Gladius, a journal that covers warfare from the ancient Near East until the 18th Century in the Americas, offers free downloads on articles older than 6 months. About every other issue seems to have an article that is relevant for the study of the ancient Near East. Here are a few that interested me:
| The tactical development of Achaemenid cavalry | 5-18 Abstract PDF |
| Alexander K. Nefedkin |
| Deux archers assyriens à Mari (Syrie). Esquisse sur l’introduction du fer au Proche-Orient ancien | 11-25 Abstract PDF |
| Juan Luis Montero Fenollós |
| The Greek military camp in the ten thousand´s army | 29-56 Abstract PDF |
| Mauricio G. Alvárez Rico |
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I saw Gladius come over the Agade list. Very cool.
I forwarded the link on to a mechanical engineering student who is taking my Egypt and Near East history class. (He also took my Ancient Judaism class last semester.) He loves military history. (And he really enjoyed talking about the siege of Jerusalem and Masada in the first century last semester.) After looking through the Gladius archive, he found the article on Persian calvary and will be using it in his term paper this semester. . . . You have to love open access journals and resources, no?
This student is fun to have in class. A couple of weeks ago we studied Lachish from both ends of the evidence: the Lachish excavations and Sennacherib’s palace reliefs (essentially Ussishkin’s stuff). While looking at the reliefs, he noticed the Assyrian archers stood behind what looked like reed shields that were taller than the archers and sort of curved over their heads, making a kind of canopy above them. This intrigued him. We talked after class like usual about the issue and threw around the idea of how one could test wicker shields, etc. Later that day I received word about summer research money available for undergraduate research. So my student and I talked some more. . . . If everything comes together, we’re thinking about doing some experimental archaeology in the summer of 2009. The task: to determine how one might weave a wicker shield to stop an arrow from a double-recurve bow. There are lots of problems, variables, and plain-old unknowns, but I think it’ll be fun. I’m sort of psyched about it!
The open access movement is just fantastic, it opens up scholarship to a much wider audience. Plus, when the articles and books are in PDF it is very easy to just email someone a link rather than photocopy and stuff.
Your student sounds great–it makes teaching really rewarding when we have bright and enthusiastic students. That would be a really fun project, maybe you all could video your tests and put them on YouTube.
I do have a few students that provide solace, so to speak, when so many of my other students just want to go through the motions so they can get into dental or pharmaceutical or business school. General education classes, my classes, to these other students are a burden and an obstacle. Just yesterday a student told me she resents having to take classes that have nothing to do with her major(!). Another student told me (yesterday) that my class was standing between her and professional school. (Yesterday was not fun.) Both of these students were stressed because the Biology and Chemistry departments are making enormous demands on the students in the last two weeks of the semester. Of course, my students don’t blame the science classes for their stress; they’re really important. No, I’m to blame since my class is just an obstacle. It’s so very tiresome.
By the way, the guy that likes military history . . . also likes to use four letter words in class. Student: “So the Assyrians just said fu*k this, built a ramp up to the walls, and kicked the sh*t out of the Israelites at Lachish?” Me: “Well, that’s one way of saying it.” He is getting better this semester about using the appropriate register of discourse. I keep telling him that it’s important to learn when that kind of profanity is inappropriate. It could cost him a client or a job in the future!
So I guess this has turned into gripes from the forefront of teaching Freshmen . . . .