Erratum: in my post yesterday on a recent Guardian article about Bronze Age feasting networks, I linked to a 2023 paper that was all I could find at the time. I’m grateful to @timdaw.bsky.social for telling me about the now-published paper in iScience, at doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

Today’s Guardian article on multi-isotope evidence for feasting at the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition is still interesting even though it’s based on a 2023 paper by Richard Madgwick, Carmen Esposito & @angelalamb.bsky.social 🧵1/2 www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Our alternative interpretations of the ‘king’ of Newgrange (a skull fragment from an individual who was born of incest) and his distant relations have been published! We argue for the importance of careful integration of aDNA results with detailed archaeological evidence. Such a great team effort!

Our brains love the colour gradation in rainbows, maybe due to our ancestors searching for sources of water. Looking at plants helps us recover from stress & looking at something we think is beautiful causes dopamine release. I've posted this photo to alter your brain biochemistry for the better 🌿

Fin Cop above Monsal Dale (the only Derbyshire hillfort to feature on a classic rail poster!), excavated 2009 by Longstone History Group and ARS. Late Bronze Age origins, and a harrowing end in the Middle Iron Age (400-300BC) with inhabitants massacred and dumped in the ditch. #HillfortsWednesday

Check out this beautiful wooden shovel and antler pick from Bronze Age Britain #FindsFriday 🏺 Currently in the Cornwall Museum, they are some of the oldest of their kind in Europe and would have been used to mine tin traded as far as the Levant! Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

Curious how the Arts & Humanities can elevate your research? Join us for a free webinar where leading scholars share how interdisciplinary collaboration can unlock new insights and tackle complex challenges. 🗓️ June 18 ⏰ 12:30 PM EDT 🔗 Register now: https://oxford.ly/4kadupU #AcademicSky

The so called Leprechaun house at Carrowkeel, Sligo is a ruined Neolithic tomb. Sliced by a field boundary, some of its material is used in the stone walls… I was inspired by this to come out of “drawing retirement” (1/2) 🧵

An entertaining talk (he said it wasn't a lecture) last night from Mick Lynch, RMT secretary-general, delivering the inaugural Agnes Flues Memorial Lecture to our local UoN UCU branch. Memories of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Agnes in blizzards on picket lines in February 2018. #solidarity

Happy birthday, p = 0.05! I had a short introductory lecture in statistics for biologists this morning, and then it dawned on me that p = 0.05 is celebrating its hundredth birthday this year.

HE job cuts in the East Midlands www.bbc.com/news/article...

Sounds like a plan

Something lovely for the weekend! About 40,000 years ago, during the #IceAge, this small figurine of a ‘big cat’ was sculpted from mammoth ivory. Thought to be a cave lion, it is one of the world’s oldest known works of figurative art. 📷 me #Caturday #Archaeology

What a day. What a team. What a city #NUFC

We are happy to share our pre-print on dating bone using a novel non-destructive protocol we developed. The paper is on the Biorxiv here (Luftensteiner et al. 2025): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Let’s go for it! Tell everyone you know to join @bsky.app and TOGETHER let’s send them packing

Hooray! Our paper detailing new dates for Flagstones enclosure in Dorset has been published in @antiquityj.bsky.social today. It shows that Flagstones is middle Neolithic, built and used for burial around 3200 BC, earlier than expected. Open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Nice job @suegreaney.bsky.social !

Radiocarbon dating of Flagstones Middle Neolithic ‘proto-henge’ is earlier than thought: Ancient Dorset burial site raises questions over age of Stonehenge www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

👏 Archaeology in action! It's just as much microscopes and lab coats as it is trowels and spades. This is a great look into one of our most important tools for understanding archaeology 🤩

Brightwell Barrow back in autumn, with Castle Hill Iron Age hillfort on the horizon at Wittenham Clumps. (My quarterly posting of this view)

You know you’ve had a book for a long time when the bookmark you used years ago is a computer punched card — one of my undergrad textbooks, 1976.

#GitHub, a platform widely used in software development, offers a robust framework for documenting all activities of laboratory research projects. This Community Page highlights the benefits of, and provides guidance for, incorporating the GitHub ecosystem into wet lab workflows. 🧪💻 plos.io/4i1LWkV

In Bronze Age Europe, people used weights and measures to count their gold #NumberDay However, gold does not seem to have been mass-regulated at all in ancient Britain, indicating it was not used as currency. 🔗 from 2022 🆓 https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.54

Colin Renfrew obituary, by Cyprian Broodbank www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I’ve made the leap and reached for the sky so looking forward to meeting old friends, followers and followees. More about prehistoric gold and archaeology to come like the Shannongrove gorget from Co. Limerick

I’m on a blissful high after a radiant and serene performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony (best I’ve heard) by the LSO and Simon Rattle, part of his 70th birthday celebrations at the Barbican. Tippett’s Ritual Dances & premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Sco guitar concerto in the first half.

In London for the weekend and in the ‘Michaelangelo, Leonardo & Raphael’ exhibition at the Royal Academy, no connection at all with #A-Haydn-a-day, you would think… but this is the ‘Esterházy Madonna’ by Raphael, on loan from Budapest, presumably once owned by the family of Haydn’s employers.

When I dedicated my PhD to the women of the Iron Age in 2003, I knew their time would come. It’s almost here.

If #A-Haydn-a-day isn’t enough… currently listening to his Piano Trio No. 21 on this recently acquired LP — music that just smiles with delight!

We should be talking more about what's happening at the British Museum. See my new blog mikepitts.wordpress.com/2025/01/10/b...

Next on my #A-Haydn-a-day catch-up list was Symphony 79, from 1784–85 and I can’t believe I forgot how good it is. Richard Wigmore writes “the most uncomplicated of a set designed […] for international consumption”. Ottavio Dantone and Nicholas McGegan and their bands are both superb in this.

Have you tried listening to #A-Haydn-A-Day? There are 50 symphonies on my playlist so far, each one a miracle of wisdom, humanity and sanity.

Popped down to see the icicles that form under the arches of the leaking Vyrnwy Aqueduct after a -6 night. They map the extent of leakage quite well! Not the largest we have seen as there were some beautiful scimitar shaped icicles 2 years back.

Next on the #A-Haydn-a-day list for me is Symphony 6, ‘Le matin’, first of the 1761 trilogy in which Haydn shows his employer, Prince Paul Esterházy, just how good his composer and orchestra are, with many solo passages for the players to shine. Shining playing from Hogwood’s & Müllejans’ players.

I’m falling behind with #A-Haydn-a-day listening, so onward with Symphony 93, performed in 1792 during his first London visit. By now, he had gauged the English taste and the music was well received, with the slow movement being encored. Dorati and Davis the versions I listened to today.

Yet more catching up with #A-Haydn-a-day & Symphony 22, ‘The Philisopher’, perhaps named after the opening dialogue between pairs of horns and cors anglais, a sound so outlandish that a French edition dropped it and replaced the c.a.’s with flutes! Heroic fast horn playing in Hogwood’s recording 👏

After a weekend of severe weather in the UK and heavy overnight rain, there’s a lot of water in fields around where we live

Still catching up with #A-Haydn-a-day & Symphony 38: so good I listened to three versions. Another “festive “ C maj, again trumpets, drums & those fabulous high horns. Started with my trusty Dorati LPs as usual, then moved on to Pinnock. Finally, Hogwood: metallic glint of the horns shining through.

Jeff Bezos never wanted this cartoon to become public. He killed it, and as a result, pulitzer prize editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit. Make sure everyone sees this cartoon.

Moving briskly on with #A-Haydn-a-day and Symphony 69, another in “festive” C major with trumpets, drums & horns in C basso, much less exciting than the high horns in No.50. Dedicated by Haydn to General Laudon, I was less inspired by this symphony, but it’s Haydn, so enjoyable all the same.

More catching up with #A-Haydn-a-day and Symphony 50 in C, his “festival” key, with horns in C alto (taken by Haydn scholar Robbins Landon as his autobiography title), trumpets & drums. Likely for Empress Maria Theresa’s visit to Eszterháza in 1773. Slightly prefer Hogwood to Pinnock here.

The last altar. Before leaving the Antonine Wall yesterday, I paid a visit to an absolutely unique object, the Carrick Stone - which is the sole altar from Roman Britain that has survived above ground

Still catching up with #A-Haydn-a-day and Symphony 60, ‘Il distratto’. After a performance in Pressburg (now Bratislava), a newspaper review said “The connoisseurs are on the one hand amazed, while on the other, the public is simply enchanted, for Hayden knows how to satisfy both parties” …me too!

A pair of gold armbands from the Colchester Fenwick hoard, buried before Boudica’s attack in AD60. As the last stand took place where Colchester Castle now sits, the owner may have perished where their jewellery is now displayed @ColMuseums.bsky.social #FindsFriday #BoudicaFriday #Echolands

More catching up with #A-Haydn-a-day and Symphony 83, ‘La Poule’, the chicken… sorry… the Hen, from the hen-like clucking figure in the first movement. I’m more familiar with Dorati’s recording but I enjoyed the historic approach taken by Kuijken and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Right - it's our last day of holidays and we're spending it making an archaeology/Roman site-themed Monopoly game. We've made a start. All suggestions for any additions gratefully received. Over to you....

Still catching up with #A-Haydn-a-day and Symphony 23. Back to my favourite early Haydn featuring fabulous horn playing from The Academy of Ancient Music and Christopher Hogwood, the horns more audible than in Dorati’s recording

Trying to choose some positive resolutions for 2025? Here are Scottish Geology Trust's 5 New Year’s Geo-Resolutions! Thread... 🧵 #NewYearsResolutions #GeoResolutions #ScottishGeology

#A-Haydn-a-day catch-up with Symphony 52 in a tense C minor, one of the undeservedly lesser known works of his Sturm und Drang period. H C Robbins Landon describes it as ‘the grandfather of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony’