#Post Roman Britain

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 34: Medievalish and Earlier 3

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct earlier time grouping. Basically, I'd already moved on to human history, but I'd periodically get a pre-homin suggestion, hence the occasional random item waaay out of it's time period, rather than reopen the category.

In some cases a culture lasted a really long time and I grouped them by whether it was likely the later or earlier grouping made the most sense with the information I had. (Invention ofs tend to fall in an earlier grouping if it's still open. Ones that imply height of or just before something tend to get grouped later, but not always. Sometimes I'll split two different things from the same culture into different polls because they involve separate research goals or the like).

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.

[shellsnroses]

Turned that comic into an animation

[olympeline]

Something something the poetic irony that England - one of the Roman Empire’s least loved, bastard sons - would someday grow into the personification with the strongest claim of them all to being Rome’s heir.

Taking up his loathed and lamented conqueror/father’s doctrine of Pax, and even donning a red coat to replace the old scarlet cape once worn by Rome. When the ancient empire walked and ground the world down under his heel, so very long ago

[ask-the-little-italian]

What’s your opinions on other nations?

Germania: Grandpa says Germania was always so smug as a kid, though I can't see it much

Grandpa Rome: I miss him so much. . . Grandpa was a strong country, I wish he stayed with us longer.

And Mister China doesn't seem to taking the news about the Empire's fall good either

Japan: He's a very private person, though I do wish we'd get to work together someday ^_^

Greece: Him and his mom are both like cats, always sleepy. Though I loved his plays and mythology

England: Always flustered around Big brother France, I'm not sure if they're enemies or are they married

Holy Roman Empire: It's so cute when Holy Rome tries to paint too, I still have his rabbit painting hidden away in my room

I miss him too

[vox-anglosphere]

Bless the young man who hiked 3 hours to plant a new sycamore tree

[chiropteracupola]

WIP guessing game: fire, foe, and fun!

eagle of the ninth temeraire au:

He remembered dragon-warmth, of the little couriers of the garrison at Isca Dumnoniorum, of his father’s dragon’s scales nearly steaming at a touch, like the hypocaust sunk beneath the baths. Esca, too, was warm, but only to the degree that a man was warm — no great fire banked itself behind Esca’s ribs. Still, Marcus pressed himself tight against Esca’s chest, and tried to push away the cold.

no instances for foe, and only sort of one for fun...

unnamed lurking sharpe story:

“He said it’d be all right ‘less it starts turning funny colors… it isn’t doing that, is it?” asked Perkins, fear suddenly creeping into his voice. “Dunno, sarge — would this be a funny color to you?” Cooper pointed, and Harper leaned down obligingly and screwed up his face in disgust.

[wizzard890]

some creative, wanting to make a King Arthur adaptation: "But how will people know it's for boys?"

his barista, trapped in this conversation: "What?"

creative: "You know, the knights and castles and magic and chivalry - I mean it's all kind of gay."

barista: "I--uh. Is it?"

creative: "Women are into that stuff, but they don't move tickets. I need to signal loud and clear that this King Arthur is butch, and that his knights are all rugged and masculine. --What's the most male time period?"

barista: "That's such a wild question."

creative: "I mean it has to be England after the Romans left, right? With all the Vikings and blue people and aqueducts and swordplay."

barista: "Isn't there still swordplay if they're all chivalric knights in the fourteenth century?"

creative: "No! No, that's gay, Rebecca, aren't you listening!"

rebecca: "Jesus."

creative: "What kind of guy is going to watch a movie about knights riding off to London when he could watch a movie about a warlord riding to Londinium?"

rebecca, pulling a quad shot with a thousand yard stare: "I honestly couldn't say."

creative, yelling into his voice memo app: "find and replace 'Merlin' with 'Taliesin'. -- God this is gonna be huge."

[liveandletrain]

Explaining to people that one of the most formative influences on my style as a writer was Rosemary Sutcliff always feels like an exercise in futility because no one ever knows who she is :')

[medieval-elephants]

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.

[anywayhereskirkwall]

Tevinter is so Roman it's wild. Like I would bet money that someone on the staff had experience in classical studies or at least took a class at some point when they were writing the conversations you can have with Dorian.

[historyfiles]

Northern Britain: Coel Hen is a familiar figure in many ancient Welsh genealogies, with most of the kings of the north of Britain being able to trace their descent from him.

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

love when i see a book rec list where half the items on it are things i liked / thought were okay / haven't read but am intrigued by... and then there's just one thing on there i hate and it ruins the whole list for me. i'm like. sorry. if you enjoyed the vibes of XYZ i cannot trust your taste at all. i object.

[transitofmercury]

thinking about them again

(honestly, when am I not thinking about them???)

[healerqueen]

.

[phoenix-joy]

Author: Sonja Anderson Publication: Smithsonian Magazine Timestamp: January 22, 2024

Extract:

Researchers have long been puzzled by the Roman dodecahedron. More than 100 of these strange 12-sided metal objects have been found throughout Europe—but their purpose remains unclear. Now, another discovery in England’s countryside has reignited the mystery surrounding the ancient artifacts.

[...]

“[Dodecahedrons] are one of archaeology’s great enigmas,” [Richard Parker, secretary of the Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group] says.

“Our example is remarkable. It’s in an excellent condition—considering it’s been buried for 1,700 years—and complete with no damage.["]

[...]

The hollow, grapefruit-sized object is made of copper alloy, as the Norton Disney group writes on its website. Its 12 flat sides are punctuated by circular cut-outs and studs on each corner.

According to the group, the discovery brings the number of dodecahedrons unearthed in Roman Britain to 33, while about 130 have been discovered throughout the Roman Empire’s northwest provinces. [The dodecahedron discussed in the article] stands out because it’s still in one piece, while many of the others were found fragmented or damaged.

[...]

Some Roman dodecahedrons date to as early as the first century C.E. However, no visual or textual references to the objects have been found in historical records. [...]

“Nobody knows for certain how the Romans used them,” wrote Smithsonian magazine’s Sarah Kuta last year. “Some theories are that they functioned as measuring devices, calendars, ornamental scepter toppers, weapons or tools.”

[...]

[...] the group agrees with experts who think dodecahedrons were used for ritualistic or religious purposes. [...] researchers at Belgium’s Gallo-Roman Museum have hypothesized that Romans used the objects in magical rituals, which could explain dodecahedrons’ absence from historical records: With the Roman Empire’s eventual embrace of Christianity came laws forbidding magic. Practitioners would have had to keep their rituals—and related objects—a secret.

/end of extract

"12-sided Roman relic baffles archaeologists, spawns countless theories"

Author: Leo Sands Publication: The Washington Post Timestamp: April 30, 2024 at 11:09 a.m. EDT

Extract:

“One reason that it is so captivating for the public is that it’s hard to believe that we have anything from the Roman period that we don’t know what it’s for,” Lorena Hitchens, an archaeologist specializing in Roman dodecahedrons[...] “It’s very tempting to want to solve that mystery.”

[...]

Internet sleuths have joined the speculation [...] with many gravitating toward an explanation that revolves around their use as tools. [...] knit and crochet pattern designer Amy Gaines posits [...] that dodecahedrons may have been used to knit gold chains, constructing a 3D-printed replica to demonstrate her theory.[...] English Heritage lists theories ranging from a tool for finding the best date to sow grain, to functioning as a candleholder, a polygonal die, a range finder, a surveying instrument, or a way of knitting gloves.

But academic archaeologists shy away from the suggestion that they were practical objects used as everyday tools. “I know that because I’ve examined a lot of them, and they don’t have the kind of use wear you’d expect from a tool,” Hitchens said.

“They’re also much more delicate than people realize,” she said. “They would be broken very quickly.”

[...]

The most popular theory among academic experts [...] is that dodecahedrons held religious or ritual meaning, linked in some way to local practices on the Roman Empire’s fringes.

Proponents of this theory [...] point to the intricacy of the object itself, suggesting it probably had special value. According to Hitchens, the relic was made using a lost-wax bronze-casting process, an extremely technical feat — made even more challenging by the fact that the final product was hollow. [...]

/end of extract

[fivenightsatcorans]

ancient briton themed porno titled "battle of mons pubonicus" is that anything