Monday Nonsense

Skip down to the third section for fun ancient stuff.

warm up writing

I learned that through a grand miscommunication/misunderstanding, my family was expected at a family dinner almost immediately 30 minutes away. So I dropped party prep and loaded kids in the car. That was ‘only’ 12 at table. Saturday I hosted 17, and then we were back at my in-laws with 14 for Sunday dinner. So many cousins. Honestly though it all went incredibly well. I married well and I’m only writing because I’m so mentally locked into family mode and I have the actual kids birthday to mark tomorrow and then a friends slumber party to prepare for next Saturday, that with out some warm up writing there is no way I’m going to get to the focused goals of the day.

There is a layer of sadness in my heart that my family at the moment is family of choice and my kiddos. Every morning I wake up and am grateful to get to chose to be in partnership with my beloved and raise our awesome kids and that he comes with a giant functional supportive family. And, my family of choice all showed up form me as I hosted. I’ve always known that trust and kinship are built on shared positive experiences and willingness to show up. And, yet I cannot help but grieve the wounds in my bio family, the effects of the inter-generational baggage and the alienation this has created. The survivors guilt I carry and my willingness to do anything to make sure my kids walk into the future with as few scars as possible and as many skills to identify health boundaries and safe humans as possible. I know this vague. None of the story really needs to be told, at least not now. It is just with all the joy of my intense holiday weekend I’m still coming into the week with a wistful sadness. A touch of grief for the relationships I don’t have, even as I try to construct a plausible narrative of my own origin story for myself, one that honors all that is good about my familial connections and the struggles of others that have let me thrive.

looking ahead for the week

I’m in good shape for my WashU talk. Last week, I cranked out the first 20 slides for the deck and they are a aesthetically pleasing (without the overkill on design I used to do to procrastinate), I’ve synthesized past work with new data I’ve collected over the past year especially the particle accelerator experiments and what and why I think more experimentation is valuable, and am well on my way to being able to tell the story of the relevance of this work. The WashU talk I want to focus on broader religious contextualization, in May at ICS I am aiming to focus more on the context of Nemi itself as an archaeological site: so much work to do on that still, and in Warsaw in October I’m planning to give a more economics focused version where I try to talk about the nature and variety of (co-existing) monetary systems. I want to keep working on the research and planning out of all these talks as that is my fun stuff, the work that carried me with it through its own momentum. But it is not the tasks of today. Excited to share my WashU deck next week.

I need to give my study abroad some attention. Last year my Rome trip made me nervous because it was the first time and I didn’t know how the pre-trip logistics were supposed to go. This time I know how it should or could work and every hiccup finds me impatience and a little resentful. The main source of my intolerance has nothing to do with my partners in this work, but rather that my beloved and I have decided it is not right for my family to come to Rome this summer and I would never have agreed to lead the trip if I thought it would mean 3 weeks away from my beloved and kiddos. I love my garden and home office. And while solo travel is fun, I tend to get desperately homesick for my family at about 8-10 day mark. We made the right choice and yet it has changed my relationship to the trip and its planning. It is now far more in the necessary task side of my brain, than the fun, exciting adventure side. Also chairing took me out of the classroom, too much really. I don’t feel as connected to these students as I did to last year’s cohort. We’ll get there and I’ll love it, but the joys of family are more tempting at the moment.

20 April, 5 pm, is the next grant proposal deadline I have to hit. I’ve got a great project. I want to pitch an internal investigation of the bronze votive statuettes from Nemi to compare to our aes grave data. I have had a strong suspicion since 2023 when we did surface analysis that these statuettes hold the key to contextualizing aes grave. I think they may be made from the same junk metal slurry and may even serve similar functions. If I write a good enough grant and am successful in my application I should be able to confirm this by early 2027 and lean more into this hypothesis. Normally these proposal calls come every 6 months, but the ISIS facility has a long shut down coming and there will not be another call for a year or more as they update the facilities. Also right now I have UK affiliation, I hope to find more such affiliations for future collaborations but this is not a given. It’s a now or never cross my fingers and hope sort of case, but of course I’ve got to write the damn thing and give my research partners, the actual scientists the opportunity to review and supplement my experiment design, so really I better get that done by Friday.

Finally, I’m typing this on my Mac. I love my mac. The pXRF software does not run on Mac. My research partner is in Romania with the pXRF. We’ve got a short window for equipment hand off early next week before I leave for St. Louis. I one managed to get it to run on my ancient previous PC laptop I think. I’ve never managed to borrow a machine from my college that would let me run the software. I also need a training refresher course on these analyses. One can buy a PC for under 200 dollars these days, and one worth owning (kinda) for under 500. Do I bite the bullet? My kids would love having a laptop to play with but I hate spending money on a mono tasker. I guess the thing to do is boot up my old machine and see if it seems to function and then bring it to Brooklyn for a test run next Monday and trust that if it doesn’t work, can go to a shop in NYC and throw money at the problem. Yuck.

I also owe lots of people emails sorry if you are one.

Something fun

In an edited volume for Elaine Matthews, Michael Crawford proposed a theory which he himself acknowledges cannot be confirmed, namely that the Italian state may have used bronze tablets like the one below for drawing lots as part of its federal system of government.

Crawford, Michael H. “Onomastics and the Administration of Italia/Víteliú.” Onomatologos. Studies in Greek Personal Names Presented to Elaine Matthews, Oxford (2010): 276-279. [PDF on File thanks to ILL]

I’m totally intrigued by this theory and in love with the idea we might have material culture beyond the social war coins to connect to the first Italia to try to understand the project of those who rejected Rome’s rule.

Any yet the more I think about these objects the more concerned I am that they have two names. How would that work for drawing lots? Why pair individuals in a random system of assigning responsibility? Could they be some variant of the tesserae nummularii? But that doesn’t really work either. No way to attach them to anything. No verbs not suggestion the names correspond to a dating system.

But wait what if they are magistrates (duumviri of some sort) that provide the year for some Italic community. If we could find the pairings existing else were on other epigraphy that might provide a hint…

Ah well. Just a stray point of interest.

The other fun thing rattling around in my head is this winch machine seemingly for controlling water flow on a relief found in the draining of the Fucine lake in the Torlonia collection and said to be on display Museo del Castello Piccolomini di Celano. I love driving in the Abruzzo with my beloved. If he were joining this summer this castle would be an ideal roadtrip destination. Ah well, another year.

As you know I’m interested in the technology on the Fabatus series and I think both Fabatus and Papius show capstans

Thus I really am very curious about this relief and its technology. The relief is dated to the mid 2nd century CE based on parallels with Trajan’s column I presume. The images here are from Il Tesoro del Lago (Carsa Edizioni 2001). In the same book is a list with a few illustrations of the 338 bronze coins. The vast majority of these coins seem to be 1st Punic war coins and to have been deposited by worshippers at Lucus Angitiae. The coins were recovered during construction for the lake drainage. Another place I’d love to roadtrip to. The collection has such strong parallels to Nemi on a smaller scale that I may want to use it as a parallel case study. And you guessed it there are also bronze votives that seem to come from the same locale. Again I feel vindicated by my past belief that one always buys the book when the book is being sold a a small provincial museum or site. I think I picked this one up in 2012 at Alba Fucens.