Reminder: AZ Historical Society Meeting coming up Saturday April 25, 2-4 pm
Email Judith for details and to let her know what snack you are bringing.
Speaker: Marcia Fine
“A gifted storyteller with a penchant for research.”
Marcia’s latest novel, The Blind Eye: A Sephardic Journey has been chosen ONEBOOKAZ winner in the adult category. Marcia will discuss why she writes historical fiction (she started in contemporary women’s lit) as well as the realities and techniques of the book business and marketing. What she calls “Marketing Mayhem”!
Here are my favorite posts from around the web this week:
Female Samurai Warriors?! Susan Spann, busting up those stereotypes we, who are ignorant about Japan, have floating in our ill-informed heads. I love her mysteries set in medieval Japan. So does my husband, for that matter, and he’s actually spent time there. Great post. Click here for “Onna Bugeisha Female Samurai Warriors” on Murder is Everywhere.
Fascinating what archaeologists and paleontologists do with some ancient person’s personal disaster. This Neanderthal fell into a well, died of starvation and then was uniquely preserved by limestone droplets. He’s 150,000 years old and telling interesting stories. Click here for “Altamura Man Yields Oldest Ever Neanerthal DNA Sample” on Archaeology News Network.
Human-made flute or hyena snack? I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to Neanderthal issues, but this one strikes me as a good lesson in the ambiguity of objects found via archaeology. There are a number of “religious” objects in my Bronze Age world that I suspect have undergone similar wild leaps of interpretation. This possible misread is pretty major since these “flutes” were claimed as one of the earliest signs of human music. If indeed they are just hyena teeth chowing down on flexible bear cub bones, that is a big difference in how we understand this moment in time. Click here for “Neanderthal Flute Made by Hyena, Study Claims” on Archaeology News Network.
Another of Erin Al-Mehairi’s engaging interviews—this time with one of my favorites, Nancy Bilyeau. With Wolf Hall on so many minds, hear about another way into the Tudor world. Click here for “Interview with the Intelligent History Loving Journalist, Editor and Author Nancy Bilyeau” on Hook of a Book Blog.
What’s your favorite Museum in the world and why? This caught my interest. A total, vast redo of the Turin Egyptian Museum in Italy. My husband and I took our kids there years ago. An amazing collection (one of largest of Egyptian in the world) but displayed in a dusty, old-fashioned way that cheated the world of what was there. Now they’ve reorganized so it moves chronologically and contextualizes the objects, explains their functions and history. More space means they’ve brought from storage objects that show daily life, the simple pieces that communicate so much even if they aren’t impressive in the traditional sense. Sounds stupendous. I found this contrast in Turkey last spring—the Corum Museum has entered the modern world of museum curating and so many others put random objects on display with little explanation. (There’s a Corum Museum app for your phone if you want to peak at how it’s done right) Show the visitor how that libation pitcher was used, please! Click here for “Turin Museum Gets Overhaul of Pharaonic Proportions” in the Egypt Independent.
This doesn’t happen in Arizona. We don’t even have basements much less history under our houses. I love what happened when this would-be trattoria proprietor tried to fix the leaking pipe under his building in Lecce, Italy. Is there some piece of human history he didn’t find? Geeze, they even mention Homer, who really, trust me, didn’t live in Lecce, Italy but somehow gets a piece of the action! Found anything interesting under your property? Click here for “Centuries of Italian History are Unearthed in Quest to Fix Toilet” in the New York Times.
Fellow AZ Historical Novel Society member David Waid excerpted my ancient shipwreck post on his blog. His daily posts are worth subscribing to–an intriguing mix. Click here for “Ancient Shipwreck Holds Clues to the Past” on David Waid The Fiction of Fantastical History.