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Late antiquity, early Middle Ages, manuscripts, cities and monasticism. A bit of digital humanities and maps as well.
Assistant Professor at the University of Erfurt
Thrilled to say the new Whithorn guidebook by me is now available to buy online!
A Maldonado 2025. Cold Case Reopened: A Guide to Whithorn’s Early Medieval Archaeology. Whithorn Trust
I'll be speaking about it at this year's Wigtown Book Festival - stay tuned!
www.whithorn.com/product/whit...
Oh look!
More evidence that people and things have been mixing up between medieval Europe' and 'Africa" all along ...
...which only now becomes visible as the field's epistemological and methodological frameworks continue to change (for the better, if you ask me)!
Anglo-Saxons with West African roots: DNA analysis of 7th century burials reported in @antiquity.ac.uk today reveals long-distance connections reached across continents and cultures. Read about it @science.org:
Despite bearing remarkably far-flung genetic origins, a girl and young man were buried just like their peers
2.) And this one, based on my 2023 @imc-leeds.bsky.social keynote on African-Eurpean Entanglements.
Full PDF available here: www.academia.edu/143005857/_S...
Article adapted from a keynote of the same title first delivered at the 2023 International Medieval Congress at Leeds and the 2024 Semana Internacional de Estudios Medievales de Estella.
…and this one’s out too: «So, Who Killed the Elephant?» Tracing African-European Entanglements in the ‘Global Middle Ages’!
An essay adaptation of my 2023 @imc-leeds.bsky.social keynote — two case studies, four thoughts on how we might move forward in telling more global medieval (hi)stories.
Also, hi!
I published two pieces on exactly this—people and things mixing up, without a care for the boundaries historians would later impose on them— recently.
1.) An essay for the for the Journal of Medieval History's 50th anniversary issue, full PDF available here: tinyurl.com/ytrpuj35
This essay takes the 1429 execution of a Persian merchant in Mamlūk Cairo, sent by a Christian king in the Horn of Africa to procure relics in Latin Europe, as a point of departure for reflecting on t...
Third set of proofs for a piece I really, really, really struggled to write, but now am actually very happy with (even if my affiliation, mysteriously, now language-switches between German and English).
Part of the Journal of Medieval History's 50th anniversary issue, to be published sooooon.
I would lie if I said I am not a little bit proud of getting this one past the editors…
A Viking walks into a bar
Bartender: why the long ship
a giraffe walks into a bar Bartender: why the long neck
There’s an important book out today from @letteney.bsky.social & Matt Larsen that is FREE. Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration “examines spaces, practices & ideologies of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean basin from 300 BCE to 600 CE.” www.ucpress.edu/books/ancien... @ucpress.bsky.social
Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.
Publication day for a book that Matthew and I spent six years on, anguished over, fought for, rewrote twice, and nearly abandoned. I hope it proves useful in continuing important conversations about the ancient world and about the societies we choose to build today.
www.ucpress.edu/books/ancien...
A Roman governor, a bunch of monks, and two bishops (one of them dead) walk into a bar in Edessa in April 449. If you want to know what happened after, here is an open access article on the Syriac Acts of Ephesus II and the politics of late antique cities.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The Syriac Acts of the Second Council of Ephesus offer an opportunity to look at the evolution of urban structures in the middle of the fifth century at the edge of the Roman Empire. Observing a ci...
If only we knew what happens soon after empires occupy militarily their own capital…
