James Harland
@jmharland
Late Roman & Early Medieval History & Archaeology @unibonn.bsky.social Exploring what happens when empires die. Publications available at
An honour to participate in the panels remembering Walter Goffart @ #IMC2026, organised by @drdragases.bsky.social, speaking alongside those who shaped my understanding of the field. I responded to recent efforts to revive notions of a shared "Germanic cultural koine" via the post-Roman lawcodes.
And what an excellent chapter it is too! You’re a key plank in the argumentative apparatus for my forthcoming lemma on all of this for the Neue Pauly
I don't know where you're getting "curiously biased gender admixture," from because you're certainly not getting it from either Gretzinger et al. 2022, or the Booth et al. 2026 preprint. Nor would the sort of thing you seem to be hinting be implied by the isotopic evidence from Hakenbeck et al. 2025
This habit is so incessant that I even wrote something on it (coming soon to an edited volume near you!)
Pleased to see that the July issue of @historytoday.com is out. I have a small contribution to their "Head to Head" segment on "How did the English arrive in Britain", in which I tried in c. 300 words to get across the complexity of the debate and what new evidence developments do and don't tell us.
It is fun when a new, major popular interpretation in your field implies that you argue something entirely the opposite to what you do. Cf. Higham, 2026 vs Harland 2021, p. 139. I don't mind being disagreed with but I'd prefer to be disagreed with on what I actually argue rather than straw men.
Watching the Pope be more attentive than some theorists to the brutal, material dependency relationships that shape the digital economy and the so-called fourth industrial revolution is quite something.
Making my way through a papyrus from Ravenna at the John Rylands in order to try and work out some teaching prep. and on looking into it further am utterly delighted to learn that it was catalogued and made available in its digital form by none other than @hagenilda.bsky.social !!!
I think it noteworthy that in the response to our response, the original authors attempted to cite an article (Bartholomew 1984) which in fact discusses precisely the gibberish lines in Ammianus which undermine their effort to use him that way.
It is also somewhat odd that the study treats it as striking that a cemetery located in this part of the Balkans (very much, it must be emphasised, still within the frontiers of the Roman Empire) contained people with substantial Anatolian ancestry.
Even if east-west burial was inherently Arian Christian in the 4th c. Balkans (spoiler: it wasn’t), the identification of Arian burials as a sign of Goths, which this study alleges, is sketchy. Among other things, there were two Roman emperors based in the 4th century East who were overt Arians…
Needless to say I went into a bit more detail about problems of these source materials and the assumptions applied to them than could reasonably be done justice in the 500 words of that article (I am glad he got the most important core points of my critique across though...!)
I had thought that the first two days of the HistoGenes wrap up conference had a fancy venue in the Natural History museum, but the Festsaal of the ÖAW shows that one should never underestimate Vienna’s capacity to deliver on baroque grandeur.
After meeting a bunch of deadlines, I’m glad to finally have a chance to properly begin leafing my way through @alexharvv.bsky.social’s wonderful A-Z guide on the lesser known kingdoms of early medieval Britain, which strikes the perfect balance between erudite yet accessible & fun. #medievaltwitter
Greatly enjoyed speaking on "Rethinking Romanness in the Post-Roman West" at the @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social last Wednesday (I forgot to take a picture!). Many thanks indeed to Gerda Heydemann & Babett Edelman-Singer for hosting me and to the audience for many useful (& difficult!) questions.
Publishing a paper with "agriculture" in the abstract has opened up a whole new world of scam conferences for me to get invited to.
Nb. I’m not religious in the least, but my stepdad is involved in conducting the church choir, and I remain rather fond of some traditions nevertheless, carol singing being very much one of them.
Every year for the last 17 years, I’ve gone carol singing with some members of my family and others from some of the local villages to raise money for the maintenance of the local church graveyard. This seems to have been the year that everyone wanted to record it, so I did too.
Ahah, okay no, the first job bit came from Ian Austin, but still. www.theguardian.com/politics/201...