New Developments October 2

Not much is going on. I'm still collecting material for a new chapter about William of Rubruck. I have to describe the Mongol society as this traveler witnessed.

My page on Scriggler has reached over 12 K readers. My platform is growing in spite of the fact that I don't publish new articles. My publisher advised me not to upload the whole book on the web. You can read about nine chapters at
 https://scriggler.com/Profile/michael_baizerman
If I write some notes on other topics, I will add them to my list.

I finished the fourth leg of FutureLearn course "The Archeology of Portus". Week 4 was devoted to the development of the port in the III-IV centuries AD. In 337 AD it became a town. We explored Building 5 which is supposed to be a ship shed measuring 240 m in length and 18 m in height. It had 12 bays for ships of various widths, from 4.5 m to 20 m. The researchers are sure that its initial function was to repair and build ships. The ship shed opens both on the Claudian and Trajan basins. We also studied a copper coin minted during the tenure of Emperor Constantine during the 320s-330s AD. We understood how much info can be obtained from the image and recording on the coin and that part of this data can be restored from special digital photography.

I am still confused about scientific methods used in archaeology but they add a lot to understanding of the past events.