Musings on Daily Life in the Ancient and Early Medieval Mediterranean By Sarah E. Bond
Fresco from the Bar of Salvius, Pompeii. In it, a bar maid holds a jug in one hand and a cup in another. One customer shouts “over here!”while another says “no, it’s mine!” The exasperated barmaid replies “whoever wants it should take it. Oceanus come here and drink”. (Caption and Image by Dr. Sophie Hay... Continue Reading →
Last week, Candida Moss and I were lucky enough to catch the tail end of The World between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East, an exhibition which opened March 18 and closes on June 23, 2019 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The 190 objects within the exhibition acquired from... Continue Reading →
Thousands of refugees are currently standing at the US-Mexico border. In their 2,500 mile journey from Central America, these women, children, and men from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have endured much in order to petition for a grant of asylum within the United States. As I have written about before, the concept of the... Continue Reading →
For the past year and half, I have written extensively about the appropriation of ancient symbols, texts, and material culture as a rallying point for hate and marginalization within the U.S. and Europe. I wanted to take a moment to aggregate this work, to address how and why ancient historians are working to record this... Continue Reading →
For a long time now, I have been interested in the ways in which digital humanities projects can be used to amplify, to visualize, and to give agency to underrepresented groups. Put another way: How can digital humanities contribute to social justice? One of the shining examples of this type of DH project is the... Continue Reading →
This week over at Hyperallergic, Sean Burrus and I published a co-written article on the use of variegated marbles (which have particolored and mottled veins that give it color) in order to orientalize and illustrate Roman ideas of the "barbarian." As per usual, I like to take to my own blog to discuss new essays, since it is... Continue Reading →
Over at Hyperallergic this week, I had an essay come out that was about four months in the making. It discusses how and why museums should use labels--those little tituli to the side--in order to engage with America's history of slavery. The piece was inspired by a trip to the Worcester Art Museum (Worcester, MA) over the December... Continue Reading →
My latest piece for Hyperallergic addresses the long history of red caps as symbols of politics, ethnicity, and identity. From Mithras to the Smurfs, there is a rich history of using identifying hats. This article was also an opportunity for me to post some photos of Mithras I have taken over the years--and to include a few... Continue Reading →
I think we can all agree that sexual harassment and assault are not inventions of the 20th or 21st centuries. While the visibility of these issues have increased notably in the past 6 months, they have sadly been a part of the tapestry of history since the very beginning. The good news (and there has... Continue Reading →
One of my favorite reflections on the act of writing was written by a late Roman historian, poet, and rhetorician from modern-day Bordeaux named Decimius Magnus Ausonius. Among many other works, he penned a treatise called the Fasti. In a note to his son, the author reflected on the act of picking and choosing historical events, and... Continue Reading →
History From Below 