks” Offer Clues to the Spread of Disease Along the Silk Road
Dig It With Raven - What Did We Use Before Toilet Paper?
Scientific American - Toilet Issue: Anthropologists Uncover All the Ways We've Wiped
Italy Magazine - Ancient Romans May Have Used Flat Stones As Toilet Paper
Vintage Ad Browser - Toilet Paper
Discover Magazine - What the Earliest Toilets Say About How Human Civilization Has Evolved
Japan This! - Japanese Toilets
The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy: Toilets, Sewers, and Water Systems (Studies in the History of Greece and Rome) by Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow [Book]
BBC - A potted history of the toilet
JSTOR - The Early History of Human Excreta
Popular Science - Nature’s best toilet paper substitutes
The Mariners' Museum and Park - A Head of Its Time: A Brief History of Going at Sea
Museums Victoria - Immigration: Journeys to Australia - Privies & Hygiene
RealClear Science - What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
The University of New Hampshire (UNH) - Ancient Toilet Hygiene [Video]
The Open University - Health and Wellbeing in the Ancient World: What did the Romans use for toilet paper?
National Geographic - What did people do before toilet paper?
National Museum of American History - Toilet
Berkeley University of California: Archaeological Research Facility - The Archaeology of Toileting
Ancient Origins - No Toilet Paper! Do Any of these Ancient Methods Work for You?
LiveScience - What did people use before toilet paper was invented?
HISTORY.com - All the Ways We’ve Wiped: The History of Toilet Paper and What Came Before
Youtube - The Remarkable History of Toilet Paper | Told by The History Guy | History at Home [Video]
Country Life - Curious Questions: What did people use before toilet paper?
Reader’s Digest - This Is What People Used Before Toilet Paper Existed
Free Library of Philadelphia - Unrolling the History of Toilet Paper
Hearthstone Historic House Museum - Flushed with Success: Milestones in Toilet Paper Development
Academia - Evolution of Toilets Worldwide Through the Millennia [PDF]
Ohio State University - Common Mullein- Mother Nature's Answer to Our Toilet Paper Shortage?
Gastrointestinal Society - The History of Toilet Paper
Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences: Powerhouse Collection - Toilet roll made in Australia
Minnesota State University: Centennial Student Union - Potty Talk: Understanding International Bathroom Etiquette
Health Digest - What Did People Use Before Toilet Paper?
BidetGenius - Complete History of the Bidet (Infographic)
Religion Unplugged - Islamic And Hindu Customs Wipe Out Need For Toilet Paper
Science Daily - Biblical Latrine: Ancient Parasites Show That Cleanliness May Have Been Next To Sickliness
#writing research#research#history#toilet paper#writing help#writing#writing reference#writing references#writing fanfiction#fanfiction help#toliets#bathrooms#time period#what did people use before toliet paper
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Archaeologists Uncover Two New Pompeii Victims Killed by Earthquake
Archaeologists working at Pompeii have found two new victims that they say were killed by an earthquake that accompanied the volcanic eruption of 79 AD.
The Italian city may be most closely associated with the destruction wrought by the eruption of Vesuvius, but these two men were in fact killed by walls knocked down by a simultaneous earthquake, according to the official Pompeii archaeological site.
“Part of the south wall of the room collapsed, crushing one of the men whose raised arm offers a tragic image of his vain attempt to protect himself from the falling masonry,” reads a press release on Tuesday.
“The conditions of the west wall demonstrate the tremendous force of the earthquakes that took place at the same time as the eruption: the entire upper section was detached and fell into the room, crushing and burying the other individual,” it continues.
The pair, who were at least 55 years old, were found during excavations of the Insula of the House of the Chaste Lovers during work to improve the safety of the building.
They were found lying in a utility room where they had sought refuge, and were killed by multiple traumas as parts of the building collapse.
Archaeologists found organic matter, which they believe to be a bundle of fabric, as well as glass paste, which is thought to be the beads of a necklace and six coins. The team also found an amphora leaning against a wall and a number of vessels, bowls and jugs.
In an adjoining room, archaeologists found a stone kitchen counter covered in powdered lime, which they say suggests that building work was being undertaken nearby at the time of the eruption.
The discovery “shows how much there is still to discover about the terrible eruption of AD 79 and confirms the necessity of continuing scientific investigation and excavations,” said Italy’s Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano in the release.
“Pompeii is an immense archaeological laboratory that has regained vigour in recent years, astonishing the world with the continuous discoveries brought to light and demonstrating Italian excellence in this sector,” he added.
Details of the excavation were published in the E-Journal of Pompeii.
The Roman city of Pompeii was buried under meters of pumice and ash in the calamitous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Archaeologists have uncovered only around two thirds of the 66-hectare (163 acres) site since excavations began 250 years ago.
By Jack Guy.
#Archaeologists Uncover Two New Pompeii Victims Killed by Earthquake#Pompeii#Mount Vesuvius#ancient grave#ancient tomb#skeleton#ancient artifacts#archeology#archeolgst#history#history news#ancient history#ancient culture#ancient civilizations#roman history#roman empire
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IEVRV ACEILO(N)
This is a proposed inscription format to look for: “ieuru” is a formula or abbreviation (similar to ALU) that means ‘made for’ or ‘dedicated to’ paired with a deity name in Gaulish / Continental Celtic inscriptions. The n at the ends of names seems to be dropped in at least some inscriptions. (If #GaulPol aren’t already they could include similarly formatted dedications in modern inscriptions on offerings in their reconstructed polytheist practices.)
If there is extant (or not-yet-unearthed) evidence of a bardic-shamanic deity Aceilon who later became Norse Loki, inscribed objects are the place to look. The appearance of “Aceilon”/“ac eilon” in the Yspiel Taliesin manuscript suggests cultures that spoke Brythonic and Continental Celtic are where such artefacts would hypothetically be found. The number of existing Continental Celtic inscriptions is small, and Common/Old Brythonic inscriptions is tiny. So I am not optimistic that anything currently exists.
Note that even in 2003 scholars were commenting that Celtic refers to the language and doesn’t necessarily align with the material culture (Hallstatt) and genetic marker evidence of ethnicity or relatedness, and that scholars are currently debating the notion that the language (and the ideas expressed therein) spread from the East, along the simplified path of Indo-European migration, and may instead have spread from a point of influence in modern France. At the same time, molecular archeologists are doing some elegant work showing that the genetic evidence is that migrants from modern France in the early Bronze Age carried Celtic languages to Britain, and that Bronze Age Europe as a whole was genetically and culturally diverse with more travel opportunities than previously thought. The peoples (not just elites!) connected by the North Sea and continental river networks appear to have travelled for trade and pilgrimages, and intermarried, during the Bronze and Iron Ages.
References:
Gaulish. Language, writing, epigraphy (2018) | Coline Ruiz Darasse and Alex Mullen. Academia.edu, update of a prior online publication.
Alex Mullen. Evidence for Written Celtic from Roman Britain: A Linguistic Analysis of Tabellae Sulis 14 and 18 . STUDIA CELTICA, XLI (2007), 31–45
Bernard Wailes. DEFINING (KEL’TIK): The Case of the Insular Celts. Expedition Magazine, Volume 45, Number 1. 2003. Penn Museum.
Patrick Sims-Williams. An Alternative to ‘Celtic from the East’ and ‘Celtic from the West’. Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , August 2020 , pp. 511 - 529
Wolfgang Meid. Celtic Origins, the Western and the Eastern Celts. Proceedings of the British Academy, 154, pp. 177–199. 2008.
Patterson, Nick et al. Large-Scale Migration into Britain During the Middle to Late Bronze Age, Nature 601, pp. 588–594 (2022) - summarized here and here, it was nonviolent!
Luka Papak et al. Dynamic changes in genomic and social structures in third millennium BCE central Europe. Science Advances (2021) Vol 7, Issue 35
Rachel Pope. Re-approaching Celts: Origins, Society, and Social Change. Journal of Archaeological Research volume 30, pages 1–67 (2022).
For future exploration: Library Guide: Continental Celtic.
#aceilon?#lokean#seven days of lokabrenna#post 6 of 7#gaulpol#evaluating upg#upg#sorry to intrude gaulpol friends am sharing on your tag for the references
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