In Marta Alberti’s 2018 article about spindle-whorls, are her inferences about low- and high-status users, and about performance of gender in the Roman military context, validly derived and historically useful? If you were on a committee tasked with allocating limited research funding, what degree of priority would you wish to assign to creating a ‘complete catalogue and typology of Roman spindle whorls along Hadrian’s Wall and in Roman Britain’, as she advises?

Initial Bibliography

Marta Alberti (2018), ‘The Construction, Use, and Discard of Female Identities: Interpreting Spindle Whorls at Vindolanda and Corbridge’ Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal 1(1): 2, pp. 1–16, DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/traj.241

James Balme (2010), ‘Spindle Whorls of Great Britain’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6TGuypgXms

Christine McLeod (2012), ‘How to Spin Yarn Using a Drop Spindle’ National Trust for Scotland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKAJTKvl0nE

You will be adding substantially to the bibliography by the time your essay is completed.

Please note that essay form is required. Point form or extended notes are not good enough. Give a bibliography at the end. The word limit (1000 words) includes footnotes but not bibliography. Footnotes should be given, and should conform to the rules laid out in ‘Essay Presentation & Conventions: Style Guide’, which is available from the following link: https://mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_ancient_history/current_students/program_information/

Submit this minor essay via the turnitin link in iLearn.

Two extra hints:

1. Don’t give strings of identical footnotes. Whoever is marking your essay will not be impressed by you scoring fifty footnotes, or even a century. If you are referring more than once to the same page of the same book, consider grouping reference into one footnote, probably at the end of the paragraph. Or if something is so good that it has to be referred to four or five times, why not copy it in as a quotation, then add your discussion?

2. Don’t pile up footnote markers in the same place.

This is not Wikipedia.

Place each footnote marker right after the statement of fact which the reference proves to be correct. If you want to place multiple references at the end of a sentence, put them into a single footnote.

In-class seminar

At the beginning of the semester you will be given a topic for an in-class seminar, and allocated a date and time. These seminars will be given two per lecture hour, and each seminar talk should take between fifteen and twenty minutes to deliver. You may use a powerpoint show or equivalent if you wish, or just speak to the class if you prefer. Questions and discussion will follow each seminar talk.

Topics may be biographical (reflecting on the life and achievements [including weaknesses] of a historian, whether living or dead), or based on a historical question. Whichever kind of topic you are allocated, please direct your discussion to themes relevant to what history is and how one should write history, including ancient history, in the twenty-first century.

In  addition to a topic, you will be allocated a date and time for your presentation. This appointment is not flexible, and extensions are impossible. In case of illness, put in a request in ask.mq for special consideration.

You may agree with a fellow-student to exchange appointment slots. Any agreement of this kind must be with the consent of both sides, and the unit convener will not be facilitating exchanges of slots or helping in any way with making the arrangements.

How to handle your topic

Your topic will be given you with minimal help: no bibliography, no hints about why it might be an important topic from the viewpoint of Historiography and Ancient History.  Some topics will relate clearly to the study and writing of ancient history, others will be of more general application, and a minority will be principally modern in focus.

There will be some limited possibility of swapping the topic you are first allocated. How easy it will be to exchange for a topic you like better will depend to some degree on final enrolment numbers for this unit.

You should prepare a fifteen- to twenty-minute talk (as a rough guide, this means 2,000 to 2,500 spoken words) to give to the class, and be ready to answer questions. As part of the talk, you may show a Powerpoint show or equivalent using the AV facilities which the classroom has got―but the Powerpoint show is not obligatory.

Aim to go beyond a factual summary, and comment on what can be learnt about historiography from consideration of the person, or the book or article, you are speaking about. By all means disagree with the methods and/or priorities in evidence in the person or the work which you are examining. Give reasons for any opinions you voice, whether in the way of praise or dissent.

Assessment

Your presentation will receive a written response from the unit convener (not given immediately) and a mark out of 40, and it will be worth 40% of the final mark for the unit. No written text need be handed in: the mark is for the talk and the answers to questions.

Major essay

Your major essay will be a developed version of the study first presented as an in-class talk.

If having given your in-class talk you find that its topic has exhausted its potential and you want another, ask the unit convener: it will be possible to negotiate an amended or completely new topic. Be cautious about asking to do this:  it is a labour-intensive option.

Otherwise, please develop your in-class talk into a fully-footnoted major essay (maximum length 3,000 words) with bibliography, on a historiographical theme linked to your original topic.

Please note that essay form is required in this case. Point form or extended notes are not good enough. Give a bibliography at the end. The word limit includes footnotes but not bibliography. Footnotes should be given, and should conform to the rules laid out in ‘Essay Presentation & Conventions: Style Guide’, which is available from the following link: https://mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_ancient_history/current_students/program_information/

Submit this essay through the turnitin link in iLearn.

Two extra hints:

1. Don’t give strings of identical footnotes. A marker will not be impressed by you scoring fifty footnotes, or even a century. If you are referring more than once to the same page of the same book, consider grouping reference into one footnote, probably at the end of the paragraph. Or if something is so good that it has to be referred to four or five times, why not copy it in as a quotation, then add your discussion?

2. Don’t pile up footnote markers in the same place.

This is not Wikipedia.

Place each footnote marker right after the statement of fact which the reference proves to be correct. If you want to place multiple references at the end of a sentence, put them into a single footnote.