Category: Resources
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Exploring and Travelling the Roman Empire
This week’s free online resource is the ORBIS website from Stamford University, which can be found here – https://orbis.stanford.edu/ The site focuses on exploring inter-connection through travel routes and, as a unique and amusing feature, lets you calculate how long travel would have taken between two locations, dependent on a vast number of factors –…
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Resources for Early Medieval Language Learning
A historian of the early medieval period needs to wear many hats, and an understanding of contemporary languages is crucial. Many primary sources haven’t been translated to modern English and, where they have, questions of variable translation underly questions of interpretation. However, getting started in these language can be a tough task. I’m not a…
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Old English Poetry
The poetry of ‘Anglo-Saxon England’ holds an interesting middle-ground in public perception. On the one-hand Beowulf is perhaps the single most famous piece of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cultural output, of any form. Tolkien famously translated it, as did Heaney, and there was that terrible movie in the 2000s that we try and forget… However, the sheer quantity…
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The Yale Early Medieval Lecture Series
Occasionally, you come across a resource that is so incredibly good, it amazes you that it’s free. The Yale Early Medieval Lecture Series (available free on Youtube) is one of these cases, and is an amazing contribution by the Yale outreach programme to leveling the playing-field and getting everyone access to the humanities. You can…
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The Viking Society for Northern Research
This week we’re looking at the wonderful Viking Society for Northern Research, a society founded in 1892 to further the study of the ‘medieval North’ and Old Norse studies. Today, it is one of the foremost academic societies for the study of the ‘Vikings’ in the world. You can access the website for the society…
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Archaeology – A Beginner’s Recommended Reading List
Archaeology is a fascinating subject, but is often quite difficult to get into. There’s an awful lot of complex jargon associated with it, scientific wizardry, and illegible publications. However, with a little bit of background reading, it’s absolutely possible for even the most casual enthusiast to develop a deep and complex understanding of the fundamental…
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Archaeology Maps – the Aerial Archaeology Mapping Explorer
To the great happiness of anyone interested in Landscape Archaeology, Historical England have just released a new free online archaeological resource – the Aerial Archaeology Mapping Explorer, available here. This website plots a diverse set of archaeological surveys onto a map of England, allowing the user to explore the past within the areas they live…
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The British Museum’s Online Collection
There’s a lot in the British Museum that shouldn’t be there, ‘borrowed’ during England’s colonial past. One classic example is the Complaints Tablet of Ea-nasir, a wonderful piece of archaeological evidence now removed far from its original context. I’ve written before (here) about how the use of replicas might help us address some of the…
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Bayeux Tapestry Online
The Bayeux Tapestry (technically an embroidery not a tapestry) is one of our best accounts of the conquest of ‘Anglo-Saxon‘ England by the Normans in 1066. Running from the end of the reign of Edward the Confessor to the aftermath of the battle at Hastings, the work covers a massive 70 meters and is kept…