Weekly Roundup of History, Archaeology and Writing Wisdom April 4-11

Here are the posts I found interesting around the web this week. It was one of those buried-in-the-sand of editing weeks along with a pile of small projects I had to get caught up with, so I didn’t spend much time surfing and it shows! Ah well, I guess I missed some good ones out there. But here are three good ones. Re the last one, archaeologically speaking, I’d love any comments and further info anyone can offer. I have an eerie sense that the burial site near Troy and this recent find are related, but I didn’t have any time to go looking into the material I read long ago that’s making me think that. No one else has made that connection as far as I can tell.

An interview on Fiona McVie’s blog. She dug deep into my writing world and Hand of Fire. Click here for Fiona McVie’s Authors Interview with Judith Starkston

This review of Lindsey Davis’s latest Roman mystery Deadly Election has me wishing I didn’t have such a towering pile of books I have to read. Like the reviewer, Kate of For Winter Nights Blog, I remember enjoying Davis’s books decades ago and her new female sleuth has breathed new life in this long series. Also, Kate writes a great in-depth review. The reviews themselves are always enjoyable. Click here for Kate Atherton’s review on For Winter Nights of Lindsey Davis Deadly Election 

Here’s an article about a Neolithic burial—a man and woman buried together in an embrace, which is highly unusual. But the part of this article I find really intriguing is at the end the archaeologist mentions that at this Neolithic area with many burials, they discovered a large Mycenaean reburial. That is, someone during the time of the Trojan War gathered up bones from one place and brought them to this place to be put in the ground with valuable burial gifts.

This article doesn’t make the connection that I am, but near Troy, by the small harbor area that we think the Greeks used to avoid the large bay that Troy was at that time situated on (now silted up), there was a large Mycenaean burial ground—suspiciously like you might find had something like a Trojan War actually happened. And in that burial ground there are signs of disinternment. I always assumed this meant that the Greeks took some of their dead home with them. I am wondering if this place in Greece is where they chose to bury those bones. Why choose this Neolithic place, unused for generations? This is so mysterious and gripping.

Here’s an excerpt from most interesting part of the article (to me—but the Neolithic joint burial is also fascinating):

“Galaty said one of the team’s biggest discoveries was that 2,000 years after the Neolithic Age, the Mycenaeans — who comprised the human cast in Homer’s epic “Iliad” chronicling the Trojan War — returned to Ksagounaki. They dug into the earlier village-mortuary complex to rebury their dead. “The bones were gathered somewhere else and brought to this feature around 1200 B.C. The Mycenaeans dug down into the old village and filled the pit they dug with bones,” Galaty explained. “There were a lot of wealthy objects — ivory hair pins, lots of beads, a Mycenaean dagger made of bronze.” He hypothesized that knowledge of Alepotrypa Cave may have been passed down through the civilization’s memory of tradition.”

Click here for “Embracing Skeletons Unearthed in Greece” on Archaeology News Network