Ancient Warfare Magazine with Jasper Oorthuys and Murray Dahm

In this episode, Alice and Nicolas interview the editors of Ancient Warfare Magazine - Jasper Oorthuys and Murray Dahm. Founded in 2007, Ancient Warfare examines the military history of many different ancient cultures in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, with a particular focus on Greece and Rome from around 1200BC to 600AD. It has thousands of readers all around the world – and thousands tune in to the Ancient Warfare podcast. We ask Jasper and Murray what their readers are looking for and what goes into the creation of each issue. That gets us chatting about the enduring appeal of ancient military history, the challenges of reconstructing what ancient warfare was really like, and what we gain from learning about and trying to visualise ancient warfare.

Among other questions, we asked:

• Does Ancient Warfare Magazine foreground some aspects of war more than others? What aspects does it cover less often, and why?
• How do the editors balance readers' expectations and habits of visualising ancient warfare with what their authors want to communicate and new advances in research?
• What role do illustrations play alongside textual descriptions in bringing ancient warfare to life for modern readers? And how much creative interpretation goes into the magazine's artistic reconstructions of ancient warfare?
• What factors influence modern reconstructions or visualisations of ancient warfare?
• What challenges and responsibilities does the magazine industry/popular press have to think about when representing ancient warfare in the 21st century?

We hope you enjoy the episode!

For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. If you want to find out more about Ancient Warfare Magazine, you can look up their latest issues here and listen to their podcast here.

For more information about individuals and their projects, access to resources and more, please have a look on the University of St Andrews Visualising War website.  

Music composed by Jonathan Young
 Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin