Tucked away in an incongruous green space close to a busy thoroughfare in Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania is Lincoln Cemetery, the final internment for tens upon tens of African Americans, buried here at a time when racial segregation was still legal in this country. Although the earliest tombstone dates to 1862, there is speculation that there were
Lincoln Cemetery in Mechanicsburg Read More »
Shippensburg University hosted a speaker event on the Israel-Palestine crisis in Gaza. Four specialists gave short presentations from their areas of expertise: Dr. Mireille Rebeiz from Dickinson College spoke about international law and human rights; the three other scholars are from Shippensburg University. Dr. David Weaver addressed the military strategy of Hamas and IDF (Israel
Discussion of the Israel-Palestine Crisis in Gaza at Shippensburg University Read More »
At first glance, these small statuettes seem to have little in common with each other. The one on the left is an Ancient Roman copy of Poseidon from the first or second century, originally made by the Greek artist Lysippos in the 3rd century BCE. The one on the right is a sandstone carving of
Cultural Exchange between Ancient Rome and Ancient India Read More »
Last Sunday, I got to see a terrific exhibit on early Buddhist art at the New York Metropolitan Museum. Called “Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India 200 BCE-400 CE”, the artworks show, among other things, how pre-Buddhist nature deities and imagery were absorbed by the new religion. In this sculpture — part of
Early Buddhist Art Naga Mucalinda Protecting the Buddha Read More »
The Temple of Dendur is a must-see in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Hundreds of tourists check out this Ancient Roman-era Egyptian building every day, where it stands in an enormous glass-walled room, surrounded by a huge moat of water evocative of the Nile River from whence it originally came. The
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Here are scenes from the High Line of New York City, considered one of Manhattan’s most popular attractions. It isn’t that old: a group called Friends of the High Line formed in 1999 to create the public park, and they attracted enough wealthy donors to create and open it by 2009. The High Line is
The New York City Highline Read More »
Just to the west of Las Cruces New Mexico, along the I10, is this ginormous statue of a roadrunner. It is built out of completely found materials — stuff like shoes, cell phones, old wire, crutches, headlights, and old toys. Artist Olin Calk created the recycled bird in 1993 to examine “consumption, recycling, and just
Roadside Roadrunner Attraction Read More »
The Franklin Mountains have seen human activity since at least 12,000 years ago, but their name came from a much more recent source, when a rancher named Benjamin Franklin Coons settled in El Paso in 1849 — he was such a heavyweight in the region that locals used to call the city “Franklin” in the
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Here are photos of a sculpture and the cultural museum outside the Mescalero Apache Tribe on the Mescalero reservation near Tularosa, New Mexico. Ulysses S. Grant formally created the Mescalero reservation, comprising almost half a million acres in 1873, and today three sub-tribes of Apaches live there. The Lipan Apache at the reservation arrived in
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The Robledo Mountains lie to the north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and to the east of the Rio Grande continental rift. Much of the exposed rock is from about 280 million years ago (Paleozoic), and the geological footprint is obvious and amazing. You can see a slot canyon in most of these pictures, when
The Mexican flag flies over the city of Palomas, just over the border from the city of Columbus, New Mexico. Today Palomas is a town frequented by American tourists (like me) who cross over to shop and eat — the Pink House (second image) is its most famous establishment. (It even has its own Wikipedia
Just in time for the fall season, *and* Halloween, comes the news of a recent discovery in Poland of a 17th-century “Vampire” burial. An archaeological team led by Dariusz Polinsky of the Nicholas Copernicus University was conducting excavations around an Early Modern graveyard near Bydgoszcz when they unearthed the skeleton shown here. It belonged to
Today (September 16, 2023) several students from Shippensburg University’s history department travelled with Dr. John Bloom and me to the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, an American Indian site in eastern Pennsylvania. The first slides you see come from the sandstone overhang that made a natural roof for the Meadowcroft encampment, as well as the main area
Meadowcroft Rockshelter Read More »
The title here “A brief discourse of a disease called the Suffocation of the Mother” is really misleading. Not a tract about matricide, instead it was the first English publication (1603) on hysteria — thought to be a disease that only infected women. And it’s pretty messed up from every angle. For instance, the intent
Studies on Hysteria Read More »
These statues are some of the remaining examples of “mushroom stones” from the Ancient Maya people. They testify to the usage of psilocybin by indigenous Central Americans that goes back hundreds of years. The second photo shows a real-life example, called Psilocybe Mexicana. The Central American consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms for ritual purposes was brought
Hallucinogenic Mushrooms for Central American Rituals Read More »
What the heck. So this is an illustration of a pope (Innocent X, to be exact), who is having his testicles examined by a cardinal to make darn tootin’ certain that the newly-selected leader of Christendom is a man. Made in 1645, this print testifies to a long-lasting legend that all popes had to undergo
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The woman you see in this 15th-c illumination is mounted on a warhorse, and leading a surprise attack upon her enemies — this is Joanna of Flanders (c. 1295-1374), and so famed were her military ventures that philosopher David Hume called her “the most extraordinary woman of the age”. Joanna, born into the nobility of
Joanna of Flanders Read More »
These digitally reconstructed faces attempt to regain the lost stories of 17 humans, whose skeletons were found in a well in Norwich England, but these images are robotic and not very convincing. A recent DNA analysis, however, has revealed a particularly sad and horrifying aspect of their deaths. After the bodies were uncovered by archaeologists
Medieval Anti-Semitism Read More »
The year was 1457, and the place the town of Sévigny in France. A five-year-old boy had been brutally killed, mauled to death, and the community sought justice. Turning to the legal system, a civil case was brought against the killer, and despite the horrific nature of the death of young Jehan Martin, court officials
The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art has a fantastic exhibition on the color of Ancient Greek statues right now. When we look at the statues of the Ancient Mediterranean today, we are familiar with the unadorned stone or bronze, like the sphinx from about 530 BCE featured here. However, a team of art
