Time to update your Palaeolithic palettes... 🔵 Very proud to share our new research on the OLDEST use of blue pigment! We identified traces of azurite - a vibrant blue mineral - on a stone object around 14-13,000 years old. Why is this so exciting? 👇🏺 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

Back 🏡 again from #MESO2025 in Ferrara, Italy, where I finally got to meet the faces of the field. A Mesolithic-specific week like this only comes along every 5yrs, so I appreciated every minute of it. Now it's back to the Paternity bubble 🫧🌷

This aurochs radius mattock-head was found 100years ago 🎉 Brøndsted 1934: "... the three long lines with the transverse zigzag is an unusually precise and well-executed motif for Mesolithic ornamentation, demonstrating that the art of this period was capable of deliberately stylised geometrisation"

"Transgressional phases, between 10.000-7.000 BP, may have caused a certain amount of inconvenience!"

Oi, I won an Early Career Researcher award for this neat paper doi.org/10.1016/j.ja... (go read it plz❤️) Thanks a lot to SAS & JAS! lnkd.in/ee37g7-r

So long and tschüss to Grabow, the iconic Late Palaeolithic amber workshop. Great campaign on all parameters, run by top-notch @au.dk @auarcher.bsky.social students 🚀

Off to the field with @ll-herskind.bsky.social and a group of awesome students - four weeks teaching excavation and my @erc.europa.eu project CLIOARCH’s very last field season. And we’re going to excavate the world’s oldest amber art workshop from the Late Pleistocene 🤩

Nerve-racking day of sampling from these precious artefacts, but the results will be equally invaluable. Let's get those radiocarbon dates! ⏳🦴🏺

Take a moment to appreciate this stunning photo of a fragmented, perforated, neatly decorated artefact made from an aurochs radius ✨🏺 But how old is it, you ask? Time will tell! #archaeology

I know full well that ResearchGate achievements are just a gamification gimmick that annoyingly fills our inboxes, but sometimes I have to admit it works. The 1000 "reads" of my 2023 MA thesis at least suggests that it lives its own life on the www. Wonder how many actually read the thing though

Velkommen til vores første alumnedag på Moesgård - med bl.a. den helt store fredagsbar. Vi glæder os. Sign up here lnkd.in/dswV5fSw

This heavily used #Maglemose amber pendant depicts a group of people. Brinch Petersen gives a spooky interpretation: "...four geometrical and standing persons with upright arms with a fifth floating above while a severed head is being presented by the last standing figure to the right." #prehistory

First pummeled by a wild boar, later killed and dismembered. The #Ertebølle man from Grave 13 at Skateholm had a rough life. Perhaps it would have been a comfort for him to know that, ~7000 years later, archaeologists would make a comically morbid cartoon out of it 🏺

Contemporary judgements of #prehistoric #art influence how we research and disseminate it. Mesolithic art has, in implicit comparison to more famous traditions, often been described as “sparse and poor, without much care… As a whole, a hasty, random frippery without independent worth or bearing”

🌍 We have just released a NEW global top 100 list of scientist and science communicators on Bluesky. @lassehjorthmadsen.bsky.social and I map out the new emerging community: How are the research fields clustered? All likes, reshares, and love 😍 is appreciated! mikeyoungacademy.dk/bluesky-is-e...

Best article title I've seen in a while ' Megaliths ☹️ ' #academicsky #PhD

The Beautiful Rotten-Fish Bone-Knife: This ~9430yr-old slotted bone tool (arguably a stylized depiction of a fish/fish skeleton) from Norje Sunnansund was excavated in relation to a ditch used to store and ferment fish - the world's earliest evidence of fermentation. Swedish tradition runs deep!?🐟💚

Two Mesolithic butterflies - A moment of artistic expression? Animist magic? Or a meaning-laden, communicative symbol? #StoneAge #Art #Magic #Symbolism 🏺

One of the finer things to come out of Amager - an island otherwise known for Copenhagen's waste storage and 19th century decapitations - is this decorated axe from the middle #Kongemose, ca.6150-5800 BC 🏺 Site: Carstensminde Photo: Nationalmuseet

Bone and antler was the common medium for #Mesolithic #Art, usually red/roe deer, wild boar & aurochs. But there are a few exotic exceptions: Surprised zoologists declared that this dagger was made from the bill of a #Swordfish. There is archaeological consensus that its owner must have had style🏺⚔️🐟

In South Scand. #Mesolithic imagery, human depictions are rare, but all in a similar style: geometrically stylized, always showing people in motion - and a bit ominous if you ask me 😬 Meet 'Dansarna från Bökeberg', two figures engraved on separate objects from a Swedish inland settlement. Wild stuff

Treated myself to THE palaeontology textbook - the equally cool sister of archaeology But I fear this bookshelf addition will also add fuel to the 'digging-up-dinosaurs'-confusion among friends & family

Mesolithic people were big on geometrics. But was this 'merely' aesthetic decoration, or were there other intended purposes? I'm working on it. #StoneAge #Art Site: Holmegård IV. Photo: Nationalmuseet

This was both an inspiring workshop and a fitting celebration of Kristian Tylén - I feel refueled and happy to be working in this dynamic #archaeology & #CogSci intersection 🔀. Special thanks to @izzywisher.bsky.social

3rd day of "Celebrating eSYMb: The Evolution of Symbolic Behaviour - A Workshop in Memory of Kristian Tylén" workshop. Murillo Pagnotta on the makapangsat cobble: this face-like pebble is a controversial archeological finding, but can we test the idea that it's attention grabbing because of 1/

Major JOB ALERT! I and close colleagues have 4 (!) positions open. So if you're looking for a postdoc or PhD, do read on:

This artefact has it all: 🔅A mattock made from the radius of an aurochs (cool animal) 🔅From Hohen Viecheln (dope site) 🔅Engraved with barbed lines (regionally distinct motif type) 🔅And and and it's radiocarbon dated (happy days) to 7937–7610 calBC 🔅Fine drawing too (Schuldt 1961)

“The discussion was always about how adults were teaching children,” says Izzy Wisher, an archaeologist at Aarhus University who led the new study. “This panel shows children were also doing their own thing.”

This diversely decorated Ertebølle red deer antler axe from Ølby Lyng wishes a Merry Christmas to all ✨

This amber pendant was worn around the neck of a stylish Mesolithic Doggerlander. If you think it's cute, then you are of the same opinion as Sophus Müller (1918): "This piece shows the highest, and in itself by no means poor, level reached in the oldest ornamental style of the Stone Age"

The oldest (to my knowledge) illustrations of Danish, decorated Mesolithic objects are AP Madsen's true masterpieces of copper plate engraving from 1868(!). Here is a cute slotted bone point from Langeland - what animal do you see?

Hey wouldn't it be a treat if I once a week share with you an ornamented object from the South Scandinavian Mesolithic? After all, there are so many good ones and only ≈150 weeks until planned PhD completion