1776: Black snails are still about, tho' the shell-snails have withdrawn for some time. Slugs keep-out all the winter in mild weather. It seems strange that naked snails should be more hardy than those that have houses to their backs.

Can anybody recommend an open geospatial dataset that might contain errors that my students can look at to assess data quality? I've got police crime data but I'm looking for more

How awful. There’s been a break in at the St Fagans Museum of History in west Cardiff. Artefacts have been taken including Bronze Age jewellery. I hope they are caught quickly. #heritagecrime

📣 Calling all #ESHE2025 participants and hashtag followers! Open Quaternary is looking to appoint a new Editor-in-Chief as @mlaw.bsky.social, @suziebirch.bsky.social and I step down after 10 years of shared service. Apply here: openquaternary.com/announcements

Simply astonishing. Maybe Lecturer A should not have to mark over 100 essays in a two-week window in the first place? Invest in qualified staff and reduce impossible workloads FFS www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strate...

A lovely review article (and my first dissertation citation🍾) on Scottish archaeological mollusc exploitation from @jenniferbones.bsky.social & @mlaw.bsky.social. Makes the point that culture ("taste" if you like) may be just as important as economic considerations www.mdpi.com/2571-550X/8/...

As Chair, here is our cross-party joint statement from the Parliamentary Black Caucus, regarding the rising threat of racism and violence from the far-right.👇🏾

Elon Musk openly called for violence on our streets yesterday. I hope politicians from all parties come together to condemn his deeply dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric. Britain must stand united against this clear attempt to undermine our democracy.

This is, I believe, the first official word from the Government on what happened yesterday in London. Not only inaction in the face of violence and hate, but a celebration of it. I passed through London twice yesterday with my two kids & what Labour seem to be missing is that people aren't just...

Archaeologists Against Apartheid urgent call for action! We are not anonymous. We are members of both the EAA&global archaeological community and more committed than ever to holding our representative organisations to account and anti-democratic influences. aaaeaastatementseptember3rd.tiiny.site

Fun idea: the government emergency alert test on your phone, but the alarm sound is a new song by U2

matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2025/08/24/a... 🏺🌱

😱 and this is the issue with the academy not building/ having the resources to build its own infrastructure…

matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2025/08/02/a... 🌱🏺

Is anyone with access able to share these chapters with me? doi.org/10.1093/oxfo... and doi.org/10.1093/oxfo...?

Amid challenging times for publishers and authors, a new look and a new editorial team, for the important gateway, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

Musical satirist Tom Lehrer has died. He once declared: “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” Here’s one of my favorite Lehrer tunes

Forgive the purple grow light, but is this a speckled footman? Or someone else?

This is a crucial research resource and repository of open access data.

#OTD 1858 Joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace's papers on evolution at the Linnean Society, London

so it seems the take away is that if you have a Spotify sub, you’re paying for military technology development?

scale, current towns and cities on the map + csv file with coordinates of all the sites in the supplementary information

Don't like: North arrows

At what scale? Generally I like topography- either as elevation or a hillshade. Watercourses. Coasts. Not too many classes of object. Distinct symbology between classes. Check colorbrewer for accessibility: colorbrewer2.org#type=sequent...

Question: what do you think makes a really good map of site locations in a publication? Any elements you think are essential? Or that you don't like to see?

The Archaeo+Malacology Newsletter seeks contributions - short research articles or site reports, conference or book reviews, interesting images, news of new publications or theses. Get in touch if you have an idea!

How did we let such weak thinkers get such power (everywhere - but specifically in HE) education can unsettle deeply held views, but being offended is not essential to education. Being told that your very existence is 'debatable' makes learning & everything else harder www.bbc.com/news/article...

Would anybody be able to send me this new paper from Journal of Archaeological Science? doi.org/10.1016/j.ja...

Call for Papers for @lornarichardson.bsky.social and my session on Archaeological Integrity at this year's @tag2025york.bsky.social Come and share your thoughts on keeping our profession safe from AI, intellectual theft, & political manipulation! tag2025.hosted.york.ac.uk/en/call-for-...

Funded PhD on natural and cultural heritage on islands! www.mic.ul.ie/sites/defaul...

An 1,500 y/o tradition on the brink: 🐚 On #Mexico’s coast, #Mixtec artisans "milk" a rare snail (Plicopurpura colummelaris), w/o harm, to extract #purple dye ink. Now #ClimateChange, poaching, & tourism threaten snails & centuries of #Indigenous knowledge: 📰 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Woke up to the sound of rain, and the familiar smell of the earth hydrating after a dry spell

This is a brilliant and deeply disturbing thread. Essential baseline data and it's totally unreliable.

My fabulous second year Climate & Society students designed a board game today. You play as a country beginning either carbon dioxide removal or solar radiation management and each colour square gives you +ve or -ve consequences

Another post - I'm keen to hear of any archaeological finds of this one from Britain matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2025/05/10/a...

Just seen this for archaeologists across the UK. #TransRightsAreHumanRights 🏺🧪

The significance of archaeobotanical research! The first discovery of a vanilla pod in Europe: A multidisciplinary record from the early modern period of the Prague Castle www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Did this less-famous Neolithic circular enclosure inspire Stonehenge? #InternationalDayforMonumentsandSites 🏺 Radiocarbon dating of Flagstones in Dorset, England, finds it was in use ~3200BC, 200 years earlier than expected! 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

My 100th post in this series! matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2025/04/12/a...

Museums in the UK are increasingly having to deal with requests to access or get information on human skeletal remains from Britain in their care because the people requesting access have been told they have a specific genetic connection to an ancient individual.

Nitin Sekar says mammoth “de-extinction” is bad for conservation. He’s the former lead for elephant conservation at WWF India and member of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission arstechnica.com/science/2025...

"De-extinction" seems a lot like narcissism in a lab coat

Colossal Bioscience did not revive dire wolves, despite a sensationalist Time Magazine cover story. Making genetically modified animals that are cosplaying as extinct species is not de-extinction.

Hooray! Our paper on kinship in Neolithic Ireland is out. Such a pleasure to write this (and draw fancy maps) with a team of fabulous and inspiring prehistorians: Neil Carlin, Jess Smyth, @cjfrieman.bsky.social, Dani Hofmann, @pennybickle.bsky.social, Kerri Cleary and @prehistorian.bsky.social:

Post number 99 in my series on economically useful species in Britain matthewlaw.wordpress.com/2025/03/30/a...

You don’t do this.

What the hell is this nonsense?

Quite a long-shot but I've got a note of a useful quote by Alasdair Whittle on the decision to adopt agriculture, but no reference. Does anyone recognise this: "What has persuaded these people to give up the certainty of their traditional practices in favour of a new but less certain way of life?"?

Friends!