Hey folks! I am, as I mentioned last week, taking this week off in an effort to catch up on my sanity and also some grading and writing I need to be doing. But I didn’t want to leave you with… | Continue reading
This week, we close out our four(and a half)-part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb) look at pre-modern iron and steel production, although I ought to note that there will be at least one addendum discussing p… | Continue reading
This week, we continue our four(and a half)-part (I, II, III, IVa, IVb) look at pre-modern iron and steel production. Last week, we looked at how a blacksmith reshapes our iron from a spongy mass c… | Continue reading
This week, we continue our four-part (I, II, III, IV) look at pre-modern iron and steel production. Last week we took our ore and smelted it into a rough, spongy mass of iron called a bloom; this w… | Continue reading
This week we continue our four-part (I, II, III, IV) look at pre-modern iron and steel production. Last week we prospected our iron ore and extracted it from the ground and did some initial mechani… | Continue reading
This week we are starting a four-part look at pre-modern iron and steel production. As with our series on farming, we are going to follow the train of iron production from the mine to a finished ob… | Continue reading
This week, we’re going to be a bit silly and talk about the recently released grand strategy computer game Crusader Kings III, because quite a few of you asked for it. Now from the beginning … | Continue reading
This week’s post is the first in a four part series (II, IIIa, IIIb, interlude, IV) looking at what I’m going to term the Fremen Mirage (a play on Le Mirage Spartiate, which we’ve… | Continue reading
As an addendum on to our four-part look at the general structures of the farming of cereal grains (I, II, III, IV) this post is going to briefly discuss some of the key ways that the structures of … | Continue reading
Hey Folks! Fireside this week; next week, I hope to start up our next “How Did They Make It” series, focusing on iron production. I say ‘hope’ because COVID-19 related disru… | Continue reading
As the fourth and final part (I, II, III) of our look at the basic structure of food production in the pre-modern world (particularly farming grain to make bread), this week we’re going to lo… | Continue reading
This essay will hopefully be the first post in a series covering some of the basics of how things in the past, particularly in the ancient world, were made. This isn’t a how-to guide (we̵… | Continue reading
I have been holding off writing something like this, because it is often such a well-worn topic and I hardly wanted to preach to the converted. But at the same time, the humanities need all of the … | Continue reading
This is is the eight and last part of a series taking a historian’s look at the Battle of Helm’s Deep (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII) from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and Peter Jackson… | Continue reading
This is is the seventh part of a series taking a historian’s look at the Battle of Helm’s Deep (I, II, III, IV, V, VI) from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and Peter Jackson’s 2002 film… | Continue reading
This is is the sixth part of a series taking a historian’s look at the Battle of Helm’s Deep (I, II, III, IV, V) from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and Peter Jackson’s 2002 film of th… | Continue reading
This is is the fifth part of a series taking a historian’s look at the Battle of Helm’s Deep (I, II, III, IV) from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and Peter Jackson’s 2002 film of… | Continue reading
This is the third part of a series taking a historian’s look at the Battle of Helm’s Deep (I, II), from both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954) and peter Jackson’s 2002 … | Continue reading
Hey folks! Fireside this week, but next week, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the blog (the first post went up May 3rd) we’re diving into a look at Helm’s Deep in both the book… | Continue reading
By popular request, today we’re going to talk about oaths. Oaths appear a lot in fantasy fiction – and even in historical fiction – and they are frequently done wrong. I remarked … | Continue reading
This week, we’re going to talk briefly about why ‘we’ – and by ‘we’ here, I mean the top-tier of modern militaries – have generally eschewed the systematic… | Continue reading
This is part II of our four-part series (I) looking at what I’ve termed ‘the Fremen mirage,’ after the fiction people from the science fiction novel Dune. If you are just tuning i… | Continue reading
This is actually a neat kit review to pick up with after the last one, since this is essentially a more successful effort to construct a fantasy panoply for a plate-armored common infantryman. Toda… | Continue reading
Today we’re going to start looking at one facet of how polytheistic religions function, their practicality. This is going to be a series (I’m currently planning at least four parts) loo… | Continue reading
This week’s post will be a bit shorter, as the holidays are now upon us and the year is winding down (but don’t worry – I have a humdinger of a series planned for January – … | Continue reading
Welcome to the first of a new set of a posts, which I’m calling A Trip Through the Classics. This won’t be a series so much as a new format we’ll have sometimes (like the kit revi… | Continue reading
The following post is the first part of a three part series where we look at the question “how medieval is Game of Thrones?” and – if not the European Middle Ages – what per… | Continue reading
This week, we look at the positioning of main gun batteries and see what the Battlestar Galactica could use to learn from the USS South Carolina (BB-26). | Continue reading
This is the first part of a six-part series I expect to roll out taking a historian’s look at the Siege of Gondor in Peter Jackson’s Return of the King. We’re going to discuss how historicall… | Continue reading
At long last, Relic Entertainment has announced that Age of Empires 4 is coming. Strategy gamers rejoice! I am excited – I played the first one back in ’98 (I may be dating myself here)… | Continue reading
This week and next, we’re going to look at an issue not of battles, but of settings: pre-modern cities – particularly the trope of the city, town or castle set out all alone in the midd… | Continue reading
This is Part I of a seven part series (II, III, IV, V, VI, VII) comparing the popular legacy of Sparta (embodied in films like 300) with the historical ancient state. Today, we’re going to st… | Continue reading
Today we’re going to talk about what a pre-modern battlefield might look like after the battle is over. Obvious content warning, since this post is going to talk about (and show pictures of) … | Continue reading
Today we’re starting the first part of our three part series on War Elephants (by reader request!). In this first part, we’re going to talk about how elephants performed in battle: how … | Continue reading