Katherine McDonald

‘Hey’ came before ‘hi,’ and ‘hi' came before ‘hello.’

‘Hi’ is most likely a variant of ‘hey.’

‘Hello’ is not related to either.

Goodbye.

WCC and me - Dr Christine Plastow - WCC-UK As part of our tenth anniversary celebrations, we are writing a series of blog posts in which members tell us about their experiences with the WCC UK. Our fourth interviewee is Dr Christine Plastow. C...

Our newest blog post is now live! Check it out below 🏛️🏛️

wcc-uk.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2026/03/10/w...

Digital Classicist London 2026 call for papers. Papers on any aspect of the ancient or pre-colonial worlds *and* that address innovative digital approaches. Deadline Monday 16th March 2026. blog.stoa.org/archives/4370

This box is full! So in a sense I wasted my money?

Thank you! Sorry, I realised after I sent it that it was all Etsy's fault.

This link isn't working for me! But would love to take a look.

A woman's hand holds a blue packet of staples with the word "Woolworths" on it.

Organising stationery bits and pieces at home to bring into the office and... when did I buy these staples???

The sweet spot!

I've never forgiven them for the time the train was 28 mins late.

Very satisfying (if one must be late).

You know what's GDPR compliant? Normal light bulbs.

I will literally pay extra at this point to not have to use an app.

Testing out the new college coffee machine, and someone has just started playing the piano next door. So civilised.

Do need to get back to work now though.

Erm... 😮

I also power down dramatically around 4pm, just when lots of people suddenly get going. Good we're all different, etc.

Anyway, this is a note to self to stop doing mindless admin very quickly at 9am, when it could definitely be done slowly in the afternoon instead.

I think so too!

The important thing is to know oneself. I know people whose best writing time is at 5-7am. To be fair I have not tried this but I doubt I'd make it work.

Also, definitely not five days a week or anything, let's not get ridiculous.

I think I have to face that I only have around three (3) really good research/writing hours in me per day, and that those hours basically have to happen between about 8.30 and 12.30.

After that, I need lunch, a walk and mindless admin only.

I think you are right. But the maps are a terrible idea - talk about false precision! If you're only giving a city/site, just leave it at that.

Argh, Clauss-Slaby database has undergone some kind of interface redesign...

Yes, expectations and time allotted need to align, for sure!

My full digital reconstruction of the Mithras ‘tauroctony’ (Mithras slaying the bull) statue group, including colors and patterns on the god’s eastern style clothing. His tunic is red, with a wide Greek wave pattern border in gold against blue; his leggings have a blue-green strip down the middle with gold borders and a repeating pattern of stars/suns and moons; the patterned strip from his leggings is repeated down the center of his red Phrygian cap. His blue gold-edged cape has gold stars in the pattern of the pleiades. A yellow dog and orange and yellow snake lick the blood coming from the wound in the bull’s shoulder, and a yellow scorpion is draining the bull’s testicles. Yikes!

The fresco in the S. Maria Capua Vetere Mithraeum, showing Mithras in his colorful outfit stabbing the white bull in the shoulder, with a dog and snake licking up the flowing blood. A scorpion is draining the bull’s testicles. Mithras’ assistants, Cautes and Cautopates (who are dressed identically to him, including the Phrygian cap) stand on either side, one holding a torch upwards, the other holding it downwards. Sol and Luna are in the sky above. A very colorful fresco, photographed by Carole Raddato.

For those of you who have never seen it, a while back I did a digital reconstruction of the Mithras ‘tauroctony’ statue in the British Museum, using the colors and patterns from the fresco of the S. Maria Capua Vetere Mithraeum. #polychromy 🏺 2/

Fresco 📸 Carole Raddato

It's part of the reason I left Exeter in the end - the colleagues and students were amazing, but what they were asking us to achieve in research was not plausible in the time they made available.

This makes me feel like Wikimedia Commons is zooming to the rescue. Which it is.

I'm printing something out and no one can stop me.

Met Museum every time 🙂

I only managed to turn up for the last 45 mins of this, but so glad I did! #WCCWiki

Is it really that expensive to run? I just don't understand the thinking.

Very elongated statue in bronze of a young man in a toga holding a plate.

Love this 3rd century Etruscan statuette, known as Hinthial, discovered in 2010 and published 2019. italics.art/en/tip/the-s...