RT @UCLpress: Congratulations to Eva Miller! The latest #openaccess volume of the Modern Americas series, Early Civilization and the Ameri….

RT @UCLpress: Congratulations to Eva Miller! The latest #openaccess volume of the Modern Americas series, Early Civilization and the Ameri….

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RT @UCLHistory: UCL History's British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Eva Miller, has recently published ‘Early Civilization and the American….

RT @TheTLS: ''I did not have anybody to feed them. Therefore I have sold my daughter.' . These are the words of a mother named Ku’e recor….

I wrote about just some of the great papers we had at GHCC2023, focusing on the theme of 'local' Pasts in the Middle East, for the blog of @PastPresentSoc one of our funders. This was an area where I learned so much from our presenters' new research.

Nice to see Dippy in person. I wrote a bit about Diplodocus carnegii and Andrew Carnegie's 'world peace through giving heads of state Diplodocus casts' plan, for an article on (get ready for it) ancient Babylon, cryptozoology, and living dinosaurs (here:

Also had a great time at @The_Herbert. Multiple totally free play spaces which kept the kids entertained for a long time (though the local history displays were also popular with my three year-old!). Incredibly good welcoming public space.

Also, between this and the weird summer solstice sun alignment of Milton Keynes, surely something to be said about British modernism, town-planning, neo-paganism, sun worship? Or at least a folk horror revival film to be made?.

Thinking of the late Dominic Montserrat's identification of a general British trend towards seeing Amarna as a forerunner of the British Garden Suburb 😂 in Akhenaten: History, Fantasy, and Ancient Egypt

Was also interested to learn from local placards that Coventry's architect, mastermind of the postwar town plan, Donald Gibson, was inspired by the city of Amarna, Egypt, ancient Akhetaten, the new capitol constructed by 14th c. pharaoh Akhenaten.

It was great to run into @Dr_Ammar_Azzouz at Basil Spence's incredible Coventry Cathedral, even if it felt a bit awkward that touristing around it Saturday morning also involved crashing a beautiful DOUBLE Desi wedding.

On another note, as a fan of postwar architecture and urbanism, I was also thrilled to finally visit Coventry! Fascinating place, also a great place to be thinking about heritage, memory, etc.

I took @MidEastInEurope's advice and just listened to this podcast by @GawadHeba As thought-provoking as everything she said in person!.

Finally, all our roundtable speakers were incredible, gave me a lot to think about (that recording will be up with Arabic subtitles soon).

@L_Shakir's look at coverage of Iraq's antiquities in the interwar Arabic press was similarly exciting to me, someone who doesn't read Arabic. (Including a novel of such historical accuracy, the characters call Babylon Karduniash!) Enthusiasm, strong knowledge in Iraq and beyond.

@DFoliard read Austen Henry Layard against the grain, putting that reading in context with social histories of Mosul, showed how we can say a lot about how much various factions knew, what scholarly works they were reading, and writing, &c.

On another note, for 19-early 20th c. Middle Eastern archaeology, we often hear that 'locals' had their own knowledge of and interest in sites, but with little elaboration. So I loved two papers on Iraq that did elaborate.

(as @poisonchallis was telling me, the British tried to do everything for nothing, and were very explicit about wanting to know the monetary value of what they were taking).

Yet of course money matters not only to dealers who made their living (and even uplifted their communities) by trading antiquities, as @skgriswold and @nicoleHkhayat discussed, but to states deciding, e.g. whether to shell out to move some stones to a museum.