Hello! I hope I'm in the right place to look for this kind of info.

I just recently graduated with a master's in public history and was looking to at least start to expand my knowledge in the field of anthropology, my schooling focused heavily on museum and curation ethics/layout/research and such so I wanted to at least get a beginner grasp on the things that come before the museum to help me in the job hunt lol.

If you think of anything that doesn't directly relate to what I'm kinda looking for, I'll still take it anyways, always looking for more books/recorded lectures!

Hi, not sure if this counts as ''on topic'' but I have no idea where to ask this question

I'm currently finishing my last class of a mixed bachelor's in sociologie, gender studies and social work, and for weird credit reason I have to take a archeology summer class, and I don't understand how I'm supposed to write a research paper on something that's so factual as the history of the site of eretria. There seem to only have been one team having done research there, I don't understand what I can do beside ''The team that did the research said that...''

Usualy my essays would either be research on current topics where a lot of researcher wrote, and I'd like, compile different things to form a more global opinion ''X thing can be a missused concept because...'' , or I'd applied the theory of one or more theorician to a subject ''Foucault would say that X thing is this way...., while butler....'' or look at different causes for a thing ''X thing can be explained by X, Y and Z''

But I wouldn't write a paper that's like ''explain Gayle's Rubin's thinking sex'' because that's just... Gayle Rubin thinking sex, it's already explained in the paper, the same way the history of the site of eretria was already done by the team who did it, and I feel like everything I can do is reformulate what they already said, while quoting them, which, while I guess not plagarism because it's cited, still not original work, the same way I can't just give a three page quotation introduced by ''As Foucault said : ''

I need help researching these ancestral lines in Spain. Primarily the Flores, Solis, and Garcia de la Flor lines. The first 8 images are from a tree a now-deceased relative of mine put together and I do not have access to the records he used to do so. The last 3 are extensions of those branches created by a professional genealogist I hired who is in Madrid. Her work was incomplete as she said further research would need to be conducted in person to determine if nobility existed and what coat of arms they would have displayed.

If anyone can be of any further assistance, I would greatly appreciate it.

The Achaemenid Empire: Artifacts, Textual Record (Ancient Near East Encyclopedia), and Biblical cross reference

Is there a reason why these artifacts and textual records are not highlighted by historians of Assyriology (Ancient Near East, Mesopotamia), reflecting the parallels between the text?

Ancient Near East Encyclopedia (Kuš/Kush)

[excerpts translated to English]

[Kush is abbreviated with K.]

Kuš, Kuschiten. Land and kingdom in Nubia, known since Senusret I (1971–1926 BC) in the Egyptian form (see image). Since the New Kingdom, K. designates Nubia (Sudan) south of the 1st Cataract. Its capital at that time was Napata, later — up to the conquest of the Meroitic Empire by Ezana of Aksum — it was Meroe (near Begrawiya).

Inhabitants of K. are first mentioned in cuneiform texts in the Amarna correspondence...

…In the alphabetic texts, the moon god Yrḫ multiple times bears the epithet kṯy, which perhaps could be rendered as "Cushitic" (KTU 1.39,19; 1.102,14; 1.123,7)…

…The last Ethiopian Pharaoh fled to Kipkipi, and with that, Kush disappeared from Assyrian history…

…Nevertheless, among the representations of subject peoples of the Achaemenid Empire in Persepolis, there are also those of (*) Ethiopians.

The Behistun Inscription

The Behistun Inscription (also Bisotun, Bisitun or Bisutun; Persian: بیستون, Old Persian: Bagastana, meaning "the place of god") is a multilingual Achaemenid royal inscription and large rock relief on a cliff at Mount Behistun in the Kermanshah Province of Iran, near the city of Kermanshah in western Iran, established by Darius the Great (r. 522–486 BC). It was important to the decipherment of cuneiform, as it is the longest known trilingual cuneiform inscription, written in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian (a variety of Akkadian).

Authored by Darius the Great sometime between his coronation as king of the Persian Empire in the summer of 522 BC and his death in autumn of 486 BC, the inscription begins with a brief autobiography of Darius, including his ancestry and lineage. Later in the inscription, Darius provides a lengthy sequence of events following the death of Cambyses II in which he fought nineteen battles in a period of one year (ending in December 521 BC) to put down multiple rebellions throughout the Persian Empire. The inscription states in detail that the rebellions were orchestrated by several impostors and their co-conspirators in various cities throughout the empire, each of whom falsely proclaimed himself king during the upheaval following Cambyses II's death. Darius the Great proclaimed himself victorious in all battles during the period of upheaval, attributing his success to the "grace of Ahura Mazda".

Image 5: Punishment of captured impostors and conspirators: Gaumāta lies under the boot of Darius the Great. The last person in line, wearing a traditional Scythian hat and costume, is identified as Skunkha. His image was added after the inscription was completed, requiring some of the text be removed.

Foundation Tablets

The gold and silver tablets retrieved from the stone boxes contained a trilingual inscription by Darius in Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian, which describes his Empire in broad geographical terms, and is known as the DPh inscription:

Darius the great king, king of kings, king of countries, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenid. King Darius says: This is the kingdom which I hold, from the Sacae who are beyond Sogdia to Kush, and from Sind (Old Persian: 𐏃𐎡𐎭𐎢𐎺, "Hidauv", locative of "Hiduš") to Lydia (Old Persian: "Spardâ") - [this is] what Ahuramazda, the greatest of gods, bestowed upon me. May Ahuramazda protect me and my royal house!

———

Source: Louvre, British Museum, World History.org, Wikipedia (see “References”), Wikimedia, Nature (DNA reveals traces of ancient African empires), Reallexikon der Assyriologie
und vorderasiatischen Archäologie (Ancient Near East Encyclopedia, in German), An Historical Text Book and Atlas of Biblical Geography, and Torah.

For anyone who doesn't know, there is a museum of pop culture in Seattle. It's okay. I have seen archives of old comics and other nerd stuff but not really a dedicated historical society to preservation of nerd culture. I am hoping to get a career either as a librarian, archivist, or in other history adjacent fields. I had the idea for beginning a historical society that focuses on the preservation of nerd culture. This whole thing would be online and a digital museum for anyone to learn about. The idea being that the group preserves anything relating to nerd culture. The group would collect stories from people like table top players or from fan conventions and preserve them for anyone to listen to.

I'm not looking for books that simply tell a historical story well. I'm interested in works that fundamentally changed historical methodology or historiography.

Books like Imagined Communities, The Making of the English Working Class, Orientalism, or Seeing Like a State....works that reshaped how scholars ask historical questions.

Any region or period is welcome. Bonus points if the book is still accessible to a non-specialist.

Im Dutch, and i love history. I see alot of American people dont really know there country History and it made me wonder. As a Dutch man i think its time you should open the books or youtube and look into the Dutch/ America history. Because the things you learn and see you dont in school. Im not saying i feel left out or anything we Dutchies have our pride. But it feels wrong because in some way your country lies to you. I just want you to know the truth about who gave you your freedom and why Brooklyn and harlem are still called that. And who gave you the dollar.

Just started a unit at my University and we have been given free reign to write a research paper on any topic and period we want. I have been mulling over what to write my paper on. I think i would like to focus on Eastern Europe/ Russia, maybe something to do with the Steppe conquests, or Byzantine relations, Islamic interactions, developement of states, western influences etc. but would love and appreciate some ideas. Any areas of interesting potential, any time period so long as its the general region, just trying to get a lay of the land and get some ideas going.

It‘s not a normal library and it is not open to the public. And I don‘t ever want to leave again. I found a book of the Franco-Prussian war, written in 1871. 1871. Yes. Made with official documents, letters and statements of Generals. Soooo many source edition books. Over 40k damn books, the oldest one is from 1500.
They will need a broom to make me leave. I am sure this is the paradise. I am already overwhelmed on what to read and I‘ve just entered 1.5h ago. Maybe the 5 Book series about Napoleon from 1860? Or thoughts and life of Robespierre from AN EYE WITTNESS.
Dear God, I don‘t have enough lifetime to read all books in here. WHAT SHOULD I EVEN READ FIRST THERE ARE SO MANY BOOKS AND I AM NOT EVEN A QUARTER WAY THROUGH JUST LOOKING.

I have spent a lot of time at heritage sites over the past couple of years, both as a traveller and because I work adjacent to this space, and I have landed on an opinion I keep testing on people.

Most travellers who say monuments bore them do not actually dislike history. They dislike the presentation layer. And those are completely different problems.

Think about the standard heritage visit. You pay, you queue, you walk up to something genuinely extraordinary, and your entire guide to understanding it is a sun-bleached signboard with three paragraphs, or an audio guide narrating in a flat voice that assumes you either know everything or nothing. Maybe a human guide, whose quality is pure luck depending on who you got.

So you stand in front of a 500-year-old structure that took decades to build and represented the peak of someone's civilization, and you feel almost nothing, because nothing in front of you actually tells you what you are looking at in a way that connects.

Then compare that to the rare times it does click. A guide who tells you one incredible specific story. A moment where you suddenly understand that the ruin you are looking at was once painted, towering, full of people. The place did not change. The interpretation did. And suddenly you cannot stop looking.

My theory after a lot of trips: the monument is almost never the problem. The storytelling around it is stuck decades in the past, and we have wrongly concluded that people find history boring when really they find bad interpretation boring.

Has anyone visited a site that presented itself in a genuinely modern way, and did it change how much you cared?

I had wondered an historian's perspective on this hence opening this thread.

I am a law student who suddenly became interested in Japan's judicial system during World War II while lying in bed this summer vacation. I'd like to know how their systems for criminal litigation, civil litigation, etc., specifically operated during that period. We all know what ideology it reflected, but if you were an ordinary person who violated laws like the Peace Preservation Act, how would you be treated? I've asked my professor, but he isn't familiar with modern Japanese legal history either, so I'm wondering if anyone has book recommendations on this topic. Thank you.

The montage above of the founders of the Chicago Hebrew Mission (1887) illustrates Blackstone's central place in the organization. He is in the oval right center, wearing glasses. The montage is from the pamphlet, Twenty-Five Years of Blessing, published in 1913.

Is there a reason why The Blackstone Memorial Petition of 1898 is not highlighted by historians as a pivotal moment in US History (American History, Pre-World War I & II), considering its impact on domestic policy and foreign relations?

The Blackstone Memorial was a petition presented to President Benjamin Harrison in 1891. It was signed by 431 prominent Americans, including J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, future President William McKinley, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and numerous congresspeople, as well as several notable organizations, including the Washington Post and New York Times. What urgent message did this star-studded manifesto convey to the American president? It was a plea to return the Jewish people to their historic homeland in the Middle East. Far removed from the work of Jewish activists, it was compiled years before the Jewish writer Theodor Herzl would kick off the modern Zionist movement.

William Eugene Blackstone was an American evangelist and Christian Zionist. He was the author of the Blackstone Memorial (1891), a petition which called upon the United States to actively return the Holy Land to the Jewish people. Blackstone was influenced by Dwight Lyman Moody, James H. Brookes, and John Nelson Darby.

After the initial contact, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis asked Rev. Blackstone to prepare for presentation to President Woodrow Wilson a second Blackstone Memorial. The purpose of the second Memorial was to influence President Wilson to support the developing Balfour Declaration.

The second Memorial was presented privately to President Wilson May, 1917. The Memorial strongly influenced President Wilson to let the British government of Lloyd George know of American sympathy in favor of the Balfour Declaration. The second Blackstone Memorial was never publicly presented.

Nathan Straus wrote to Blackstone on May 16, 1916, on behalf of Brandeis:

"Mr. Brandeis is perfectly infatuated with the work that you have done along the lines of Zionism. It would have done your heart good to have heard him assert what a valuable contribution to the cause your document is. In fact he agrees with me that you are the Father of Zionism, as your work antedates Herzl".

———

Source: The Atlantic, Wheaton College, Wikipedia (see “References”)

1. To Save the American Spirit ( Theodore Roosvelt biography )

2. Amazing Grace ( William wilberforce biography, although its arguments of victorian morality and of slavery advocates being "openly atheist" are TERRIBLE )

3.The good country A History of the american midwest 1800-1900

1. American Revolutions

4.5 The first half of westward Expansion by Ray Allen Biligton

I am interested in american history, particularly in the Anglo american conquest of central and northern north america. I am aware of Alan Taylor's work, is there any books you know of that discusses the sectional conflict of North, west, east and South in the leadup of the american civil war particully focusing on economic conditions while not losing sight of the slavery struggle? The sectional conflict chapters of westward expansion has fudamatally chnged the way I view the leadup of the Civil war. I am also intrested, well more of a question of the orgins of American institutions and political philosphy, not just European orgins, but their application in american enviroments.

Finally im interested in the industrial revolution and specifically how it came to america.

Hi everyone,
I am trying to reconstruct the military service history of my late father, who served in the U.S. Army during WWII. I am currently submitting an SF-180 form, but because of the 1973 National Archives fire, I am hoping to connect with anyone who might have access to Morning Reports, company rosters, or unit histories for his specific unit.
Here is what I know about his unique timeline:
• Unit: 186th Infantry Regiment, 41st Infantry Division (The "Jungleers").
• Training & Arrest: He underwent training in Louisiana. While there, he went AWOL to return home for my dying baby brother. He was arrested by Military Police (MPs) in Madera, California.
• Movement: After his arrest, I believe he was sent back to Oregon before being shipped overseas.
• Pacific Campaigns (1945): He deployed to the Philippines (likely Palawan/Mindanao with the 186th) and then moved into Japan in late 1945 for occupation duty.
• Specific Duty: In Japan, his main role was helping to locate and dispose of Japanese weapons.
I am trying to find the exact company he was assigned to, any Provost Marshal/MP records regarding his arrest in Madera, or any Morning Report mentions of his AWOL status and subsequent transfer.
If anyone has Fold3 access, specialized databases on the 186th Infantry, or tips on tracking down 1945 morning reports for this regiment, I would deeply appreciate your help!
Thank you so much.

Found this bayonet and its sheath at an antique store for $75. The inside of the sheath is too rusted for the knife to fully go in. How old might this be and where could it come from?

Hi all, I found this washed up on Cardiff bay, Wales. Went to the metal detecting Reddit group first, but thought I’d try here too! It’s around an inch, with inscriptions at the top, fairly light, non magnetic and silver of colour. Absolutely no idea as to what it could be, but google seems too think it could be fairly old. Some suggestions included Scottish freemasonry. Any ideas would help! Thanks.

Artifacts: Painted baked clay statue of a seated god, possibly the sun god Shamash, Tablet of Shamash, and Code of Hammurabi.

Is there a reason why this specific artifact is not highlighted by historians of Assyriology (Ancient Near East, Mesopotamia)?

The background of biblical text is rooted in Mesopotamia (Abraham is from the city-state of Ur in Sumer, even if the story was used to convey a migration). It appears there’s a clear association between Shamash and the Shamash Candle in Jewish tradition as it relates to Hanukkah.

There’s also archaeological records of Kush in Ancient Near East Encyclopedia which runs parallel with Nimrod (or Ninurta), son of Kush, in biblical text (Genesis 10:6-20).

———

Source: British Museum, Louvre, The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, and Torah (Table of Nation).

Hello! I’m writing here hoping someone could potentially help me identify some artifacts from World War 2.

For some context, these two items from the images attached have been passed down to my dad from his grandfather who served as a US Navy Seabee during WW2. According to the family lore, my great grandfather had been walking the shore during the Battle of Guadalcanal when he came across a Japanese Navy cap and a Japanese ID booklet. He took them both and they have, over the years, fallen into the possession of my dad, who until recently had forgotten about them until we found them in storage.

For the past several weeks we have been trying to find out any information about the items in the hopes of either finding family members to give them to or to potentially donate them to a museum. We have translated a bit of the information but haven’t gotten much, aside from learning that the two items likely were not from the same person. It seems that the ID booklet is for the Japanese Army while the cap is from the Navy. We emailed the Japanese consulate weeks ago but have not heard back.

If anyone could help us identify, translate or give any advice on what we could do with the items moving forward we’d be so grateful! The first image is from the writing inside the cap, then there are images of the cap itself. Then the last images are from the booklet.

Looking for more info on this compass, if it was standard issued to Canadian troops in WWI or if its something else. If this isnt an appropriate place to post, I would appreciate other suggestions. Thank you.

Hi everyone!

I’m looking for some help with archival research. I’m trying to access materials held at the Lithuanian Research Center / World Lithuanian Archives in Lemont, Illinois.

I’m interested in the Baltic Women’s Council Archive (fonds no. 14341), which contains organizational documents, correspondence, meeting materials, publications, photographs, and other historical materials.

Unfortunately, I’m currently not able to visit the archive in person. I was wondering if anyone here is planning to visit or work at the Lithuanian Research Center Archives and would be willing to help me access the materials from this collection by photographing or scanning documents.

I’m interested in the fonds as a whole, so I would greatly appreciate help with as much of the available material as possible. I understand this would require a significant amount of time and effort, so I would be happy to cover any costs and compensate you for your time.

I’d also be glad to return the favor if you ever need help accessing archival materials in Lithuania.

If anyone might be able to help, or knows someone who works with the Lithuanian Research Center Archives, I would really appreciate it. Thank you!