Last night a dear friend preached a sermon that he told me drew on two term papers I’d written and shared with him. It’s given me such a strange and wonderful sensation of—intimacy and appreciation and value and horror
It’s a funny place, divinity school. I’ve watched in real time research inspire sermons and sermons drive essay topics and sermons and research drive activism and activism raise new questions back around.
All of the quotes are just me asking myself questions
A page of the 6th-century St Augustine Gospels manuscript featuring twelve square panels organized into a grid; images in each panel features scenes of the Passion narrative.
Entering Holy Week thinking a lot about this page from the St Augustine Gospels.
Few writers were as careful with the circulation of their work as Constantine Cavafy. Langdon Hammer on a new biography of the elusive poet.
March 26, 375 CE: Honoria, a 30-year-old mom is buried in the city of Salona (Croatia). She is buried in the sarcophagus with her parvula ("little girl") who died earlier—likely after childbirth (CIL III, 9506). mappola.eu/index.php/20... 0.5-2% of Roman women died in childbirth (versus 0.01 today).
The landing page for an object lot in the American Numismatic Society database, with provenance metadata, a map showing the geographic distribution of the lot, and a paginated list of specimens from the lot.
The landing page for Edward T. Newell in the American Numismatic Society database, with provenance metadata for all associated object losts, a map showing the geographic distribution of the lots, and a paginated list of specimens from related lots.
Coming soon to the American Numismatic Society database: provenance records for object lots, with distribution maps of the lot contents and a list of associated objects. It is possible to drill down into entities (eg Edward T. Newell) to gain a big picture view of their collecting/donating history.
Many thanks!!
Today, the final day of spring break at the end of my master’s program, marks the start of the final countdown—6 weeks until everything is due, 8 weeks until graduation. Chaos and joy abounding!
The cover art appended to the video is a bit bizarre...but, here is a talk I gave to the American Numismatic Society last week!
It was a joy to present some of the material in the Society's collection in the Long Table series, a forum that I was part when it first started in 2020. Full-circle!
Thank you!!
Some big news: I've accepted an offer to start a PhD with Yale Religious Studies! But first! I've also accepted to do a one-year graduate internship at the Getty Villa. I’m excited—and grateful—for continued opportunity to research ancient Mediterranean religion & material culture in different ways.
upper register of lower half of Joseph dreaming and relaying his dream to his parents in vividly-painted page 29 (folio 15) of the Vienna Genesis. On the left, Joseph reclines on a bed looking away and the above him, stars and the sun and moon shine, the latter two personified; on the right, Joseph talks to his parents, who emphatically lean in to hear him, his brothers gathers and gossip behind them. Some of them wear high-colored knees socks in blue and red.
do you ever just poke around at the digital facsimile Vienna Genesis for hours and hours? it that just me?? the full digitized VIENNA GENESIS can be right at your fingertips:
viewer.onb.ac.at/106F8E6A/
Bloodstone amulet with image of Jesus Christ crucified. Greek text surrounding.
Gold medallion with Greek text and image of St Thomas touching the crucifixion side wounds of Jesus.
A view of the ambulatory of the Church of Santa Costanza in Rome: once a tomb for an imperial family member over the catacombs of St Agnes, eventually it was dedicated as a church.
7. Now that my semester has officially finished(!), I can add that I wrote 5 term papers about religion & late antiquity this year. My topics included the famous BM crucifixion amulet; a gold medallion with St Thomas; liturgy and Santa Costanza; Eucharist fraction; and Samaritans in late Roman laws.
Man in jacket (me) standing in a very formal looking wood paneled wall. A projector has a Slide with text on it reading haptic and visual pistis in late antique amulets Yale medieval lunch colloquium December 9 2025 Austin Goodwin Andrews and my email. The background is a detail of a gold amulet showing st Thomas touching the side wound of Christ
6. I gave two papers this year, which were both thrilling & terrifying. I presented on epigraphy, icons, and frames at Mt Sinai for the Newman Seminar in Late Ancient & Byzantine Cultures and, just yesterday(!), I talked about 6th century amulets at the Yale Medieval Lunch Colloquium
Cover of unfinished Christian: ritual objects and silent subjects in late antiquity by Georgia Frank. Cover image is a portion of a late antique ivory Pyxis with a representation of the biblical myrrh bearing women performing liturgical roles censing an empty tomb that also looks like a late antique Christian altar.
Cover of ancient Christians and the power of curses: magic, aesthetics, and justice by Laura Salah Nasrallah. A photo on the cover is a sculpture called Mourning for Maurice, a face made of carved wood and nails. Nasrallah describes the work as: “Deep, large, oval eyes closed; the face retains its rhythmic chisel marks against wood. A pattern of shallow canals radiates under and out from the lower lip, and the forehead is smoothed downward with vertical ridges. The face, tilting right, is surrounded by darker wood that is the bed for dark, thick, hammered nails that form the hair and beard.”
Cover of Gender Violence in late antiquity: male fantasies and the Christian imagination by Jennifer Barry. Cover image is a painting “The Nightmare” by Henry Fuseli, which features a woman laid back and a nightmarish creature sitting on her
Cover of Cambridge elements in early Christian literature: The author in early Christian literature by Chance E Bonar. Cover art is fragmentary papyrus.
5. co-organizing the Late Antiquity Reading Group the last few years has been a real joy—and this last year was especially exceptional with readings from @jennisifire.bsky.social @chancebonar.bsky.social @lsnasrallah.bsky.social, Georgia Frank, Ignazio Tantillo, & John Matthews
Broken sea snail shells in the ground
4. Speaking of imperial purple, not a day has gone by since May 3 that I haven’t thought just a little bit about the 5th/6th c. purple dye production center at Andriake (ancient port of Myra in Lycia/s. Turkey). Excavators estimate 300 cubic meters of sea snail shell debris!!!!
Purple imperial stone sarcophagus in Istanbul.
3. I think I may well be in the “top 1%” of late antique sarcophagi observers. In Marseille, Arles, Rome, the Vatican, Istanbul, and NYC, I spent dozens of hours this year looking at these stone burial boxes. The imperial porphyry sarcophagi at the Istanbul Archaeological Museums were spectacular!
Rolling hills above an excavation site (the outline of foundations of c 6th century buildings
2. Tied for 2nd are the new late antique finds uncovered at the excavations in Stromboli (Italy) and Golemo Gradište, Konjuh (N Macedonia). These projects continue to teach me so much about rituals sites in peculiar regions—and I’m grateful to work with incredible teams in such wonderful locations
There are so many glorious late antique features of this trip that probably all each deserve their own review (icons! doors! roof beams!), but I might have to come back to this [including playing 20 questions on the bus with entries from the Age of Spirituality catalogue]
Monastery in desert with mountain background
1. visiting the monastery of St Catherine’s at Mt Sinai for the feast of the Nativity in January was the wildest way to start my year. An easy #1
A man (me) standing in a late antique baptismal font in Stobi
“my year in late antiquity” wrapped 2025
