K Epps's List: Primary Sources

"Why do maps always show the north as up? For those who don’t just take it for granted, the common answer is that Europeans made the maps and they wanted to be on top. But there’s really no good reason for the north to claim top-notch cartographic real estate over any other bearing, as an examination of old maps from different places and periods can confirm."

Written in Stone: Historic Inscriptions from the Ancient Near East, ca. 2500 B.C.–550 B.C.
View all five objects in an exhibition that explores the development of writing in Mesopotamia—the wedge-shaped system that we call cuneiform—that was in use for over three thousand years.

"In the 12th century, all of Mesopotamia blossomed. The Islamic Golden Age was a time of thriving science, scholarship and art, including bright and vivid Persian miniatures—small paintings on paper created to be collected into books."

"It was Marco Polo’s book of his travels that introduced Europeans to China and Central Asia. Although he was not the first European to travel to China, he was the first to write about his adventures and so it was his experiences that formed the basis of early European knowledge of the country. For example, Marco Polo brought back the idea of paper money and some think his descriptions of coal, eyeglasses and a complex postal system eventually led to their widespread use in Europe."

"No matter which dates you use to define it, the medieval period was a very long time ago. Most of the people who existed during that time lived and died anonymously – at least as far as history is concerned. So how is it that we know anything about this period at all?"

"The textbook I choose to use for the course, which I have found to be quite satisfactory, is Volume 1 (Compact Edition) of The Bedford Anthology of World Literature: The Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern World, Beginnings-1650. This volume includes a section entitled “The Crusades: War and Faith in the Middle Ages,” situated as an “In the World” context to the preceding The Song of Roland. In this section, there are, following a background introduction, Robert the Monk’s version of Pope Urban II’s “Call to the First Crusade” from 1095 and excerpts from the early twelfth-century History of the First Crusade and Third Crusade sections of Ibn al-Athir’s twelfth/thirteenth-century The Collection of Histories. In this article, I will outline my approach to teaching these texts."

"Abstract: In the mid-1220s, William Marshal, second earl of Pembroke, commissioned the History of William Marshal, a verse history which recounts the life of his father, the first earl of Pembroke. The History has been utilized as a source of information about its titular subject by modern historians, but none have examined the causes behind its commissioning and the significance of the document within the context of the second earl’s political career in depth. This thesis seeks to increase understanding of the History by placing it within this context and examining the second earl’s influence on its contents."

Human migration and social change are closely linked to changes in Earth's climate. Climate shifts have both
helped to foster the rise of civilizations and contributed to their demises. Over the last few decades, proxy records
(tree rings, sediment cores, mineral deposits, etc.) of ancient climates and past climate shifts have become
available. Studies of these records show that past periods of significant climate change often correspond to periods
of social change across remote parts of the globe. While no universally accepted definition for civilization exists,
here civilizations are defined as societies that rely on permanent infrastructure (i.e. cities, granaries and irrigation
systems) and intensive cultivation of crops for their survival, meaning that they cannot respond to climate change
simply by moving to where the weather is better nor can they readily switch to different food sources.

"By combining data from coastal Cyprus and coastal Syria, this study shows that the LBA crisis coincided with the onset of a ca. 300-year drought event 3200 years ago. This climate shift caused crop failures, dearth and famine, which precipitated or hastened socio-economic crises and forced regional human migrations at the end of the LBA in the Eastern Mediterranean and southwest Asia. The integration of environmental and archaeological data along the Cypriot and Syrian coasts offers a first comprehensive insight into how and why things may have happened during this chaotic period. The 3.2 ka BP event underlines the agro-productive sensitivity of ancient Mediterranean societies to climate and demystifies the crisis at the Late Bronze Age-Iron Age transition."

"Preserved Fish (1766-1846) was a prominent New York City shipping merchant in the early 1800s. In 1822, he founded the shipping company Fish, Grinnell & Co., which later grew into Grinnell, Minturn & Co., a California clipper ship company. "Preserved" (pronounced with three syllables) was a fairly common Quaker name, meaning "preserved from sin" or "preserved in grace," and the Fish family was prominent in New York politics, producing Hamilton Fish, the secretary of state after whom Hamilton Fish Park in the Lower East Side is named. Preserved Fish is buried in the Marble Cemetery"

"An ancient limestone tablet covered with a mysterious Hebrew text that features the archangel Gabriel is at the center of a new exhibit in Jerusalem, even as scholars continue to argue about what it means."

"Data to conduct this study were collected using literature by art historians on the subject and by analyzing artwork on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the exhibition “The Renaissance Portrait: From Donatello to Bellini” (December 21, 2011–March 18, 2012). Writings attributed to authors of Renaissance Italy were also evaluated in order to parallel the portrayal of women in Italian Renaissance portraiture to the social status and expectations of women in an Italian Renaissance society."

"The Getty Tumblr recently featured a fabulous Athenian pottery fragment that depicts a boy reading a scroll. Readers were curious to hear more about what the letters mean and how we know. Here’s the word from antiquities curator David Saunders."

Hover your mouse over a section, click, and then click on a bullet to learn about the image 

Hover your mouse over a section, click, and then click on a bullet to learn about the image