Stori3d Past

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Harold Johnson. Maine (from away!). Bookseller. Coin seller. Pilgrim. Word Guy. Skeptic. History & Archaeology. Tolkien. Trek. Old English. Used to make YouTubes, now I make typos. 19th C antiquarian — Sideburns included! 🏺📖🧙🏻‍♂️

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Jim Baker (1818-1898) was a frontiersman, trapper, military interpreter, and rancher. Over his life he married 3 different Native American women & had 14 children. He looks exactly the way you would imagine a 19th C Western trapper & rancher would look.

I was just watching a YouTube car guy drive an old truck thru Wyoming, and he stopped at a soda fountain shop that was built in 1914. It made me wonder what the oldest building in Wyoming is. Turns out, the oldest non-fort building is the Jim Baker Cabin in Savery, WY. Built 1873!

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So, I have a new book out this month from Berghahn: Machine-Created Culture: Essays on the Archaeology of Digital Things and Places. I suspect this will be my final publication on #DigitalArchaeology #Archaeogaming & #MediaArchaeology. HALF-PRICE code: REIN5706. www.berghahnbooks.com/title/Reinha...

Machine-Created Culture: Essays on the Archaeology of Digital Things and Places | Berghahn Bookswww.berghahnbooks.com Independent Publishing since 1994

Just a few miles west of Birdoswald fort on Hadrian's Wall, there is an old Roman quarry above the river at Coombe Crag. Several Romans left graffiti there, including one by Daminius, who wrote "I didn't want to do this."

I'm still floored that the stone-built commander's house could fall to earth-covered ruin in one generation. The builders of Hadrian's Wall were not setting out to create a monument for the ages!

You may be playing too much Long Dark when you see cattails on the side of the road and think "Ooh, calories."

I'm still floored that the stone-built commander's house could fall to earth-covered ruin in one generation. The builders of Hadrian's Wall were not setting out to create a monument for the ages!

Evidence all over Hadrian's Wall suggests that the entire frontier may have been abandoned for some 30 years, 270-300. The breakaway kingdom of Carausius brought an end to 60+ years of peaceful, settled, populated life.

In my Hadrian's Wall book I've reached Birdoswald. A fab fort with well-preserved walls & remnants of a Dark Age mead-hall. And this, the latest inscription known on the whole wall. From ~AD300, it records rebuilding of the old commander's home, which was "fallen into ruin & covered with earth."

Happy Birthday to a country whose birth was messy & whose reality has always been messy. Sometimes less, sometimes more. I'm happy to call it home. 🇺🇸🎇

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the earth is littered with the bones of once proud empires happy fourth of july

I just learned that the above-tide causeway to get to Lindisfarne was only built in the 1950s. Before that, low tide still meant having to drive 3 miles in murky water up to your door guided only by a row of tall stakes!

Tonight's goodnight image. A humdrum photo of an amazing place -- the causeway from "mainland" NE England to Lindisfarne, Holy Island. It is underwater much or most of every day, cutting off access. It's eerie to stand at a road that intentionally disappears under the waves.

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Stairway to hell; stairway to heaven. Emmons County, North Dakota. July 2, 2024.

If you make it through the Roaring Forties, the next latitudes have been called the Furious Fifties. After that, the Screaming Sixties. Not even kidding.

Fun factoid: The Drake Passage is 600 miles of the world's most violent ocean between S America & Antarctica. In those latitudes ("the Roaring Forties") there's no land anywhere to dampen the winds. They transfer all their energy into the ocean. 50-foot waves are common. 66-ft have been recorded!

It is not so dark here.

If you want the oldest nonworking door in Britain, the best bet is this partial one from Roman London, about AD50! Preserved in wateogged conditions.

Random factoid: The oldest working door in Britain is in Westminster Abbey. This door was put into service in the 1050s. In a few more decades it turns 1000 years old.

I don't know why I find the idea so appealing. It's not like I want to lose the comforts of civilization! But I really like that in the gameworld, your character has two choices: adapt/metamorphose or game over.

In The Long Dark, none of the ready-food that spawns into the world ever respawns. When you've exhausted all the sardine tins, crackers, cat tails, soda cans, etc. you can find, they're gone. You have to transition to living on what you can hunt & catch. It's like "letting go" of the old world.

Of course this door pales in comparison with the carved 18-ft-high cypress wood doors in Rome's Basilica of Santa Sabina. They were carved in AD432.

This door survived the Norman conquest, about 5 civil wars, the Great Fire, and the Blitz.

Random factoid: The oldest working door in Britain is in Westminster Abbey. This door was put into service in the 1050s. In a few more decades it turns 1000 years old.

"Saving the Wall" by Leach & Whitworth documents how as recently as the Great Depression there were plans to quarry away the majestic sills in the central Wall region, preserving only 50 feet of hilltop and forever destroying the sense of place!

It's ironic that the best-preserved section of Hadrian's Wall was also under the greatest modern threat. In the 19th & early 20th Cs, three different mining companies ate away three different sections of Wall at Cawfields, Greenhead, & Walltown. The beautiful, tall Wall now stops at cliff edges. 😢

Up in Hadrian's Wall country, there's a gorgeous, easy, often-overlooked little walk. You start up on the Wall itself at Haltwhistle Burn (the Cawfields Quarry parking lot area). Immediately to the east is the 19th C quarry, which destroyed a chunk of the Wall but left Milecastle 42 high & proud. 🏺

For that work, I was rewarded with this night sky. This game really is something.

Today in The Long Dark I shot a deer poorly, & it ran off. I followed its trail, to find it dead & circled by a wolf. I drew the wolf toward me & led it to a nearby rabbit, which it charged & attacked. While it was busy with that, I one-shotted it. Then I battled blizzards to harvest meat & hides.

I say I'm jealous. But I imagine the restrictions on what you can do with your front yard when that yard is on top of an archaeological site of international importance is pretty limited. Plus the thousands of strangers hiking past your doorstep.

That south gateway also happens to have the only Roman altar left visible & in situ at any Hadrian's Wall fort! It's been standing in the guardroom of the south gate for 1800 years!

Now on my Hadrian's Wall armchair journey I come to my most envied site: Great Chesters. Barely excavated, it clearly has impressive remains waiting to be found. But I'm jealous because a modern farm has been built in its NE quadrant and still uses the original Roman south gate as its driveway!!

Of course after we start heading home from al fresco early dinner, the sun starts thinking of peeking out.

Summer