Me requesting an illustrated catalogue of early medieval quadrangular hand-bells for my birthday.

LANDMARK MOMENT - the Greens now have more members across Great Britain than the Lib Dems! Let's keep it going! 👇🏼👇🏾👇🏽 join.greenparty.org.uk Latest stats available: 85,800 @greenparty.org.uk (England & Wales) + @scottishgreens.org combined membership 83,174 @libdems.org.uk (a single party across GB)

Exciting book launch event!! Dr Victoria Whitworth: The Book of Kells: Unlocking the Enigma is finally out, and you can celebrate it (and snag a copy) at the Tarbat Discovery Centre on 11 October. Tickets at www.tickettailor.com/events/tarba... (1/2)

DEADLINE EXTENDED to Friday 26th September Really exciting call for papers for Leeds, please get in touch with Hannah and Nik by the 26th of September!

Today's fortuitous realisation: a 20-minute conference paper basically equates to a 3,000-word blog post. This means I can publish my talk from next weekend's Highland Archaeology Festival conference as a blog afterwards, hurrah.

THE PICTISH ARTS SOCIETY CONFERENCE!! Day 1, Metal and Metalwork Day 2, New research on Pictish Art and it’s Context Book below! facebook.com/events/s/pas...

Student unearths 2,000-year-old stone that shows Pictish face carving www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

I was already a @greenparty.org.uk member, but I'm delighted to see @zackpolanski.bsky.social stepping up and the party getting attention and airtime. Labour has lost its way so badly on all of the issues mentioned below. Hopefully the Green Party can actually be a viable alternative.

Have you got your ticket yet? The Pictish Arts Society's 2025 online conference is on 4 and 5 October, focusing on sculpture and metalwork in Pictland. 8 expert papers including finds from Burghead and Rhynie, Pictish bull carvings, Pictish weapons, the 'tower' on Sueno's Stone and more. Link below.

...and this is how you get past the pop-up to delete your account.

Deleted my Academia account last night.

Burghead 2025. What a year. Here is a snapshot of the upper citadel. 8/9th C brooch pin like one from Dunadd. A 2nd C spiral bead from inside a 8th/9th C building, very similar to one from the Croy hoard. The building is massive >7m long, a huge central hearth. Also me busy on the John Deere!

I'm an early medievalist researching the Moray Firthlands in Scotland. There are almost no textual sources (though I've identified one or two overlooked ones), so my sources are mainly place-names, archaeology, sculpture, objects and landscape. Everything is difficult and puzzling and I love it.

Fascinated by the BBC News clip in here of the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill demo (which I was at). They spend a few seconds filming one of the organisers telling off one of the rowdier element who'd tried to break through the gate into Downing St. Not sure you'd see that kind of nuance nowadays.

Join us on 4 and 5 October for our 2025 online conference! Two days of expert talks on Pictish art and craft - from recycled Roman silver to metalwork at Burghead and Rhynie, plus insights into Pictish weaponry, Sueno's Stone, two Caithness cross-slabs and Pictish bull carvings. Booking link below.

Agenda is up for the Pictish Arts Society conference 2025 - happening online on Sat 4 and Sun 5 October. Papers on metal and metalworking in Pictland, plus latest updates from @northernpicts.bsky.social and new research on Pictish cross-slabs and bull carvings. Tickets from £12.94. Not to be missed!

Have just read on the BBC that "the UK's first 'super-university', stretching across an entire region" is to be creaed by merging the universities of Kent and Greenwich, and I'm thinking it's a shame they've never heard of the University of the Highlands and Islands.

I'm excited to announce that I'll be sharing some findings of my PhD research at an online talk for UHI's Institute for Northern Studies on November 27, titled 'Families, Networks and Informants: The Making of Orkneyinga saga'. Click the link below to register!

Dear #MedievalSky & #SkyStorians, could you help, please? I am looking for depictions of orcas from before 1700 I already know: Olaus Magnus, Sebastian Münster, Pierre Belon, Guillaume Rondelet, Conrad Gessner, as well as the ones on bestiary.ca (s. pic) & the mural in Greifswald Thanks in advance!

A Pictish ring was found by volunteer John Ralph during a University of Aberdeen-led dig at Burghead, Moray, #OTD in 2023. Professor Gordon Noble said it further indicated 'the high-status production of metalwork' at the Pictish power centre. 📸National Museums Scotland #medievalsky

🎆 LAUNCH 🎆 The team of the Glasgow-Maynooth OG(H)AM project have the pleasure of launching the revised & updated 𝗢𝗴𝗵𝗮𝗺 𝗶𝗻 𝟯𝗗 database Where: Royal Irish Academy @ria.ie When: 12 Sept 2025, 15:30 @maynoothuniversity.ie @uofglasgow.bsky.social in collaboration with @scs-dias.bsky.social @dias.ie

Why had I never seen the Lion of St Mark from the Echternach Gospels before? What a fabulous sproingy beast.

Can confirm - a good chunk of my client work these days is rewriting things that the client originally 'wrote' with ChatGPT and its ilk.

New digitised early maps on the NLS site!

Well last full day on site and we got the quintessential Pictish artefacts today- painted pebbles! What finds from Charlotte, Ben and Matthew! Always wanted to find these ❤️❤️❤️

For those interested, a recording of my Groam House lecture from Tues night is now available (link in replies). I identified what I think may be an overlooked early medieval text from northern Pictland, and substantially re-interpreted the career of Curetán. Interested to hear anyone's thoughts.

Cracker of a day yesterday at Burghead with one of the star finds being this beautiful bead found by Patrick one of our University of Aberdeen undergraduate students.

Join us online tomorrow from 7pm for 'How to Read a Hogback' - delivered by @rebekahbeatnik.bsky.social & Ancrum Heritage Society. Register here: bit.ly/HogbackAugustSeminar

Quite glad I'm not watching #KingAndConqueror

Looking forward to giving this lecture tomorow night - featuring lots of new research on St Curetán (fl. 697) and Rosemarkie in particular.

The same has happened in Plymouth UK... only in reverse.

Quality subhead there

So great to see this long-running project nearing completion. A nice antidote to all the horrible news.

V. proud of daughter who *just* missed the GCSE science grade she needed to do A-level Environmental Science, but v. bravely spoke to the sixth-form college and persuaded them to accept her. Good real-world skills applied this day.

Looking forward to reading this! Evidence for smaller kingdoms within Pictland is often neglected in favour of a narrative that treats the whole region as one political entity. Nice to see @alexharvv.bsky.social bringing in some balance.

I've already seen people on LinkedIn convincing themselves there will only be a gentle correction, not a bubble burst. Just like they did in the dotcom boom.

People who've moved from Substack to Ghost - what did you do about porting comments across? I'm keen to switch off my Substack, but there are 300 or so comments on there that I need to keep (partly so that I can credit people appropriately in my thesis).

Scottish Gaelic and Early Gaelic/Old Irish for me. It's a constant source of embarrassment, especially as I'm doing my PhD in the dept of Celtic & Gaelic at @uofglasgow.bsky.social. Though I did actually speak my first words of conversational Gaelic the other day, which felt like a minor triumph.

A quick blog about three (or four) talks I've got coming up (mostly because I feel guilty for not having written a blog in a while...)

Insanity that these are going ahead without disclosing their projected electricity and water consumption, and in parts of the UK where water is already in short supply.

Reposting for all but especially for @nibus.bsky.social who worked on Peter Hill's dig.

NEW RECORDINGS: Rhind Lectures 2025: Scotland's Place-Names Covering language, archaeology, the church and more, all six recordings from the Rhind Lectures 2025 with Dr Simon Taylor are now available on our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... Sponsored by Ordnance Survey

Fascinating data on tenth-century river navigation coming out of this project - well worth following! #Saga25

Just-announced programme for the Highland Archaeology Festival in Inverness next month. I'll be there talking about evidence for the early church in Urquhart, the Aird and Strathglass, drawing on some of my most recent research. Looking forward to meeting and hearing from others!

One month to go. The completely revised 𝓞𝓰𝓱𝓪𝓶 𝓲𝓷 3𝓓 website, created by the Glasgow-Maynooth OG(H)AM project, will be launched on 12 Sept. as part of the Teangeolaíocht na Gaeilge (Linguistics of the Gaelic Languages) conference in @ria.ie @rialibrary.bsky.social. @researchireland.ie @ukri.org /1

AI making a valuable contribution to Pictish Studies

There will come a time when we will have to fight Google for water to drink, and Google will win.

Hours-long anxiety attack today, caused by I don't know what, instantly cured by listening once (1x) to Duran Duran's 'Girls on Film'. The brain works in mysterious ways.