Eleanor Konik @eleanorkonik@scholar.social

Hello, Scholars (& Friends!)

My undergrad degree was in philosophy and I passed the bar exam in 2012 (oof) so now I teach (yay). My interests are broad and varied; I enjoy reading academic papers on random topics like feudalism and the role of priestesses in ancient Rome.

I'm working on an epic fantasy novel inspired by the environmental crises in northeast Africa, but I won't talk much about the writing process nearly as often as I'll squee about obscure research dives.

#introductions

Super amused that my article about how academic investigations into how the ancient Phoenicians really viewed THEMSELVES is doing such good numbers that it's now my most popular history post of all time.

https://eleanorkonik.com/ancient-identities-complex-cultures/

@bookandswordblog saw this over at r/AskHistorians and thought of you immediately:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p0ecgf/how_frequent_was_the_use_of_swords_in_actual/

It's a discussion about how often swords were *actually* used in ancient & medieval warfare. Apparently they were mostly "backup" weapons since they could be useful for so many other contexts than just on the battlefield.

Alright friends, I've hit a wall in my research so I'm throwing this out there:

Anybody got any references, stories or anecdotes about ancient/medieval mercenaries + marriage? Bonus points for true stories about down-on-their-luck or retired mercenaries & soldiering companies and what they did after the war was over?

Bonus bonus points for information about ancient war brides.

I can't get a good starting point just using search terms and it's driving me nuts.

@bookandswordblog Or maybe it was about permanent armies? Argh :(

@bookandswordblog I once read an article that talked about the pros and cons of a professional army for the society that hosts it. Was it you that posted it, or was it Scott Alexander, or someone else? I can't find it now :(

@bookandswordblog

Hey Sean, did you see this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/oemmpc/in_387_bc_the_persians_funded_a_spartan_fleet_to/ (question was: In 387 B.C., the Persians funded a Spartan fleet to destroy an Athenian fleet, which the Persians had previously funded to destroy another Spartan fleet, which the Persians had previously funded to destroy another Athenian fleet. Was this brilliant geopolitics or indecision and a waste of money?)

You probably already knew about it, but I'm over here with my jaw on the floor laughing and shaking my head.

This crowd seems like the sorts of people who might ever wind up interested in running a newsletter off of ghost -- @bookandswordblog I know we talked about it once -- so I wanted to share this writeup about my experiences self-hosting a newsletter using Ghost.

The TLDR is that it's very good at one very specific thing, but as a "wordpress replacement" or good way to run a free newsletter for nontechnical users, it's pretty overhyped.

https://eleanorkonik.com/ghost-my-experiences-running-a-self-hosted-newsletter/

Can somebody who knows more about #horses than I do explain the "natural" + "gelding" part of this statement from Taylor, et al. in "Early Pastoral Economies and Herding Transitions in Eastern Eurasia"

"free-range horses organize themselves in their natural social structure, with a lead stallion & a harem of mares, geldings, & juveniles."

context: https://eleanorkonik.com/early-pastoral-economies/

In peak nerd, I wrote an article analyzing the different theories about how the domestication of the horse came about, and whether different academics think horses pulled carts before they were ridden.

I have no real expertise to lean on personally, but some arguments being made strike me as relatively bonkers.

Particularly "experienced horse riders are wrong because they are blinded by their knowledge," lol.

https://eleanorkonik.com/early-pastoral-economies/

Can anybody recommend alternatives to services like semantic scholar and ResearchRabbit, and https://connectedpapers.com — I seem to remember one that had more of a tree-like structure but I can't find it now. Trying to set up a good workflow for discovering relevant documents. Filters for things like language and ability to read the abstract inside the program (and click to open the doi) are preferred features.

Thanks!

@bookandswordblog awhile back I came across Miles Cameron's Traitor Son Cycle thanks to you and your blog and we talked a little bit about how much I loved it, but I finally got around to writing a proper gushing review about the parts I loved the most:

https://eleanorkonik.com/the-traitor-son-cycle-by-miles-cameron/

I was recently interviewed about my personal knowledge management system, and one of the questions I got asked was whether I would ever teach my students how to use obsidian.md for notetaking, since it's the program I use and I get a lot of value out of it, and it scales really well for studying and academia and such.

The answer I gave in the interview was a resounding "no," lol, but it turns out I had a lot more to say on the topic:

https://eleanorkonik.com/the-difficulties-of-teaching-notetaking/