I’ve just finished my first non-archaeology book since completing my thesis: a book about the books that novelist Susan Hill has in her house. It’s great to be reading for enjoyment again! (Not that reading archaeology isn’t enjoyable but you know what I mean).

To celebrate the centenary of Woodhenge, this #findsfriday we thought we would share something from the site! This necked beaker, decorated with incised lines and zigzags was found from circle 1, Woodhenge, by Mrs M E Cunnington and Mr B H Cunnington, 1926-8. Now in our Prehistory Galleries!

Out now & #openaccess: Grimm, Oliver (Ed.): Beast and Human: Case Studies for Northern Europe from Prehistoric to Early Modern Times, Heidelberg: Propylaeum, 2025 (LEIZA Publications, Volume 8). doi.org/10.11588/pro... #LEIZArchaeology #Archaeology #HumanAnimalStudies

It took the cat a millennium to reach Ireland from England

Just want to point out that both the Guardian and the BBC used "man" in their coverage of this research today. If you want science news that doesn't employ anachronistically gendered language, be sure to read us at @livescience.com. 😘

Where Little Shambles meets Shambles, York. Number 8 Shambles can be seen, along with a bit of 9 Shambles, between numbers 43, on the left, and number 42 on the right. On the extreme right 1 Little Shambles, one of the few survivors of the street left after the creation of the market. #drawing

Calling all who appreciate plants and what they do for us! Reconsider the potential suspension of Plant Biology Courses at University of Nottingham (UK) chng.it/Fq67ZRxK via @UKChange #Botany #PlantScience

University pressing ahead with course closures plan despite 'profound' warning www.nottinghampost.com/news/notting...

'It is notable that in the last Research Excellence Framework exercise the Department of American Studies at Nottingham was ranked third in the Area Studies unit of assessment and was one of the top-performing units across the whole of the University of Nottingham.' 1/2

Another day, another round of news articles admonishing the administration for making cuts to our university. It's clear that faculty, students,. staff and community members are united against course closures. When will the university listen? www.theguardian.com/education/20...

An amazing day of solidarity with staff, students, and community members saying NO to compulsory redundancies and unnecessary course closures.

Horrified by the proposed closure of Modern Languages @uniofnottingham.bsky.social This would end language higher education in the East Midlands & decimate the uni’s research profile. Shortsighted and reckless. #University_of_Little_England #SaveNottinghamLanguages #WeAreUoN

Please support and share this petition to help save American Studies teaching at The University of Nottingham. Staff are facing redundancy. The expertise that would be lost would be monumental. Please sign. c.org/26qjPmffNy

In Birmingham for tonight’s concert of Schumann & Stravinsky by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra & Simon Rattle and picked up this flyer about UoN’s dreadful Music Dept plans. Spread the word.

THREAD: Delighted that Peterborough Museum has received £250k, to further explore the amazing Bronze Age assemblage from Must Farm. One of my favourite projects of the past few years was creating replicas of the pots, to better understand the technology behind them 🏺 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A massive number of our members just got word that the courses they teach on will be "suspended" by the university, effecting out current and future students in every single faculty and school at UoN.

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.