Peak District done. Decompressing programme is on. 🎅🏽

Right, one last day lads.

One Peak District day down and one to go. Then 🎅🏽

Busy year here. I helped this lovely lot below on the nature of Neolithic society in Ireland. I wrote on the archaeology of matrilineality for the Iron Age. And sorted out palisaded enclosures as a type, building a model of Late Bronze Age transhumant pastoralism with Lorrae Campbell.

Academics: what's the best bit of knowledge you created this year? I co-authored a new model of the Irish Neolithic, effectively rewriting social structure and the role of large funerary monuments for the creation of community identities

What historians (and other scholars do) is create knowledge. We should use that phrase more and talk about what it means. I think we don't, and it's part of why AI enthusiasts are confused when we don't readily agree that our work can be replicated/replaced by their products.

Why mistletoe at Xmas? It’s all long dead out here in the west at least.

A great start to the weekend of the winter solstice! What a morning at Newgrange today. The livestream link now available - be sure tune in on the morning of 21 December at 8:40am. 🔗 gov.ie/solstice 👈save it, share it, join in! #ShareTheSolstice #NewgrangeSolstice #WinterSolstice 📸 OPW Guides

Dirty, dirty Chelsea. #NUFC

Over my lifetime, Saturdays have shifted from Benny Hill and lasses being barred out of football, to Lionesses and Claudia Winkleman in a suit. It’s good you know.

Claudia Winkleman is sort of a posh Eric Morecambe.

NO YOU’RE CRYING #NUFC

THE FOOTBALL

Ah Nick man we still loved you anyway, but by aal means keep gannin #NUFC

Aye, know your history.

There is hope in the government’s new VAWG strategy, but promises alone won’t deliver change. Urgent action, survivor-led change, and better funding for organisations tackling violence against women and girls are needed now. Survivors can’t wait. https://bit.ly/48Zw8MB

I’ve got tomorrow. Then it’s a Peak District job. Then a break over Xmas. Then it’s writing out my thinking on the social impact of Late Bronze Age climate change. Then a final (final) week on the book. Then it’s teaching 120 degree level+ students.

Will somebody please come and exorcise W.J. Varley from me. It’s time.

And a third brilliant colleague, Dr BMA is expanding our work on post-colonial archaeology.

Another of my excellent colleagues, trained by the very lovely Emeritus Prof. John Gowlett.

My wonderful, utterly brilliant colleague - read up via the link below. Her work will change everything we think we know about the origins of agriculture.

I’ve just written R2/D2 in the Eddisbury Hillfort volume. It’s not about Star Wars, so what do you think it might be?

One argument I used to make to my students about why it was important to learn history (and historical thinking) is that someone was always going to be trying to tell you things were natural or had always been this way and that you needed to be able to see that as an exercise of power.

All archaeologists should be aware of how our discipline is being used in Palestine right now 🏺

Working on archaeological landscape regional studies and looking at the evidence over millennia really makes you appreciate the significance of how rivers form and inform how we live in the world. It also makes you passionate about not passing them on to future generations as abused open sewers

Well tbf Sunderland was and has been the better team this season, so they deserve the win (even if we scored it mind). Reckon I’m going soft. #NUFC

Or, might some institutions find that, in hastening to decapitate successful Arts, Humanities and Social Science (SHAPE) units, they've killed the goose that laid them golden environmental eggs in REF2021, thereby compromising their SPRE2029 scores? 2/5

Gradually reintegrating five really critical female scholars back into our disciplinary history: Maud Cunnington, Dorothy Liddell, Lily Chitty, Molly Cotton, Peggy Piggott. Hillfort women aren’t so easy to forget 💪🏼

I generally don't think everything should be remunerative, but I do think often about how many humanities scholars and departments could have been sustained by being paid even a fraction of what their work was worth to academic publishers, and instead ended up as pure profit to people doing nothing.

🏺 Top tip for British Museum visitors: go across the court, up rotunda stairs, cross bridge into upper floor, head past crowds aiming for Egypt and Mesopotamia, and go straight to Rooms 50 and 51 where the most stunning array of glories from later prehistory await you!

Get it on your devices!

Today’s must listen: Kinship, Culture, and Death in Neolithic Ireland. On the value of integrating aDNA science and archaeology to better understand the nature of prehistoric groups.

Archaeologists have gathered evidence from hundreds of Bronze Age sites in western Turkey that could be remnants of a civilisation that has been largely overlooked

Decision in the Sandie Peggie case. She was not directly or indirectly discriminated against, her claim of victimisation fails entirely, her claim of harassment fails largely and her claim against Beth Upton fails entirely. www.judiciary.uk/judgments/sa...

here's the link for the BBC complaints, using 'biological male who identifies as a female' in their story shows bias and that they do not consider Dr Upton to be a woman. My complaint has been submitted .. www.bbc.co.uk/contact/comp...

At the point in the hillforts book of diving in to deal with highlighted bits. Obviously gutted to find out I need a little more on Maud Cunnington.

Well this is exciting: www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Ffs BBC, a trans woman clearly isn’t a ‘biological male’ are they. Aspects of their *biology* (i.e. hormone receptors in the brain) clearly aren’t male. You’re just making the country look stupid.

I’ve got a I class student who likes prehistory, ceramics, and science. Wondering who granted my Xmas wish!

Imposible no amar a Martin Parr, era uno di noi. 🥲

RIP Martin Parr Some of my favourite photos

Bar’s open! Photographer Martin Parr Union Hotel. Manchester, 1974. Martin Parr, always making the ordinary extraordinary.

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

Off to Cambridge for a party. It’s been a while. So far I’ve packed a jumper, diamantés, beer, hormones, dog, gift. I reckon that’s it.

| PUBLICATION 📚 | We are very happy and proud to announce the publication of the English translation of ‘Introduction à l’archéologie du genre’ by @barpublishing.bsky.social ! 🎉 👉 www.barpublishing.com/book/an-intr...

This one’s a heavy recommend for the reading lists:

I’m calling it. It’s time for the Catherine Cookson revival.

The attacks on trans rights, which are basic human rights, are a terrible injustice and an attack on truth and fact as well. Everyone should be deeply alarmed and it should be disqualifying for a politician to support such discrimination.

Guterres said Israel's war has been waged with 'total neglect' with respect to civilian deaths and Gaza's destruction.