Ancient history online - your complaints please

[Jona Lendering]

Next week, I have to lecture on the use of the www by students reading ancient history. I have prepared it (more or less) and the outline is more or less clear (I am not very happy with what is offered right now, and universities are well-advised to offer old-fashioned, dusty book to students).

What I am still looking for, is good examples. I have a whole bunch of them, but there may be better examples, and probably, you know some of them. So, ladies and gentleman, fire at will, and do not hesitate to criticize my very own website.

[Gaius Decius Aquilius]

OK...

I just did a search. I wanted a chronology of Greek periods and phases, with regional, relative, and absolute chronologies. Example: Late Geometric, Protocorinthian, etc. Where, and from when-to-when. Phases sub-phases, whatever, particularly regional associations. These dates get tweaked from time to time and new manifestations appear. I also wanted a definition as to whether these are just artistic convention, pottery based, or multi-component in archaeological usage.

This is the best I found:

http://people.ku.edu/~jyounger/grkartchron.html

This may be a bit specialized, but access to detailed publications are a bit limited here.

This is supplied as an example, but if anyone has a source, on line or not, I would like to know.

Thanks
Ralph Izard

[Tarbicus]

Sometimes the obvious can be missed :wink:
http://www.wikipedia.org/

[Jona Lendering]

Sometimes the obvious can be missed :wink:
http://www.wikipedia.org/

Don't worry, its part of my lecture: both the negative sides and the positive sides. The negative goes without saying; the positive is that -with a little help from academic scholars- it can become a useful tool. The crux is, in my view, that ancient sources and modern literature must become available. Essentially JSTOR without paying.

There is some E.U. legislation to make force big publishing houses to put their stuff online, but it takes time to have it done. One of the problems is that publishers want to keep the information they rightfully own for themselves. The proposed solution is to allow them an interval of six to twelve months; and to force them to make it public after that period, so that internet articles can start to quote sources.

I think this may be the solution, but it is also possible that the publishers will put their servers in countries with different laws.

Once, it was hoped and feared that information would settle where it felt comfortable: pornography in Holland of course, with its loose laws against pornography; and racist information in the USA, where the First Amendment offers freedom of speech on subjects that are sometimes banned in Europe. Now, it may turn around: information retreats to those parts of the web where it can hide.

[Gaius Decius Aquilius]

There is some E.U. legislation to make force big publishing houses to put Once, it was hoped and feared that information would settle where it felt comfortable: pornography in Holland of course, with its loose laws against pornography; and racist information in the USA, where the First Amendment offers freedom of speech on subjects that are sometimes banned in Europe.

An interesting remark on our relative freedoms. I would feel enlightened if you would expand on this a bit.

Ralph Izard
An American

[Jona Lendering]

There is some E.U. legislation to make force big publishing houses to put Once, it was hoped and feared that information would settle where it felt comfortable: pornography in Holland of course, with its loose laws against pornography; and racist information in the USA, where the First Amendment offers freedom of speech on subjects that are sometimes banned in Europe.

An interesting remark on our relative freedoms. I would feel enlightened if you would expand on this a bit.

If I want to sell porn, it is best to put the server in a country that allows pornography. Putting one's server in Iran is plainly stupid. So, pornography sort of settles in those countries which have -for better or worse- a liberal attitude towards pornography. I once heard that about 20% of all porno is on servers in my own Holland, something I can not check; what I do know is that my city has paid a lot of money to buy names like Amsterdam.Com, which used to be in the hands of pornographers (and a Google run on "porno" + "Amsterdam" will still bring you to a lot of info that's not safe for work).

On the other hand, if I want to say -for example- that the world is run by the Jews, I can best put it online on an Iranian site, and several European Neonazi parties have put their information online in Florida, because on racial issues, the USA allow -again, for better or worse- more freedom of expression. (One of my books, on Roman-Germanic relations in Germania Inferior, has a favorable review on a Dutch Neonazi site hosted in Texas...) In this way, information settles there where it feels at ease.

I hope this helps; I am not looking for a political discussion about the merits of this or that system, I was merely trying to describe how information moves around.

If it does not help, send me a pm, and let's keep this topic apolitical; after all, I need info on poor ancient history websites. :wink: