@alexharvv
Best-selling author, artist, archaeologist; I write about the ‘Dark Ages’. Views my own. New book, LITTLE KINGDOMS, out now!: https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Little-Kingdoms-Hardback/p/56542 Published w/ Cambridge Uni, Sidestone Press, Amberley
Lead-alloy weight (image credit: St Albans council)
#FindsFriday
Time for trading; this week's trinket is a lead alloy weight used in the mixed coin / bullion economies of ninth-century viking army camps
BH-1DA0A5 (finds.org.uk/database/art...)
Some AI idiot saying “Look i know ai is “not sentient” but if you went back to the 90s and told someone about this, they would tell you you had a sentient robot inside your computer”
I know batteries “do not contain fire stolen from the gods” but if you went back and showed the ancient Greeks a taser they’d say you had Zeus’s lightning bolt trapped inside it.
Further reading:
On unique weight designs and viking army identity; Haldenby & Richards 2022, www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...
On Mercian sculptural inspiration; Bergius 2012, etheses.dur.ac.uk/3543/1/Bergi...
Mercian art was itself heavily inspired by Lombard designs, so our weight provides a tiny example of the multi-stage process of artistic inspiration, emulation, and re-use
In any case, it would have stood out from the crowd amongst the hustle and bustle of camp markets like Torksey and Repton
A black-and-white image of an eighth/ninth-century Mercian cross-shaft from St. Lawrence’s church, Eyam, Derbyshire. From Routh, 1937: pl. XIVb
A black-and-white image of early ninth-century swirling foliate motifs in St Margaret's Church, Fletton, Huntingdonshire, reproduced from G. Dales
Given the presence of swirling vegetal/foliate motifs, I'm reminded of 8/9th c. Mercian art, which was dominant across much of middle England
It is not unlikely that the metalwork predates the era of viking army camps by <50-100 years, reused in this weight. A vestige of, by then, a fallen kingdom
A dragon and foliate motif highlighted in red and green from object BH-1DA0A5 (image credit: St Albans council)
It is somewhat unique given the quality of the inset design; what might be a sinuous drake-like creation surrounded by the suggestions of a tendrilous tree
Not only was this likely selected for its artistic value, but it was placed in the lead extremely neatly - a proudly owned trinket, perhaps?
A cowrie shell filled with lead, possibly a unique weight (SWYOR-CC0BF1: image credit West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service)
A weight with in-set Late Roman metalwork (NLM-E2EF3B: image credit North Lincolnshire Museum)
A lead weight incised with an X motif, suggested by Dave Haldenby to signify a subdivision of the typical weight (NLM-B08E76: image credit North Lincolnshire Museum)
Many other trading weights were adorned with additional details, almost to function like a 'personal logo' of whoever owned and used the weight
Other examples of inset details include pieces of glass, silver alloy, or even Roman pottery
Our weight from Weymouth fits nicely into this milieu
While archetypal of the usual size and shape of viking army trading weights, this example, found in Dorset in the SW of England, is unique for its inset copper-alloy metalwork
As suggested by Kevin Leahy, it seems likely that this detail was carefully selected from a piece of pre-existing art
Lead-alloy weight (image credit: St Albans council)
#FindsFriday
Time for trading; this week's trinket is a lead alloy weight used in the mixed coin / bullion economies of ninth-century viking army camps
BH-1DA0A5 (finds.org.uk/database/art...)
The audio version of What happened when the Romans left Britain? with @alexharvv.bsky.social is now available
legendsandlectures.podbean.com/e/what-happe...
Using multi-isotope analysis @samleggs22.bsky.social’s Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social focused on the role of food and diet and its link to mobility in early medieval Britain and Ireland.
media.leverhulme.ac.uk/feature/sleg...
#InternationalWomensDay
+ plenty of Elden Ring references!!
And then all the lights went out and they stumbled around for 200 years unable to build even a functioning sewer, until the church finally brought civilisation back <3
Romans after Rome!
This is it isn’t it? The benchmarks and goalposts always keep moving with AI bros; back in 2017-19 GPT-2 was being heralded as the dawn of a new age of thinking.
Superintelligences have been ‘5 years away’ for 15 years or more now
In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.
This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.
Tremendous time chatting about inspirations and big questions!
I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to
They were absolutely brilliant Steve, right in the disco space for Leeds IMC too!
My questions:
1) who earns the most money out of AI?
2) what does the average person gain from it?
3) who loses as a result of its success?
4) what will the consequences of these losses be?
Stop this nonsense
I’m going to live in a cave
Dystopian to the point of absurdity
Sounds about right
If you teach please show your students this. If you're a student, please read this.
The answers LLMs generate are not all alike. They are more likely to hallucinate on topics we don't already know a lot about. Even answers with "sources" shouldn't be trusted.
leahbroad.substack.com/p/chatgpts-a...
comic cover for the Hogback Saga a Viking wears a helmet reflecting swords and flames
Norse warriors assembling into ranks for battle
Two feuding Norse men cease their conflict due to the presence of the Oath ring of Dublin, a sacred object associated with Thor
Hello to my new followers! On top of posting round Robins I also draw a Viking-Age comic called the Hogback Saga. Its about groups of Norse settlers that have been ousted from Dublin trying to form a new community as part of Strathclyde, the last kingdom of the North Britons.
This is cool as hell
A very interesting period of northern history to frame a narrative about community around, given Strathclyde itself basically rebranded as if it went through a PR crisis at this same time (Twitter could never)
Similar to as suggested for Sutton Hoo and other ‘princely burials’ in England: North Sea mercenaries serving farther afield than previously thought
(Gittos 2025)
A documentary film on @artede.bsky.social @artefr.bsky.social about the analysis of remedies from medieval Arabic #manuscripts in modern laboratories.
An interdisciplinary project involving historians, physicians, and biologists.
@cnrs.fr @cnrsshs.bsky.social
🧵
#histmed #medievalsky
Hi friends. As I previously noted, the U. of Iowa is planning to get rid of African American studies; Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, & the Classical Languages major—along with others. If you wish, please sign the classics petition: www.change.org/p/keep-the-c.... I will add more as I find out.
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets
Went to a gig last night and (again) threw myself willingly into the moshpit for 2 or so hours, which is basically the closest thing you can get to an early medieval shield wall
I wrote about this parallel (+ others) for @epoch-history.bsky.social last year: www.epoch-magazine.com/post/what-ar...
