Kerry James Marshall (b.1955), painter and prof, "The Histories", retrospective with new work at Royal Acadrmy, London. Black, bright, bold, clever as hell, food for thought 🤩 Until Jan 18, 2026 www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

The Beetles crossing Abbey Road

#archaeobirds 🪶

Sheer beauty 🤩 stone lintels from Yaxchilan, Maya culture, 450-550 (with pictograms, that list rulers) and c.725 CE (large scenes, that show them performing rituals). Now in British Museum, London, gallery 27 🏛 Yaxchilan, on border between Mexico and Guatemala, was an extraordinary place to visit 🦋

NEW: Extraordinary scenes in Amsterdam this afternoon (Sunday, Oct 5). An estimated 250,000 bring the city to a standstill; people all wearing red to show solidarity with Palestine 🇵🇸 (🎥 Ahmed Zantac)

At almost 2,000 years old, this child’s wooden toy sword is a remarkable survival from Roman times! Found in the living quarters of the cavalry barracks at Vindolanda fort in 2017. Dated c.120 AD. Chesterholm Museum 📷 by me #RomanFortThursday #Archaeology

Did you know I have a store? topatoco.com/collections/... I sell prints of some of my most popular comics, plus tshirts, mugs, and more.

Ever wondered what students at medieval universitites got up to? Wonder no more and learn all about this from @amwillemsen.bsky.social next Tuesday at 1pm for a free lunchtime lecture! www.sal.org.uk/event/back-i...

Today is the feast day of St Jerome. I used to have a copy of this Durer print above my desk. I love the quiet stillness of his study and the light streaming in through the windows.

"Whoever carved the Ardross wolf has seen the real thing" 🐺 Now on display in Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, the famous Ardross Wolf Stone was probably created over 1,000 years before these animals were persecuted to extinction in Britain around 1760: www.digitscotland.com/the-archaeol...

The #Antonine Baths of #Carthage powered by the mighty #Zaghouan #aqueduct (built under #Hadrian ) & the vast La Malga cisterns - 15 vaulted chambers holding up to 60,000 m³ each. One of Rome’s greatest feats of engineering in Africa, it supplied water until damaged in the 5th and 11th centuries.💧🏛️

Just open: 'Beato Angelico" in #Florence, unique overview exhibition in Palazzo Strozzi featuring re-assembled golden altarpieces & in Museo di San Marco featuring manuscripts & serene context of frescoed cells. Surprise bonus: Van Eyck's "St Jerome in Study" from Detroit 🦁 worth the trip! < 25 Jan

For #InternationalRabbitDay a frolicking bunny on a maiolica dish from Faenza, early 16thC, now at extensive & lively International Museum of Ceramics, Faenza (Italy) 🐇

For #InternationalRabbitDay 🐰🐇: Love the facial expression on this blue bunny, it just keeps getting funnier the longer you stare back at it😂 China, Qing dynasty, Kangxi period (1654-1722), porcelain w/ blue glaze, Newfields collection: collection.imamuseum.org/artwork/23070/

Female American Kestrel strikes a pose 🪶☀️🌵

#FlintFriday! Stunning 🤩 Mesolithic scraper from submerged #Doggerland 🌊 found on the beach by Maurits a couple of weeks ago.

This only happens to you once

Sigrid Leijonhufvud, Rosa Norström, Märta Leijonhufvud and Fanny von Haartman sitting on an 11th century bench, discovered in 1906, still being used in Kungsåra church, Sweden. Currently at the Historiska museet in Stockholm, no sitting allowed. historiska.se/upptack-hist...

"Hey! Just saw your message. Sorry for the delay—got swallowed by a glacier that migrated south. I’m inside the ice now. Surprisingly roomy. Hope you’re well."

Our Enduring Fascination With Ancient Roman Baths hyperallergic.com/1043102/our-...

Impressed by how my sharp-eyed students spotted today how the Vatican Vat. 6018 map (c. 770) includes size estimates for some Mediterranean islands, taken from Orosius.

4-year funded PhD in Old Norse-Viking Studies at UCC, working on the Literature & Art strand of the NorseMap Project. www.ucc.ie/en/hr/vacanc...

Italy has moved me to tears for 3 days straight. Bravo ❤️

This blue-green Egyptian faience amulet was meant to protect its owner (apotropaic) and bring good luck. It was in the form of the head of the hero Hercules, identifiable by his beard and the Nemean lionskin - a symbol of power. 2nd-3rd c. CE, Karanis, Egypt. V&A Museum. #ancientbluesky 📸 me

#RomanFortThursday Reconstruction of a #Roman watch tower near Fectio in the #Netherlands #Archaeology #Military #History

I needed to see for myself if Rome was still there 🥰 #daytrip #romesick

🏺🧪 I did a follow up back in 2021 looking more specifically at why bad Halloween animal skeletons tend to look a certain way (and more specifically, why the hell they keep getting ears). animalarchaeology.com/2021/10/30/t...

In Intriguing Furniture news: yesterday I visited Lichfield Cathedral and found a new 13 metre long table made from a 5000-year-old oak log discovered perfectly preserved in a peat bog in 2016. The cut planks took 9 months to dry out, losing 2 tonnes of weight in the process. Definitely haunted...

🌷 "Little flower — but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is." (Lord Tennyson) 🌸 The Dutch National Library & De Gruyter Brill @dgb-mem.bsky.social warmly invite you to the festive book presentation of...

Y’all, watching folks joke about how it’s already the 23rd in Australia, New Zealand, China I realized there’s a great country song I need to write: “Heaven’s on Central Standard Time”

Happy #AutumnEquinox / #SpringEquinox (I never forget my Southern Hemisphere friends!) Tōshi Yoshida (吉田 遠志, Yoshida Tōshi, Japan, 1911-1995) #Birds of the Seasons: Fall: “Serenity of Red Maple” + Spring: “Flying Around the Plum Tree” (1977) Color woodblock prints #BirdsInArt #JapaneseArt

🎵🎶There's no earthly way of knowing Which direction we are going...🎶🎵 No, wait, we found this compass, the earliest example known from an English ship at the time of discovery, panic over!

Spectacular octopus from the floor of the women’s changing room at the Central Baths in ancient Herculaneum. This magnificent #Roman monochrome mosaic makes quite an impact! 📷 by me #MosaicMonday #Archaeology

Inuk artist Pitaloosie Saila, Loon at sunrise,1994 #WomensArt #Monday

Smile like you mean it, says the skeleton from a 1493 medical broadside from Nuremberg. #bookhistory #skystorians

Gaudy Commodore (Precis Octavia): This Butterfly is native to Africa & has a summer and winter form. The summer is red with black markings, and winter form is blue with a line of red markings on the wings. Incredible image taken by Ann Warner in Zimbabwe. #gaudycommodore #butterfly #nature #zimbabwe

I got to see a wild hoopoe on a lawn at the garden! Looks just like that carving I saw yesterday 😉

The buff-tip moth (Phalera bucephala) has mastered a very particular kind of camouflage. When they close their wings up, they resemble a broken twig. Native to large parts of Europe, there's regional pattern variation that reflects the local tree species. This one best resembles birch twigs?

A general strike in support of Gaza is to impact public transport services across Italy on Monday.

Kudos til hollænderne #latenight 😂🙏🏻

Early medieval silver hoard - mainly 12th Century- weighing 6 Kg found in the Stockholm area (no exact location has been released as of yet). www.lansstyrelsen.se/stockholm/om...

#BookRecommendation for #NationalFoxDay 🦊: Introducing the Medieval #Fox (Medieval Animals series) amzn.to/3t6rJGE #AmazonAssociates

For #NationalFoxDay 🦊: #Fox - Head Bottle (aka Spout-and-bridge bottle with fox) Topará, South Coast Peru (Necropolis) Ceramic, slip H. 7 1/4 × W. 6 3/4 × D. 7 1/2 in. (18.4 × 17.1 × 19.1 cm) Metropolitan Museum of Art (63.232.49) #AncientArt #PeruvianArt #IndigenousArt

A pair of frolicking foxes for #NationalFoxDay 🦊 These foxes are from a richly illuminated 16th Century copy of the Persian version of Qazwini's ʻAjāʼib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharāʼib al-mawjūdāt (MS Nn.3.74) See it up close in the Cambridge Digital Library: https://loom.ly/9vanVC4

The elephant in the room....🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘🐘 Bodleian Library Arch. G b.6; Historia naturale di Caio Plinio Secondo, tradocta di lingua latina in fiorentina per Christophoro Landino; 1476 CE; Italy (Venice); f.93v @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Today in Certaldo Alto (Tuscany), extremely cute medieval borgo, birth place & tomb of poet Giovanni Boccaccio 🤩