Betsy Bevis
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vulpicula.bsky.social
Betsy Bevis
@vulpicula.bsky.social
1.6K followers 2.7K following 180 posts
Archaeology & Art History. She/her. Late Antiquity. Gaul, Hispania, etc. Mosaics of questionable quality. Villas no one has heard of (yet). Premodern textiles. Cats, cooking, knitting. First-gen, Neurospicy. Impossible love child of Ms. Frizzle & Mae West.
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vulpicula.bsky.social
I leave very soon and for my annual stint at the excavation of a Roman villa in Portugal (the Santa Susana Archaeological Project.)

Watson will not be tagging along, so while I pack he is making sure that I have an adequate supply of cat hair on my stuff for the next several weeks.
An orange tabby cat with white paws, chest, and muzzle lounges among orange packing cubes in a partially-packed suitcase. He is grooming so enthusiastically that he has turned one of his ears inside out.
May 28, 2025 at 4:42 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Watson takes his TA duties seriously. 😉🐈
A ginger tabby cat with white splashes on his face and white paws and chest lounges on a stack of Roman art tests. The head of the 1st century BCE sculpture called The Tivoli General is visible just below his outstretched paw.
April 23, 2025 at 11:28 AM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Midterm season — grading is piling up, and I’m presenting a conference paper in a couple of weeks, various things I’ve promised to organize are heating up. I have downtime scheduled for 4:15 pm on the 14th and for about 20 hours on the 22nd. 🤪
View of a terribly messy desk. Organizational supplies, to do lists, a tea mug and teabags, research materials, and spinning supplies for a class on ancient textiles are piled haphazardly. The interior of my mind is much the same.
March 6, 2025 at 8:42 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Just an adorable cat photo.
An orange and white cat sleeps on top of an open cookbook with one paw tucked under his chin.
February 13, 2025 at 1:57 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Today was the official start of the spinning project in my class Textiles, Gender, and Labor in the Ancient Mediterranean. I got to bring the _fun_ supplies to class. 😊🐑☁️🧶
A pile of supplies for hand spinning wool and making hand spindles, including prepared wool roving, completed spindles, and wooden wheels used for spindle whorls. A spindle with a terracotta whorl and a small amount of spun wool.
February 4, 2025 at 11:14 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
One of my students brought me a tiny replica of a Mycenaean psi figurine from their semester in Greece. I’m feeling very appreciated today. 🥰
A tiny terracotta figurine, representing a woman with her arms raised, stands in front of a stack of post-it notes.
January 24, 2025 at 11:18 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Io Sol Invictus….. or whichever deity this mosaic was meant to represent. Or all of them — gleeful syncretism, FTW!

(The Christ-Helios Mossic, from the ceiling of Tomb M in the Vatican necropolis. ca. 3rd century CE.)
A partial mosaic showing a young man with tousled curls, a radiate halo, an orb in one hand, and a flowing cloak riding a four-horse chariot across a metallic gold background. The scene is bordered with a thick wreath of green grape vines. Is he Christ? Is he Helios? Is he Dionysus? Is he a deified emperor or Alexander the Great? The iconography draws from all of them.
December 22, 2024 at 6:25 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
My favorite ancient hog!

Terracotta oil container in the form of a boar.
Italo-Greek, ca. 325-275 BCE.
RISD Museum 1996.98
A small terracotta pitcher, originally used for oil, in the shape of a wild boar. He is curling is lips up over his tusks like he is trying to look mean, but his ears are back and his little rear trotters are tucked up under him like he’s shy, so the effect is funny and adorable.
December 5, 2024 at 12:14 AM
vulpicula.bsky.social
I visited family for a couple of weeks and now I’m not allowed out of paw’s reach.

#VelcroCat
#NoTraveling
An orange tabby cat with a white belly and socks sleeps possessively on his person’s arm. She’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
December 1, 2024 at 3:28 AM
vulpicula.bsky.social
A wooden board on a red tablecloth covered with cheeses, sausages, cured fish, fruit, nuts, and pickles.
November 28, 2024 at 6:49 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Aaaaand I forgot the pics.
A jenga tower of butter, waiting to become a giant dessert. A birthday cake with a lit candle is covered with buttercream frosting and raspberries. The decoration is messy but it tasted delicious.
November 24, 2024 at 5:40 AM
vulpicula.bsky.social
#Classics and #LateAntiquity scholars, I am organizing the Society for Late Antiquity’s paper session at the 2026 SCS annual meeting. The abstract deadline is 2/14/24. See the CFP for details.

Full CFP below (feel free to share) and also at classicalstudies.org/annual-meeti...

#AncientSky 🏺
Page 1 of an academic call for papers. White text on blue, with a blue grid in the background and white line drawing of elements of classical architecture, intended to look like blueprints. The text is also available at https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/technical-and-professional-knowledge-late-antiquity-society-late-antiquity Page 2 of an academic call for papers. White text on blue, with a blue grid in the background and white line drawing of elements of classical architecture, intended to look like blueprints. The text is also available at https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/technical-and-professional-knowledge-late-antiquity-society-late-antiquity
November 20, 2024 at 12:05 AM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Grading at my local brewery sometimes comes with bonus dog time. ❤️
A large, chestnut brown Golden Retriever sticks his head out from under a table in hope of pets and attention. The photographer is happy to oblige.
November 18, 2024 at 1:28 AM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Aaaaaaand I forgot to add the screenshot from the trailer to the first skeet of the thread. 🙈
Screenshot from the trailer for The Return. All rights belong to the creator, I just grabbed it off of YouTube https://youtu.be/tLlcIfmqcPw?si=XZBWoTk7M7DgJTEx Description: in a dimly lit close-shot a woman sits at a horizontal loom, weaving (or un-weaving) a large, dark red fabric.
November 17, 2024 at 8:50 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
8/? There are several ancient images that show women working together at a warp-weighted loom to produce an extra wide fabric, but in the absence of a partner, a weaver would need to walk back and forth in front of the loom to do the work of making a large textile.
Metropolitan Museum of Art 31.11.10 Terracotta Lekythos attributed to the Amasis Painter (550-530 BC). A pottery oil flask with black figures painted on an orange background. In the middle, two women stand at a warp-weighted loom, sharing the job of weaving a large textile. To the left and right other women are performing other tasks of spinning and weaving.
November 17, 2024 at 8:37 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
The day I teach symposium and kalos vases is always fraught with awkwardness, but the intense double takes when I show this psykter are always worth it.

(ID and©️in the alt-text)

#AncientSky #GreekArt #Satyrs #OriginalPartyAnimals
Red-figure wine cooler (psykter) with bearded satyrs, signed by Doris as painter. ca 490 BCE. British Museum 1886,0606.7 © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
November 15, 2024 at 6:24 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
#FrescoFriday Gorgeous frescoes and mosaics on display in the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano in Mérida, Spain.
Nearly complete Roman frescoes and mosaics on display as if the were in a house in the National Museum of Roman Art in Mérida, Spain. In the background a woman looks at another wall installation of fresco fragments.
November 15, 2024 at 2:07 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Sometimes I draw silly things while teaching, mid-semester edition. (Part 2)

Very silly things I draw while teaching, mid-semester edition.

Differences between black figure and red figure vase painting. This might be clearer with a whiteboard than a chalkboard. 🧐🏺

#teaching #ancientart
November 14, 2024 at 12:28 AM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Sometimes I draw silly things while teaching, mid-semester edition. (Part 1)
1. Reviewing the Doric order with the temple of Artemis Corcyra from Corfu.
2. I swear that’s supposed to be Medusa.
3. Hooray for modern technology!
4. Teaching Etruscan style temples.

#teaching #ancientart
A chalk drawing of a (very simplified!) gorgon and panthers in a temple pediment. A chalk drawing of a Gorgon and panthers vaguely like the pediment from the temple of Artemis Corcyra on Corfu, with added digital artwork to make it more finished. Chalk drawing of Etruscan style temples in plan and side view, surrounded by notes. A chalk drawing of a Doric style Greek temple.
November 14, 2024 at 12:23 AM
vulpicula.bsky.social
I used a gift card to a tea shop that I got recently, and my order arrived yesterday. The giant bag in back is 8oz of loose leaf tea. In hindsight I must admit that I had no real clue how much that actually was.

#teaparty
January 14, 2024 at 12:07 AM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Classics friends, feel free to share!

Someone who works on Greek novels left a copy of the Loeb Daphnis and Chloe in a women’s restroom at the conference hotel. It looks like they are actively working on it.

I have turned it into the hotel lost and found — hope they get it back!

#aiascs2024
January 7, 2024 at 9:01 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
December 5, 2023 at 9:14 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
I enjoy teaching, and mostly like my students but NGL, kind of feeling like this today

(For those who have not watched Last Crusade a million times, that is Indiana Jones bailing on a horde of students by sneaking out his office window. …. My office does not have windows….)
November 1, 2023 at 5:24 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
This is the second full blackboard of the class meeting. I am completely incapable of communication without drawing.
A classroom blackboard covered in notes and drawings about Ancient Greek archaeology.
October 14, 2023 at 8:05 PM
vulpicula.bsky.social
Midterm grades are due next week. Fort Academe has expanded to a redoubt in my living room. Watson is playing the part of a vocal and demanding second lieutenant.

#proflife #kitty #felinesupervisor
October 3, 2023 at 11:17 AM