I’m sorry that I didn’t comment on your interest in medieval archaeology and Greek & Roman history. I didn’t because it is ubiquitous and I didn’t know where to begin. But I do have a funny medieval history story. I was in Scotland this summer and among other things, I learned about the role of John Knox in helping to give birth to modern democracy. Edinburgh served as a laboratory for democracy in medieval times. Adam Smith, the “father of economics”, wrote “The Wealth of Nations” there in the 1700s, establishing the foundations for modern capitalism, which is central to modern democracies. Before him, John Knox, a major reformer in Christianity in the late 1500s, founded the Presbyterian Church. The major change in Presbyterianism is that it was democratic. The people chose their own ministers. Rather than having them appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s impossible to overstate the significance of this, given the role of the Christian Church in medieval Europe. If someone could introduce democratic ideas into the Christian Church, they could introduce democracy anywhere.
I was in Edinburgh for the better part of a week. We toured all of the major sites in Edinburgh. One of them was Saint Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh’s equivalent to Westminster Cathedral in London. Many important figures in the history of Scotland are buried at St. Giles. We were told that we could find the burial site for John Knox at parking spot #23 in the car park! No joke. There is a small plaque embedded in the black top at #23 marking the spot as his final resting place.
All of Edinburgh looked like it was the set for a Harry Potter movie. We did take a short bus trip out of town to visit the medieval Roslyn Chapel, made famous in the Dan Brown book & movie, The DaVinci Code”. My favorite archaeological site was Skara Brae, a 5000 year old Neolithic village way up on the Orkney Islands with nearby stone circles and a chambered cairn. Yes, Skara Brae is older than the pyramids and older than Stonehenge but they had an early version of a plumbing system to remove human waste. The village is also a potential site for marine archaeology as much it was destroyed by erosion from the Atlantic. The neighboring bay is believed to be the site of more of the village but it is now underwater.