Getting your goat

I'm copyediting a book for Lockwood Press, Cattle, Sheep, Goats, and Pigs in Pharaonic Egypt: A View from the Herd (it's not on the website yet), that will be appearing next year. The final paragraph in chapter 12, on goats, is too good not to share:

I include labor under goats because a recent article appeared by Donna Sutliff (2019) that suggests that goats may have been domesticated for use as pack animals, or, at the very least, their ability to carry loads was quickly appreciated and used in the Neolithic. Sutliff provides only two modern examples of the use of goats as pack animals. The first is in Tibet and the second in North America where, according to Sutliff, hiking with pack goats is a popular “American Pastime.” She cites several authors who have dismissed the idea and I would like to join them.

For the record: I can't see goats being used as pack animals!

How free are you, really?

Identity and personhood are complex ideas that may have been quite different in the ancient past. Often, our contemporary inclination is to think of ourselves as individuals who operate with agency and intent, yet our actions, and consequently our various identities and personhood, are formed and directed as much by consciously and unconsciously inculcated social rules and norms as by freewill. Identity and personhood are relationally constructed, socially constrained.—His Good Name: Essays on Identity and Self-Presentation in Ancient Egypt in Honor of Ronald J. Leprohon, xix

It's official!

I announced in Ancient News that I would be leaving Eisenbrauns/PSU Press at the end of November. Today, it was officially announced that I have begun working for Lockwood Press. Below is the announcement that was posted to the Agade list via Jack Sasson.