Ash (she/her)

I’m genuinely sorry about all the ad-hominem attacks you’ve been receiving. I don’t line up with all of your views here, but I appreciate good-faith argument, and the pile-on you’re getting isn’t that. Wishing you some rest from the noise - discussions on any social media can get heated so quickly.

The Formation of the Sasanian Empire: Administration and Elites in Comparison with the Roman Empire Purwins, Nils. 2025. Der Aufbau des Sasanidenreiches: Administration und Eliten im Vergleich zum Römischen Reich (Ancient Iran Series 18). Leiden: Brill. The work provides in two volumes the first comprehensive overall concept of the administrative and social structure of the Sasanian Empire (5th-7th century). In more than 1.000 contemporary leather documents, seals, ostraca, inscriptions and texts, which are brought together here for the first time, the subjects of the king of kings report in words and pictures on their lives in the various provinces of the empire, on the organisation of the military, civil and religious administration and on the circles of power at the court of their ruler.

The Formation of the Sasanian Empire: Administration and Elites in Comparison with the Roman Empire

Purwins, Nils. 2025. Der Aufbau des Sasanidenreiches: Administration und Eliten im Vergleich zum Römischen Reich (Ancient Iran Series 18). Leiden: Brill. The work provides in two volumes the first…

This annotated bibliography makes accessible a body of material that can seem forbidding to non-specialists and reveals how valuable it can be for our understanding of the Roman empire -- well beyond histories of the Jews, rabbinics, or ancient Judaism more generally.

Super valuable contribution.

Unraveling the Secrets of the Inca Empire For hundreds of years, Andean people recorded information by tying knots into long cords. Will we ever be able to read them?

Khipus really feel like they push the definition of "writing." The few "world writing systems" books I’ve read don't really mention them. Even Andrew Robinson's highly readable book gives a whole chapter to Chinese and Japanese writing but not a word on khipus.

www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

A plaster cast of the 'Venus of Dolní Věstonice', a Palaeolithic female figure made from a mix of charred powdered bone and clay. The original is c.30,000 years old, making it one of the earliest known manmade ceramic objects & was discovered in a mammoth hunter’s dwelling in Czech Republic in 1925.

A fascinating (but gruesome) read. Without jumping to conclusions, I do believe what we're seeing is the emergence of human sacrifice. What's interesting is how quickly these practices spread.

A comparative study of similar developments in other prehistoric societies might shed some light on this.

YouTube video by Polyglot Gathering A Crash Course on ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ Manchu, China’s Former National Language - Iskandar Ding | PG 2024

Really enjoyed the Manchu crash course by @iskandarding.bsky.social

Mongolia has quite a few Manchu experts, one of whom - Oyunjargal Ochir in her interview to Mongolian National Broadcaster would say "Manchu is the easiest foreign language to learn for Mongols".
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt64...

Did Sasanians Remember the Achaemenids… or Should They Have? (Any unauthorised quotations, copying, or use of the following is strictly prohibited) The scholarly debate on whether the Sasanians, particularly the early Sasanians like Ardashir I, had any memor…

The memory, or forgetting, of the Achaemenids in Sasanian late antiquity and the medieval period is a robust debate. I wrote a rather longish blog about it here:

iranologie.com/2025/11/29/d...

DIONYSIAC FIGURE, C. 50 BCE. THE BRITISH MUSEUM. This detail of a fresco bought from a French nobleman in 1873 shows part of a Bacchic dance in a garden, in a fresco that is said to have come from the necropolis of Villa Doria Pamphilj and probably does. This mostly naked man with right arm upraised in celebration is already drunk and in movement, carrying an amphora in the crook of his arm. His lineaments are sketched in with red paint and this is almost more of a drawing than a painting, but it's all expertly done with great economy. He's nude from his navel down, and his long phallus is delineated by a line that ends in a dot at the tip of his foreskin. Remember that for the Romans, you were not offensively naked unless the foreskin was retracted.

It's #PhallusThursday and time to party! I'm wearing my party outfit of a cloak, a wreath crown, and absolutely nothing else; I'm bringing an #amphora and an enormous #Roman sausage! From c. 50 BCE, in a fresco possibly from the #necropolis of #VillaPamphili. #AncientBluesky 🏺

I feel you, ancient Mongolian ceramic hedgehog. I feel you.

Sperm Whales and Their Almost-Human Speech

1️⃣Sperm whale communication is far more complex than we thought.
And here’s the wild part — it actually sounds surprisingly close to human speech.
Yes, really.
Researchers from the CETI project just found vowel-like features in whale clicks. 🐋🔊

It wasn't all wretched though. These documents record a religious festival (possibly the oldest written evidence for a midsummer celebration in England) at the fort, where beer, wine, pork, fish sauce and more was consumed!

Learn how Roman fish sauce was made in Antiquity 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

Onfim's world Child artists in history

Profile pic:
For more unhinged medieval marginalia - "snail fights," "murderous rabbits," etc. - see:
weirdmedievalguys.substack.com/p/an-800-yea...

Banner:
If anyone ever mounts an Onfim + Darwin's kids exhibition, I will pay.
resobscura.substack.com/p/onfims-wor...

Footnote to p.64 of Kuśiññe Kantwo: Elementary Lessons in Tocharian B, where the paradigm of this adjective is discussed: "A YOLO attitude quickly leads to _yolo_ actions."

A decolonial archaeology of refusal, care and repair | Antiquity | Cambridge Core A decolonial archaeology of refusal, care and repair

Hi all,

A modest proposal on the contours and future of Decolonial Archaeology (open access). Grateful to all who inspired the ideas! I would welcome all feedback and critique.

A decolonial archaeology of refusal, care and repair | Antiquity | Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Iran president says capital move now a necessity as water crisis deepens Iran’s capital must be moved because the country “no longer has a choice,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday in remarks carried by state media, warning that severe ecological strain has mad...

'Iran’s capital must be moved because the country “no longer has a choice,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday in remarks carried by state media, warning that severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain'

#Iran 🇮🇷

This image shows a partial colour reconstruction of the Prima Porta Augustus including a cuirass in reds, blues, and golds. Military dress in red, and purple toga details.

✨Augustus in colour✨

The Prima Porta Augustus is one of the most famous sculptures of ancient Rome. Earlier depictions of the sculpture noted the remnants of colour but the craze for cleaned statuary meant much detail was lost to the casual gaze.

#AncientRome #History

Archaeology and cultural heritage in wartime: Sudan 2023–2025 This article aims to record the efforts of the Sudanese antiquities department—the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM)—alongside Sudanese and international archaeologists, museum and heritage professionals, and international organisations, to respond to threats to Sudanese cultural heritage during the first two years of this ongoing war.

Before the war, the museum held an estimated 100,000 objects covering thousands of years of Sudanese history. Work to document the damage is ongoing but the war is not over and many challenges remain for the brave people protecting Sudan's heritage 2/2

🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

YouTube video by Planet: Critical Collapse for the 99% | Luke Kemp

In this interview, he argues that human sacrifice (Cahokia, Shang China, or - surprised he didn't mention this - Roman gladiatorial combat) functioned as elite display of expendable resources.

(Not unlike, say, modern elites flaunting their Qatari jets...)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMbt...

His point about the unreliability of estimates of pre-modern "death tolls" is common-sensical, yet surprisingly under-said in popular discourse. (We know from modern warfare that population declines result far more from displacement than death.)

The umpteenth meme about Chinggis Khan comes to mind.

That said, Kemp provides some truly fascinating - and to my admittedly noob eyes, novel - ways to show this.

The use of "osteoarchaeology" feels like a potentially revolutionary method for quantifying commoners' quality of life and tracking pre-modern shifts in societal level of development.

Still one of the most thought-provoking articles I’ve read this year.

Of course: "Are imperial collapses really that bad?" isn't a new question. (To name one: Walter Scheidel's impressive tome argues that only state collapse and kindred shocks reliably reduce inequality.)

aeon.co/essays/the-g...

A truly fascinating read about Congolese hunter-gatherers in the modern world.

Padilla-Iglesias’s arguments really remind me of Graeber & Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything. A great complement to G & W's broader frame; tDoE, as I recall, touches relatively briefly on Africa.

aeon.co/essays/the-h...

'no single lifestyle or form of civilization is a prerequisite to living with dignity and intelligence.'

This review captures much of my ambition in writing steppe peoples -- since 2003. People of the past, and of the steppe, as intelligent as you or I? As engaged in ideas? My axiom 1.

Thanks EM

A Visit from the Scythians: Four Shaman Stories Four shaman stories. Two reprints, two originals.'Ill Spirits''Spirit Writing''A Truce with Evil''A Visit from the Scythians'Together, 17000 words.'Ill Spirits' first published in The Knot Wound Round...

In the dead of night
New ebook, only in my Payhip store

A Visit from the Scythians: Four Shaman Stories
Two reprints, two originals

payhip.com/b/rzo4b

Book cover. A thicket of leafy green vines hangs over a white space with the title: Human-Plant Entanglement and Vegetal Agency in the Poetry of Thomas Hardy and Sylvia Plath by Dilek Bulut Sarikaya.

most intriguing book title found today
(actually I'm reading the author's other, The Human-Animal Relationship in Pre-Modern Turkish Literature)

The pre-Islamic civilizations of west Africa While West Africa has been part of the Muslim world since the late Middle Ages, as famously demonstrated by the golden pilgrimage of Mali's Mansa Musa in 1324, Islam had only arrived in the region at ...

Tichitt could be viewed as the western counterpart of ancient Kerma in the Nubian Nile Valley, but it remains much less celebrated and discussed in world archaeology.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/the-pre-is...

Really like this title of an upcoming book.

Hope we can do away with the whole "Marco Polo went to China" trope with this.
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Roshan Institute to Establish Persian Digital Library | Maryland Today Supported by $1.8M Private Gift, Project Will Be First of Its Kind

"[T]he initiative will provide free, global access to a constantly expanding body of classical and modern Persian texts. The project will also partner with institutions to help safeguard thousands of at-risk manuscripts and rare books from collections in India, Pakistan and beyond."

Modern Iranian History Professor Review of applications begins on October 15, 2025 and will continue until the position is filled

The Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University invites applications for a position in the field Modern Iranian History, with a particular emphasis on the period spanning 1700 CE to the present.
cipgs.princeton.edu/about/positi...