Plagues and Pandemics

In this episode, I interview  Dr Carlos Machado from the University of St Andrews about the social perceptions and realities of poverty in the Late Antique period.
Dr Machado is a Roman historian whose work focuses on aspects of urban space in the Late Antique Roman world, from elite building, honorific monuments, and domestic spaces; he is now working on shedding a light on the strata of society that seldom received attention in the historical record or monumental commemorations - the poor - which is what we shall dig into today. We discuss preconceptions about who the 'poor' of antiquity were, and how the early Christian church tried to deal with the shifting fortunes of their communities when facing historical realities of cycles of poverty in the past.

I have included some links below for anyone wishing to find out more about Dr Machado's  recent publications, and his upcoming project work.

Urban space and aristocratic power in late antique Rome: AD 270-535
Machado, C., 25 Oct 2019, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 317 p.

The epigraphic cultures of Late Antiquity
Bolle, K. (ed.), Machado, C. (ed.) & Witschel, C. (ed.), 2017, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 615 p. (Heidelberger althistorische Beiträge und epigraphische Studien; vol. 60)

Dr Machado has recently won an AHRC-DFG partnership grant for a project entitled ‘Land and loyalty: the politics of land in the later Roman world (4th to 6th century)’. This forthcoming project will analyse the politics of imperial and royal land grants and how this practice changed the dynamics of Mediterranean societies between 300 and 600 CE.

To follow Carlos on Twitter (X); @AmianoMarcelino, or you can check out his Academia.edupage or University of St Andrews contact page. 

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In this episode, I conduct an in-person interview with the Assistant Director of the British School at Athens, Dr Giorgos Mouraditis. Giorgos' research focuses on athletic self-representation in inscriptions from the Hellenistic and Imperial periods.  

Listeners will be familiar with the British School of Athens from the last episode when I met with its Director, Professor Rebecca Sweetman, to discuss the exciting public engagement work that the institute is working on.  I returned to the BSA for a short visit in May of this year during the fieldwork I am conducting for my thesis chapter in Greece. I thought it might be fun to throw my mic in my rucksack and do some field interviews while I am on the road!

Giorgos' upcoming project, ‘Athletics and Paideia’ investigates the role of monuments in preserving and the diffusion of knowledge about Hellenic culture and civic education. Giorgos has an upcoming publication that explores Money and Honour in athletics this autumn, and a chapter in a forthcoming volume on Paideia and Performance (2023).

You can follow Dr Mouraditis on Twitter @Giorgos_m776 and Instagram @Giorgos.m776. If you would like to find out more about what is going on at the British School at Athens, you can check out their website, www.bsa.ac.uk, or linktree .
To read his publications and stay connected through Academia.edu. 
If you would like to get in touch, you can contact Dr Mouraditis by email, contact Giorgios at: assistant.director@bsa.ac.uk

If you would like to apply to the BSA for ‘Communicating Archaeology: knowledge exchange, impact, and public engagement', apply here: https://www.bsa.ac.uk/courses/communicating-archaeology/

This course will be aimed at PG students or professionals looking to gain hands on experience communicating archaeology to public audiences. This is a brand new programme, with exciting seminars and speakers planned including the fabulous Classicist and award-winning author, Natalie Haynes, journalists, heritage practitioners, and me, podcast and graphic art nerd, Zofia!
The deadline for application is October 30th  2023.

To get in touch and find out more about Two Friends Talk History:
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Explore more resources and topics about the ancient world on ArchaeoArtist

Music by the wonderfully talented Chris Sharples
Illustration by Zofia Guertin

If you'd like to get in touch, email at twofriendstalkhistory@gmail.com. 

In this week's episode,  flips the script and am interviewed by returning guest, Dr Briana King. This episode will be part one of an ongoing look at how the ancient world is used in different media today!

I discuss with Dr King the history of “Classics” and what we mean when we discuss classical reception. Our first conversation is meant to lay down the foundational context for understanding what it means when classical images and stories are incorporated into modern media through books, music, film, and more. 

I will explore the history of the transmission of the ‘Classical Past’ into the  Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, with a special focus on the art of Empire of Jacques-Louis David, and Neo-Classical Edinburgh and its architectural legacy of appropriating the past to project a colonial future of the British Empire.   

To follow Dr King's academic work, check out her page on Academia.Edu.

My chapter in the Palgrave Macmillan volume, Comics, and Archaeology: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-98919-4_5

To get in touch and find out more about Two Friends Talk History:
Find us on Instagram & Twitter
Support us through Patreon
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Explore more resources and topics about the ancient world on ArchaeoArtist

Music by the wonderfully talented Chris Sharples
Illustration by Zofia Guertin

If you'd like to get in touch, email at twofriendstalkhistory@gmail.com. 

In this week's episode, Zofia interviews the Director of the British School at Athens (BSA), Professor Rebecca Sweetman. Rebecca has stepped into the role of Director of the BSA for the next few years and has really hit the ground running.
We discuss the role and responsibilities of the institute and the exciting outreach she is leading with her fantastic teams in Athens and Knossos.
With the 50th anniversary of the Fitch Laboratory coming up next year, we discuss how researchers, academics, artists, poets, and more are making use of the incredible library, archives, and collaborative space to engage with  Greece of the past and future.

Professor Sweetman has published on the religious networks and economies of Roman and Late Antique Crete, and the Peloponnesus. She is currently working on a project on the Cycladic islands and the networks that connected them throughout changing social circumstances in the Roman and Late Antique periods.
She is also one of my PhD supervisors at the University of St Andrews!

Follow this link, if you would like to read about Rebecca's fascinating work!

To get in touch with the BSA, you can email admin@bsa.ac.uk, and for more information about the exciting events taking place, check out the link here.
You can follow the exciting events going on at the BSA on Twitter, Facebook , and
Youtube !

To get in touch and find out more about Two Friends Talk History:
Find us on Instagram & Twitter
Support us through Patreon
Buy our merch on Redbubble
Explore more resources and topics about the ancient world on ArchaeoArtist

Music by the wonderfully talented Chris Sharples
Illustration by Zofia Guertin

If you'd like to get in touch, email at twofriendstalkhistory@gmail.com. 

See you soon with new friends, on Two Friends.

In this episode of Two Friends Talk History, Zofia interviews Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of St Andrews, and founder of the Visualising War and Peace Project, Dr Alice König. In this interview, Zofia asks Alice about ideas of representing war in antiquity, and if concepts like a ‘peace movement’ was possible in a period of Roman Imperium. We discuss the absences in war narratives, and war’s impacts on women and children, and then turn our attention to the podcast series that Dr König and Dr Nicolas Wiater, launched in 2021, the Visualising War and Peace podcast. The Visualsing War and Peace podcast has over 60 episodes and seeks to present listeners with cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives on how war and peace were visualised in the past and how new narratives these established frameworks are seeking to disrupt the ways we talk about, teach and reproduce conflicts.

We also discuss the upcoming exhibition Alice has organised with the artist, Diana Forster, opening May 25th at the Wardlaw Museum in St Andrews, 'Somewhere to Stay’. The exhibition focuses on the forced migration experienced by Diana's mother, a young Polish woman, during WWII.
To hear Diana's episodes, you can listen to Art and War with Diana Forster or Visualising Forced Migration Through History.

We also discussed the upcoming exhibition collaboration with Hugh Kinsella Cunningham,  titled 'Picturing Peace in the Congo'. you can find more information linked here.

You can get in touch with Dr Konig at the University of St Andrews and her work on the Visualising War and Peace project here. Alice is also on Twitter @KonigAlice or @VisualisingWar. You can also follow the project on Facebook and Instagram, and there is an excellent blog series that you can follow through the project website/blog. 

For links to show topics:
On the appropriation of Classics topics/symbols etc by alt-right groups, helpful scholarship can be read here on Pharos' website: https://pharos.vassarspaces.net/

To get in touch and find out more about Two Friends Talk History:
Find us on Instagram & Twitter
Support us through Patreon
Buy our merch on Redbubble
Explore more resources and topics about the ancient world on ArchaeoArtist

Music by the wonderfully talented Chris Sharples
Illustration by Zofia Guertin

If you'd like to get in touch, email at twofriendstalkhistory@gmail.com. 

See you soon with new friends, on Two Friends.

In this week's episode of Two Friends Talk History, Zofia is joined by Dr Sam Ellis, an expert in the language of tyranny in antiquity and the study of monocratic power in the Greek polis from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period.  We explore how the language used to frame the actions of sole rulers has created a construct of 'tyrant' that remains with us today.

 For a suggested reading list and more information, please check out my website for a blog post on this episode and more resources.

You can get in touch with Dr Ellis on the Universität Mannheim website here,  or you can follow him on Academia.edu. Sam is also on Instagram & Twitter @SamEllis1993. Seriously, check out his Instagram. The photos are stunning.

To get in touch and find out more about Two Friends Talk History:
Find us on Instagram & Twitter
Support us through Patreon
Buy our merch on Redbubble
Explore more resources and topics about the ancient world on ArchaeoArtist

Music by the wonderfully talented Chris Sharples
Illustration by Zofia Guertin

If you'd like to get in touch, email at twofriendstalkhistory@gmail.com. 

See you soon with new friends, on Two Friends.

This week on Two Friends Talk History, I spoke with Dr Maxime Ratcliffe, hot off the press with his recently awarded doctorate, to discuss Romano-British well depositions and the tantalising mysteries that were buried within them. We explore their persistence in the British landscape, and their possible uses in antiquity.

For a suggested reading list and more information, please check out my website for a blog post on this episode and more resources.

If you would like to get in touch with Dr Ratcliffe on the Durham University Archaeology department website here,  or you can follow him on Academia.edu.

To get in touch and find out more about Two Friends Talk History:
Find us on Instagram & Twitter
Support us through Patreon
Buy our merch on Redbubble
Explore more resources and topics about the ancient world on ArchaeoArtist

Music by the wonderfully talented Chris Sharples
Illustration by Zofia Guertin

If you'd like to get in touch, email at twofriendstalkhistory@gmail.com. 

See you soon with new friends, on Two Friends.

In this week’s episode, Zofia is joined by returning guest, archaeologist, and archaeobotanist, Alexandra Slucky, to discuss the archaeology of alcohol! We discuss the archaeological process used to identify historic alcoholic vessels and processes.

For a suggested reading list and more information, please check out my website for a blog post on this episode and more resources:
https://archaeoartist.com/2023/01/29/archaeology-of-alcohol-on-tfth/

If you would like to get in touch, you can find Alex on Instagram or on Twitter @SluckyAlex.

To get in touch and find out more about Two Friends Talk History:
Find us on Instagram & Twitter
Support us through Patreon
Buy our merch on Redbubble
Explore more resources and topics about the ancient world on ArchaeoArtist

Music by the wonderfully talented Chris Sharples
Illustration by Zofia Guertin

If you'd like to get in touch, email at twofriendstalkhistory@gmail.com. 

See you soon with new friends, on Two Friends.

In this episode, Zofia interviews Dr Elke Close about Polybius, the Achaean statesman, teacher, and historian from the Hellenistic period. Polybius was active in Megalopolis at the tail end of the period of Greek independence following the wars of the Hellenistic kings and the rise of the Roman empire. 

Elke discusses the social context and political realities that Polybius faced while held in Rome as a hostage, which, fortunately, he lodged with the famous Cornelii Scipiones family. From his position among one of Rome’s most prominent families, Polybius rode shotgun on several watershed moments of the Republic. 

If you would like to find out more from Dr Close, you can follow her Hellenistic History project:
Website: Hellenistic History
Twitter @HellenisticHist
Instagram @drawingancienthistory  and @hellenistichistory

To get in touch and find out more about Two Friends Talk History:
Find us on Instagram & Twitter
Support us through Patreon
Buy our merch on Redbubble
Explore more resources and topics about the ancient world on ArchaeoArtist

Music by the wonderfully talented Chris Sharples
Illustration by Zofia Guertin

If you'd like to get in touch, email at twofriendstalkhistory@gmail.com. 

See you soon with new friends, on Two Friends.

In this episode, Zofia interviews Dr Alex Imrie about the historical context and impact of the Severan dynasty on the Roman Empire and beyond. We unpack how the dysfunctional family engaged with each other and the tumultuous world of politics and warfare around them while trying to connect to a human center.

Dr Imrie is a Tutor in Classics at the University of Edinburgh and the National Outreach Co-ordinator for the Classical Association of Scotland (CAS). His doctoral work focused on the Constitutio Antoniniana (Antonine Constitution), and he has since published widely on the Severans.

To get in touch with Alex, you can find him on Twitter @AlexImrie23 or edinburgh.academia.edu/AlexImrie

In the interview, we discuss his publication on Caracalla's supposed use of the Macedonian phalanx, which you can read more about HERE.

To find out more about the CAS and register for upcoming 2023 programmes, please check out their website: https://cas.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/

To get in touch and find out more about Two Friends Talk History:
Find us on Instagram & Twitter
Support us through Patreon
Buy our merch on Redbubble
Explore more resources and topics about the ancient world on ArchaeoArtist

Music by the wonderfully talented Chris Sharples
Illustration by Zofia Guertin

If you'd like to get in touch, email at twofriendstalkhistory@gmail.com. 

See you soon with new friends, on Two Friends.