If you are in the Bay Area, here is a date for your diary

A new "encyclopedia" which appears at the top of the search page whenever I search for content related to Mexico. It is entirely written and illustrated by AI and contains 100% pure slop www.mexicohistorico.com/english.php

Ah! the rewards of academic success!

Demonstration of a purely instrument-based analysis of archaeological artifacts (arrowheads), coupled with a Bayesian analysis of phylogeny ... reproduces the classical typology, and much more besides ... osf.io/preprints/so...

Fascinating… AI replicates mediocre human waffle, and raises it to the nth power. It’s writing satire that no-one gets

We visited some weavers in the Cacha region of Cotopaxi province, Ecuador, and ran into a rehearsal for a festival (raymi). These events are held 4 times a year, at the equinoxes and solstices, on a sacred hilltop site ... (see alt text for details)

Still 6 days to go until the deadline ...

Just got back from 3 weeks looking at traditional backstrap loom weaving along the Andes in Ecuador. Over the next few days I will post some weavers and their locations ... I encourage you to visit them, and do buy their excellent weavings, it helps keep their craft going (see alt text) ... 1/2

There is still time to join us in Athens 🫵 The extended deadline is February 9. #EAA2026

Interesting article about cultural forgetting ... progress is not inevitable giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Darwin’s Airport finch. The short beak is adapted for eating crackers

Darwin is known for his theory of Evolution, and on Galápagos he is also known for beer and nightlife

One of Darwin’s finches, adapting to the Galapagos airport cafe area

dear me! www.ft.com/content/54e2...

Galapagos crabs, trying not to get washed away

Galápagos land iguana

Galapagos crab, rocks, and sea

Our volume on Stone Age clothing is now online and completely open access: Jöris, O., Dietrich, O., Risch, R., & Meller, H. (Hrsg.). (2026). A Stone Age History of Clothing: Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag vom 26. bis 28. September 2024 in Halle (Saale). doi.org/10.11588/pro...

Some reasons not to become a Jesuit priest. Quito, Ecuador

to note ... session 191 at the upcoming European Archaeology conference in Athens ...

Please take this advice seriously!!

Snow lions, chasing the elephant of ignorance. Gongkar Chode, near Lhasa

The shrubs in our yard are trimmed by professionals who work 24/7 in all weathers

I'm on X as well as Bluesky, and I'm disappointed not to have seen any deepfake nudes, zero posts by Elon, and no invitations to far-out rallies by right-thinking folks. What am I doing wrong?

Boyer: "Why is most cultural anthropology largely irrelevant?" The good news is that, 150 years after Tylor, we have a decent shot at getting to a genuine science of culture www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Whenever I think of NY (admittedly not very often), I think of this cartoon

I've found the slogan for my publishing venture

Cute dog in the yard this morning. I'm thinking of adopting it

Favorite bookstore of 2025: the one in Mexico City ... featuring The Guy Who Tried To Steal An Early Edition of The Quixote

Scanning some old slides for an article. This is a petroglyph from the far west of Tibet, made before 0CE. In the so-called Scythian style, in which sinuous game animals appear to float on tiptoe

This is so true it hurts. #AcademicSky

Says that all alcohol consumption is risky (like driving cars, going outdoors), but fails to quantify the risk. Bad science writing 🙄

I was going to write a summary of what I did this year, but I discovered that I can't be bothered. So instead here is a picture of some monkeys in the rain, from a trip to Indonesia

🎄 New paper! 🎁 Since the 20s it's been said that "the Hadza don't use traps". Except sporadic snaring, none have been reported. So I was excited to find baited cage traps in use. More exciting, this was cross-cultural transmission — seldom seen in action! 1/​5 tinyurl.com/cagetrap

Working on ancient textiles or fibers? We invite you to submit a talk proposal and join us at EAA 2026 in Athens! www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Turkeys are available at the Chevron station in Berkeley. Still time to get yours

I just wrote a review of this exhibition of Indonesian textiles ... including some very early examples with motifs belonging to the Hindu-Buddhist period ... the exhibition is on until January 11 at the Yale University Art Gallery and I recommend a visit artgallery.yale.edu/press-releas...

Preview of an upcoming book chapter, discussing (amongst other things) transmission and innovation in Tibetan Buddhist sects. This is a phylogeny of the main sects

New OA journal launching with the same editorial team & board = same high standards. Excellent news for accessible, rigorous scholarship.

Dioramas at museums are often exceedingly cheesy. But at the American Museum of Natural History they are an art form

New paper: Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity

New York today

What has Tracing Patterns Foundation been up to for the past year? Research, publishing, and arranging conferences (our original goals) but also donating items to overseas institutions, from Indonesia to Mexico (a role we stumbled into ...). Annual report here: indd.adobe.com/view/ebf028c...

bizarre illustration in this post is from Jakarta Airport, which has many similar bizarre and delightful drawings on the walls

Interesting ... seems counterintuitive at first, but makes sense when you read their arguments. New Guinea is a key case ... and as I've argued elsewhere, material culture diversity there is also much lower than linguistic diversity, and for good reasons ... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A curated global dataset of social contact between diverse language communities www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cultural transformations followed different regional trajectories, especially in areas of the inner peripheries. 🏺 #archaelogy #Neolithic

Greek Aegean SpongeBob Mashup Prank

I like Bluesky, but I have no intention of deleting my account on X. I learn a lot from that platform, and have never felt a need to only see posts that I agree with

About 250 copies sold so far, which means I have a way to go to match "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Whatever", but I am relieved that my publisher got some return for the free editorial work he did (thank you, Ray). Not ordered your copy yet? Makes an ideal Xmas gift ...