Rachel Singer

Confused looking woman stands in field holding book

It’s the flattest place I’ve ever been - here I am at Edix “Hill” in 2022 feeling betrayed by the name! The book I’m holding is the excavation report, because I could not believe that what I was looking at was the “hill” in question without triple-checking the map.

Oh, thank you! That’s very kind!

Thanks, James!
FWIW, I’m the first to admit I was probably wrong about the date, lol :)

Badly drawn, grainy, blue and gold award ribbon labeled “fell for it again award”

Philly sports and I are on a break

Yes, and?

Go birds 🦅🏈

The Emotional Dimensions of Colonial Rule in the Sixteenth-Century Andes: José de Acosta, Jesuits, and Emotions During the Great Resettlement* | The Sixteenth Century Journal: Vol 56, No 2 This article examines the writings of the Jesuit José de Acosta (1540–1600) on Andean governance at the time of the Great Resettlement (a late-sixteenth-century Spanish attempt to resettle Andean peop...

An article I wrote about emotions and colonialism has just come out in The Sixteenth Century Journal - you can find it below or message me if you’d like a PDF!

The Sixteenth Century Journal: Vol 56, No 2 www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Can’t wait to read it!

Pangur Bán and his owner might disagree, lol

Louse-borne relapsing fever is an important part of early British infectious disease history since William MacArthur’s 1949 speculation that it caused the mysterious, sixth-century outbreaks often assumed to be plague. It’s therefore Enormously exciting to have new paleoscientific evidence of it!

Want to learn how a careful study of burial #archaeology can improve our understanding of past disease events, especially the First #Plague #Pandemic (6th-8th centuries)? Check the #OpenAccess article I led in this month’s issue of Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies!

lol, does it still count as East Coast bias if there’s only a 12-hour difference?

Photo of physical copy of “Burial Archaeology and the First Plague Pandemic” article

It exists in the physical world!
@merleeisenberg.bsky.social

New #SpeculumSpotlight episode!! @medievalacademy.bsky.social

The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast History Podcast · Updated Monthly · The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast brings medievalists from all professional and disciplinary tracks together to think and talk about the too-oft-unsung diversit...

My colleagues, Janet Kay, Jordan Wilson and I went on @mmapod.bsky.social to promote our new Speculum article, “Burial Archaeology and the First Plague Pandemic.” Give it a listen if you’re interested!
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Speculum | Vol 100, No 2

New issue of Speculum Vol. 100, No. 2 (2024) www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/spc/2025... @chicagojournals.bsky.social @medievalacademy.bsky.social @merleeisenberg.bsky.social
@rachelbsinger.bsky.social

NB: we’ve updated this piece since the preprint went up in 2023, so consider giving it another look even if you’ve already read that!

Burial Archaeology and the First Plague Pandemic | Speculum: Vol 100, No 2 Abstract Archaeological evidence from funerary contexts is largely ignored in current scholarship on the First Plague Pandemic, despite the important information that burials and cemeteries can provid...

New, OA article! Here my coauthors and I (led by the lovely Janet E. Kay) ponder what burial archaeology would bring to the table as we seek to understand the First Plague Pandemic (spoiler alert: we think it could contribute quite a lot!) www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Hooray, congrats!!

For folks in DC, I’m giving a talk on early Irish animal disease next week!

Please do!!

Hopefully not all of this is too early for you! It may also be worth a look in the Cambridge Urban History of Britain for a survey of the field in 2000. And Simon Keynes has a good bibliography for pre-Norman English history that you could check (I’m pretty sure it has a section on urbanism).

And finally, Simon Losby has a book chapter on “Power and Towns in Late Roman Britain and Early Anglo-Saxon England” that’s worth a look.

For the how long Roman urbanism went on, much of the debate is centered on how late a specific building in Verulamium was constructed and on how we can interpret excavations at Wroxeter. Adam Rogers and Gavin Speed also both wrote seminal works on the issue in the 2010s.

Pam Crabtree’s 2018 book on the process of reurbanization is solid, and if you want something on how post-Roman British people understood and reused Roman infrastructure, I’d recommend @calthalas.bsky.social’s 2021 book.

Most of my recommendations are admittedly on the absence of urbanism in immediately post-Roman period:

This is fabulous criticism! You should consider writing it up and sending it to the journal as a ‘comment’ on the article so that more people will see it.

2 different Phillies baseball games playing on a laptop and a tv

Split squad spring training game means 2 Phillies games at once let’s gooo

Check out Rachel Singer's review of Annalisa Marzano's "Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome," published in 2022 by @cambridgeup.bsky.social; review now available @hnetreviews.bsky.social #envhist #envhum #planthist #plantstudies
www.h-net.org/reviews/show...

I wrote a book review!