Eric Poehler

Why is that bad?

For my non-MN friends just getting to know us now because *gestures broadly,* one of the (many) things we're really good at is making the most out of things, even shitty things. Winter is brutal, sure, but we don't hide from it. We make it fun, make it beautiful, and enjoy it together.

Quick example of local processing of 2 million + triples related to Pompeii. As noted, needs more documentation!! But @epoehler.bsky.social and I intend this as sustainable infrastructure encouraging re-use of our data. #Pompeii #ReproducibleReserch #OA #AncientSky

Timgad in snow. This Roman city was in the Aurès Mountains of Algeria. It was founded by the Emperor Trajan around 100 AD. The full name of the city was Colonia Marciana Ulpia Traiana Thamugadi. Emperor Trajan named the city in commemoration of his family. Photo: Tarek Bencassi. #RomanSiteSaturday

Expanding the Ancient World Workshop This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding ...

On April 1st, 2026 at 5PM (Eastern time), I'll lead an @isawnyu.bsky.social "Expanding the Ancient World Workshop" titled "Digital Approaches to Global Art History: The Example of the Human Figure" and on topic of using GAERHF in teaching. isaw.nyu.edu/events/etaw-... to register. #GlobalAntiquity

The page of a visitors book including the signatures of Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithful and Mortimer wheeler. There are other non-celebrity signatures, some of which are illegible, including one which appears to say Muln Clufb

Mainly because we're WFH and can't access our archives, we're using National Handwriting Day to resurrect this pic of our 1968 visitors book, featuring the handwriting of:

Keith Richards ✔️
Mick Jagger ✔️
Marianne Faithful ✔️
Muln Clufb 🤔
Mortimer Wheeler ✔️

This banger again 👀🤩 because why not.

#MosaicMonday
Detail of floor mosaic - 1 century AD.
National Archaeological Museum Aquileia. The bow motif connects
ivy and vine branches, referring to the cult of Dionysus. #art #Archaeology #Italy #History
📷: Ottone Porfirogenito.

Me too. I like book review for similar reasons, but also for the opportunity to talk to the field as well.

The 'space archaeologists' hoping to save our cosmic history The infrastructure of humanity's journey into space may only be decades old, but some of it has already been lost. Now, "space archaeologists" are scrambling to save what's left.

ChapmanU Professor Justin Walsh (Art) has been featured as the subject of a BBC Future article on space archaeology.

www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/...

@jstpwalsh.bsky.social

#epigraphy

I should have added the coda: and there’s little any faculty could do to changes these facts, except upon the margins (which remain valuable).

There’s some sad middle ground (or is it an amplifier?) between faculty “quiet quitting” and the academic “big sort” that is coming when a university education provides neither the credential nor the skills to outdo AI. That is, students who take up AI now will be taken over by it later.

Staring at a rock on a street corner in Pompeii that I had walked by more than 200 times, and understanding suddenly, “holy s%^~ I know what direction the carts were traveling down this street”. 1900 years years later.

WE'RE HIRING!!!
universityvacancies.com/university-c...

YouTube video by UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology and Material Culture: Making, Understanding, Storytelling

Our UCD Centre for Experimental Archaeology & Material Culture (CEAMC) has come on a lot since this short introductory film was made, but it’s nice to look back at it m.youtube.com/watch?v=rRR0...

I get we are supposed to grapple with ideas and the AI with word-based patterns, but honestly, are the ideas in our heads not derived from learned patterns? Whatever an idea is inside our neurons, and I don’t really know that either, is it so very different from the LLM pattern index? Send help!

Here’s where I keep getting stuck in these debates: I don’t know how EXACTLY these are different. I can’t describe how my own process of reading and reviewing doesn’t rely on both the reviewed content and the “shaping” from my PhD. Not a contradiction, just confusion on what I am doing differently.

Same. Do 10 in class writing assignments, “micro-responses” to weekly readings. Some AI use, but boy is it obvious even when not admitted. Going to be interesting decade if teaching, if we get it.

Wow! Had not seen that before. Incredible silver acroterial figures, like cut paper figures - and caryatids? in the architrave. Shadows all right to left, but the coffered ceiling might just show a single point perspective… can’t quite tell.

Fresco of a facade of a Roman temple. A short flight of steps leading up to a portico with Corinthian columns. Between the double colannade is a decorated wooden barrier with lattice work and a spiky top. The wooden doors to the temple are closed. The pediment contains a painted relief. In front of the steps is an ornate altar on which offerings burn.

Possibly the most sublime Roman fresco of a temple.
The architectural detail of the spiky-topped wooden barrier, the painted relief in the pediment, & the offerings burning on the altar; it’s a symphony of observations.
Archaeological Museum of Capri (no provenance)
#FrescoFriday

🏛️ Join us at UCD next academic year to take our MSc in Mediterranean Archaeology. Expert teaching and supervision from across our Schools of Archaeology and Classics. Work first hand with ancient materials in our Classical Museum.📝 Registration opens in January. tinyurl.com/34r5w8pn

And, with the ubiquity of video now, seeing only with you mind’s eye is a joyous reprieve.

Schmidt Sciences awards $11M in grants to bring AI to humanities research - Schmidt Sciences Contact: Carlie Wiener; cwiener@schmidtsciences.org NEW YORK—Schmidt Sciences has awarded $11 million for up to 23 teams of researchers around the world to develop and apply artificial intelligence to...

Big congrats to these 23 projects that just won awards from the @schmidtsciences.bsky.social HAVI program! Please spread the word. (NB I've been helping the HAVI team on this program. This is a broad slate of terrific DH projects!) www.schmidtsciences.org/havi-2025-an...

Call for papers: ”Dynamics of Inequality in the Ancient Mediterranean” workshop 22-23 October 2026, Helsinki

I’m organizing a workshop called ”Dynamics of Inequality in the Ancient Mediterranean” (22-23 October 2026, Helsinki)

Here’s the CfP:

Excited to see Mariana Castro, an ISAW-NYU doctoral student who just successfully defended her amazing dissertation, as co-author on the latest from Berenike in the Jahrbuch Des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts: doi.org/10.34780/n31....

cc @isawnyu.bsky.social

Screen shot of registration page for the ISAW Open House for Prospective Students. More info at https://isaw.nyu.edu/events/open-house-2025

Quick reminder that @isawnyu.bsky.social is having a VIrtual Open House for Prospective Students day after tomorrow (Wednesday Nov. 5th, 10AM US Eastern time). Info and registration at isaw.nyu.edu/events/open-... . Please share if you think someone who would be interested hasn't signed up. Thanks!

A thread on the work @epoehler.bsky.social and I are doing to build out Linked Open Data for Pompeii.

We have an excellent MAT program here at UMass! I struggle to think of, or imagine such a program, since PhD programs seek to make someone an expert in the subject itself. IST the expertise is in pedagogy, is a PhD in education what you’re after? Possibly showing my ignorance of the latter here.

It was a great conversation, to be continued!

What about Toonces, the driving cat? He both ran a carpool and took a car off the road every trip!