I sometimes wonder if structured deposition helped people deal with trauma in prehistory...

Crossing the Tamar earlier this evening

Late summer evening at the Gorsedd stone circle in Ruthin, constructed for the 1973 National Eisteddfod #StandingStoneSunday

It's H.G. Wells' birthday: 100 yrs ago, when he turned 59, a generation after his most famous novels, the press wasn't sure what to make of him. The Mirror found him less than consistent: "All of us may agree with some of the things that he says… for he changes his mind rather frequently" #hgwells 🧵

Can anyone explain why the Government is still doing most of its communications through a website whose owner is now openly rallying the far right to trigger a violent insurrection on our streets?

If I’m going to be overcharged at the airport, might as well do it properly…

Slightly diminish a book: The War of the Wolds

It was amazing to be in the audience for that - 27 mins for the whole thing compares rather favourably with the time it took me just to get through Book 4 at school!

Standing stone ware - a Neolithic-inspired souvenir from Denbighshire by @kirstibrownceramics (on Instagram) #StandingStoneSunday

“She had spectacles instead of … glasses” writes H.G. Wells, and now I need to know what was the difference…?

Camouflaged river

Rather disappointed with the Guardian word wheel’s failure to recognise archaeological vocabulary - in recent days I’ve had acrow, celt, recut and torc all rejected 😭

Maybe the farmers’ tactic against paying inheritance tax involves voting for climate deniers so that by the time it’s due their land will be worth nothing at all…?

Rep. Jamie Raskin tears into Nigel Farage as a "far-right pro-Putin politician" and a "Donald Trump sycophant and wannabe".

Taxing the rich more is fine but the left still won't admit that if we want European-standard public services we need European levels of general taxation. Otherwise you're stuck with Labour trying to 'grow' their way out of trouble, which is environmentally unsustainable, or Tory/Reform scapegoating

The Western Morning News #OTD in 1925 was so exercised by "the removal of certain historical cairns by a road contractor" on Dartmoor that it gave the story four headlines! Fortunately the Duchy of Cornwall had acted "to prevent the removal of stones from the Challacombe district…" #TombTuesday 🧵

Looking forward to reading this properly - I touched on ideas of worldbuilding in science fiction and prehistory in this talk a couple of years ago: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7uj...

In archaeology, resistance to the first wave of scientism (the new archaeology) took the form of post-processualism. This time I wonder if something will arise from the environmental humanities, say, to let us park at least the odd tank on the scientists’ lawn…

Looks like a fascinating paper but, God help me, starting your abstract "Understanding how the dispersal of cultural innovations intersects with the spread of genes remains a central challenge in prehistoric archaeology" is a perfect way to draw all the humanity out of what we do...

"The Ideal Woman of 50,000 Years Ago": 1st Sep 1925 saw the first report in the British press of the Dolní Věstonice 'Venus', discovered earlier that summer. A slightly more accurate follow-up in Nov (there aren't "several figures") confirmed her as ceramic and knocked 10,000 years off her age… 🦣🏺

Just when I'm getting used to the Hundred (it helps that the Invincibles are winning) they're about to f*ck it up again...

My university profs were relatively normal compared to the experience of a minor public school in the early 1980s, where I'd say there were 15% of teachers who *weren't* strange eccentrics...

The church of St Mael and St Sulien, Corwen, incorporates a standing stone in the east wall of the porch. Known as 'Carreg i big yn y fach rewllyd' or 'the pointed stone in the icy nook', it apparently thwarted efforts to build the church in any other spot. #StandingStoneSunday

From a visit to Viroconium (or Viriconium - even English Heritage can't decide...) on a very hot day earlier this month, a few images that attempt to convey the heat around the 'Old Work', the textures of the architecture, and the cool of the reconstructed town house #RomanSiteSaturday

Just caught up with this - not wishing to downplay Cornish distinctiveness but children learning far more about Normans & Tudors than earlier (pre-1066) periods is common across England; all areas need better interpretation of how their archaeology reflects both local character and wider connections

"The tragedy of Stonehenge" in The Sphere #OTD in 1921. Rows of rusting military sheds and girls playing cricket seem equally culpable to the writer: stones become "a dumping ground for coats, picnic baskets and ginger-beer bottles" while "the clean, clear sky line is gone in nearly every direction"

I remember 1450 as the start date from my A-level in the 80s! But archaeologically, the more profound changes in the English landscape follow the dissolution. I'd suggest an early modern period c 1540-1750 (when Enclosure Acts take off) so we can stop calling everything up to 1900 'post-medieval'.

The hillfort of Moel y Gaer (Llanbedr) in the Clwydian Range - not readily accessible, but spectacular when viewed from the higher slopes to the east #HillfortsWednesday

Happy #InternationalDogDay from us

Man arrested after Roman wall in Lincoln 'significantly damaged' www.bbc.com/news/article...

Apropos of nothing, but the list reminds me that I once enjoyed a poem by Robert Hamberger so much that I bought a book of poetry… by Michael Hamburger. 🤦‍♂️ Fortunately it was just as good.

I guess it depends whether the giants are ‘patriotic’ or not…

Pembrokeshire archaeology also in the news (well, the Daily Express) #OTD in 1925: remains of a "Boy Cremated 3,000 Years Ago", found in a Collared Urn (as illustrated in Cyril Fox's report). I'm not sure about Arthur Keith's opinion that a boar's tooth found with the bones got there by accident…

A review of Gordon Childe's 'The Dawn…' in The Scotsman 100 years ago: "The author does not take up an extremist position with regard to his subject, but compromises between the view that Western civilisation 'only began in historic times after 1000 BC in a little corner of the Mediterranean… 🧵

A technical #TombTuesday query: in this reconstruction of the Fussell's Lodge long barrow the structure on the left interprets a group of postholes on the inner edge of the ditch as a platform across the berm to facilitate construction of the mound. Has anyone come across anything similar elsewhere?

Not just 'bardcore' but tattoos of Calanais and references to "the blood of Alfred... the blood of Arthur". Have you read this, @lornarichardson.bsky.social?

"A Home Office spokesperson said the decision to proscribe the [Palestine Action] group was based on 'strong security advice' following 'serious attacks the group had committed, involving violence, significant injuries and extensive criminal damage'." Who exactly have they injured?

Excellent research - and an opportunity to quote the artist Paul Nash, who Wheeler said "until we parted on our diverse paths, was a treasured familiar", and who visited the 'war cemetery' excavation - though he "was not particularly interested in the archaeological significance of the discovery" 🧵

I reckon this photo deserves an outing for #FindsFriday too, given that it's 150 years since Lane Fox's (before he took the name Pitt Rivers) second round of excavations at Cissbury - providing an excuse to recount his tale of one particular discovery in the flint mines during the summer of 1875...

My main takeaway from this is that George IV is somehow no longer famous enough to be named in a headline

The Sunday Monitor (quoting the Oriental Herald) pricking the bubble of antiquarian pomposity #OTD 200 years ago: "by the help of 'probably' and 'perhaps' and 'I firmly believe,' &c., [antiquarians] can establish to a tittle any point they please..." 🏺

“Mr Philp made an unannounced visit to an asylum hotel where he said he found ‘clear evidence of illegal working for Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats’.” These people, coming over here, delivering the food we’re all too lazy to collect…

An odd story for #TombTuesday from 120 years ago: reports from Aug 1905 of Worthington Smith, described as "a competent archaeologist", being very annoyed by Bedfordshire police's insistence on an inquest for two crouched skeletons from "the prehistoric British camp at Leagrave" (Waulud's Bank)…🧵🏺

Your one-stop Neolithic feast? #UrbanPrehistory #StandingStoneSunday

Jersey Tiger moth having a moment, and one has moved in here

Since it's #YorkshireDay here's one of the Folkton Drums for #FindsFriday, as seen at the BM World of Stonehenge exhibition in 2022. Newspaper reports of their discovery in 1889 stated that "It is impossible to describe the beauty and delicacy of the design on these objects."

Farmers and scientists join forces to vaccinate badgers against TB - The groups have long been at odds over culling of badgers in England as a way to control TB in cattle - New project in Cornwall is first farmer-led badger vaccination scheme Story by me www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Runnymede council ordered to pay costs of a campaign to safeguard historically important features of a listed former church in Surrey. I passed by in 2021... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Report on the Greens’ hustings in the Guardian

Some landscape art for #HillfortsWednesday - you can see the influences of Paul Nash and Samuel Palmer on this painting of a 'Track to Chanctonbury' by Michael Ayrton (made in 1946, when he was 25). It captures the site in less clement conditions than when I was there recently...