Last week I said the hardest, most heartbreaking of goodbyes to my beloved Kiara. 17 years old, but in declining health for the last year or so, she passed peacefully in her garden, in the warm spring sunshine, held by her humans until the very end. We love you forever, darling little puss-face.

A key point has been missed, and for once it's not the AI that's the issue. C-14 dating of MSS doesn't date a text, it only dates the medium on which a text was written. Parchment was valuable, rarely manufactured for a specific text, and frequently recycled. 1/🧵 #ancientsky #classicsky #medievalsky

Wow. Unbelievable that this study passed #ethics approval at the University of Zurich, and ridiculous it was considered 'low risk'. The members of that ethics committee need to be disciplined alongside the research team. And no journal should go anywhere near this study or the research team.

Our opening @ceraejournal.bsky.social conference keynote, @jkeskiah.bsky.social, on the origins of dreams in Gregory the Great: dreams can be a product of a full (or an empty) stomach, and holy men can discern dreams by a secret taste. Well, I have just one response to that: MEDIEVAL CHEESE DREAMS!

Most #medievalsky and #earlymodernsky conferences, even online ones, are expensive 🤑. Not so for @ceraejournal.bsky.social's conference! It really is just under $10 (USD), which is even less in £ and € (and only $15 AUD!) Our first session starts in just 30 minutes! ceraejournal.com/programme/

The 2nd annual @ceraejournal.bsky.social #onlineconference is this week, 26-27 April! 🎉 🗣️Heaps of fantastic papers over our unique 30-hour continuous schedule - which allows for equitable access to the conference irrespective of location. #medievalsky #earlymodernsky ceraejournal.com/2025/04/21/i...

🚨Open call for papers🚨 Attention #earlymedieval and #lateantiquity colleagues at all career stages! JAEMA accepts submissions from all disciplines and geographical foci - and the submission deadline for Issue 1 of the 2025 Volume is fast approaching. #medievalsky #ancientsky #CFP #skystorians

Another day ... another #CelticStudies programme under attack. Please sign the petition to send a strong message to the University of Western Brittany that Breton is highly valued internationally: chng.it/cdStWfKmbz The Master's of Celtic Languages and Cultures in Contact blog: l3c.hypotheses.org

Mixed feelings on this article. On the one hand, research about the educated female medieval experience is momentarily occupying the mainstream. But on the other hand, the closer you look at their methodology, the less helpful the results appear to be. #medievalsky #medievalwomen #skystorians 1/🧵

Do you have 'spare' time in April? ✅ Looking for an #independent #medievalsky & #earlymodernsky #onlineconference to attend? ✅ Abstract submissions have been extended for just one final week! Our only submission limitations are chronological and thematic, (not geographic or methodological).

Rad new #Bowie mural unveiled in my neighbourhood. Fellow #skystorians: if medievalism describes post-medieval adaptions of artistic and intellectual medieval concepts/artefacts, then why isn't there a single word to refer to the same concept but with antiquity? #neologism #ancientsky #medievalsky

Teaching and studying languages is one of the core missions of universities. These languages include ancient ones, modern ones, mathematics, music, and coding languages. À bon entendeur, salut.

For reading other (non-fiction) books during class. More than once in primary and high school. But my coolest teacher in year 10 history, let my best friend and I read other stuff in class if it was broadly relevant - and that, dear reader, is how we taught ourselves rudimentary hieroglyphics.

I made a list of these if you want to block them. I'm not sure that this will prevent them from working, but it might. bsky.app/profile/did:...

"The influence of the Ossian cycle has placed “Celts” at the heart of genre fantasy...this, in turn, has placed 18th- and 19th-century race science, British (and French) colonial expansion, and attempted cultural genocide at the heart of the fantasy genre." 👏👏 Brilliant! #CelticStudies #literature

Sure, labret use is one explanation for the dental wear in this population, but one I think is unlikely. There is no serious discussion of dental wear resulting from continual use of the mouth/teeth as a defacto third 'hand', no reference to recent studies on the topic. #archaeology #skystorians 1/🧵

Not only is this a splendid essay featuring charming 19th c illustrations and poems dedicated to wombats in all their hirsute, rotund glory, I just can't get over the hysterical illustration of 'the common or native catte'. #Victoriana #Australianfauna #skystorians #arthistory

This is the antidote to modern STEM exceptionalism and research chauvinism - a thorough literature review that looks beyond the last generation of research and shines a light on errors and mal-assumptions within the very foundations of a field. #ancientsky #archaeology

Each contribution is fabulous (having read the whole volume through more than once during editing!), but i'm extra proud of 'Meet Me in My World', Roxanne Bodsworth's scholarly and poetic retelling of Aislinge Óenguso from the feminine POV of Caer. #medievalsky #celticstudies #feminist #literature

In recent weeks a whole bunch of new papers have been published in areas that are important to my research - with some amazing new insights ... and disappointments. One of my biggest let-downs has been the widely-shared article on ancient Peruvian #TattooHistory (www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...). 1/🧵

#Dream narratives are some of the most ubiquitous yet diverse genres of #medieval text, and we want to hear about your research! Ceræ is a fully independent digital-only journal, and our #CFP is looking for BOTH conference submissions and journal submissions. #medievalsky #earlymodern #skystorians

Even though my Glücksschwein is wonky and looks more like a plucked, zesty hedgehog than a piglet, here's to hoping that 2025 will be a fruitful and prosperous year!

A worthy petition to reinstate a worthy program. I was fortunate to have formally studied Latin at school in years 7-12, and I've used it constantly since. I would argue some knowledge of Latin is essential to undertaking any form of historical research. #academicsky #ancientsky #medievalsky

AI is not just poisoning society's capacity for critical thinking, knowledge creation, artistic and creative endeavour - those things which define our very humanity - its literal thirst for data is poisoning the environment and actively exacerbating and accelerating climate change. #toxicAI

Required reading on humanities research, by Christopher Newfield : www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Old news: @elsevierconnect.bsky.social charging unconscionable APCs and subscription fees while simultaneously undermining editorial oversight and scholarly integrity. Actual news: An editorial board finally takes a principled stand and effectively kills an AI-poisoned journal. #academicsky 1🧵

Behold, the Velociraptor of St John Stuttgart, HB VII 4, f131r

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume? Assyriologist: Du[ring] grad sch[ool] I [took?] a position ... [13 lines illegible] ... now.

Today, the UK government announced a proposal to change copyright law - for the benefit of AI companies - that would cause huge, irreversible harm to creators. More info below, but most importantly here's what you can do (wherever you live): 1. Email your MP. Template letter in 🧵 👇 1/10

If these pages could speak: 🗣️ "Slay!" 🗣️ "Nailed it!" I also love that this is an illustration from the Speculum Virginium - a didactic dialogue text written both for and about medieval female cloistered life. For an excellent discussion of this particular MS: books.openedition.org/obp/1011?lan...

Roses are redde Noble are the manatees Yf we wante a bettir future Teach artes & humanityes

Weren't we just talking about the #globalmedieval on #medievalsky? I love this type of research where the context and the purpose of the primary text is interrogated - and it becomes apparent that the text has been misunderstood by previous scholarship.

Really great #medievalsky OA article on the Global Middle Ages, its limits and limitations. What irks me about the GMA is it's seen from the POV of (often monolingual) English-speakers: both the audience and researchers. Research becomes visible to Global North scholars only when written by one. 1/2

Thracian culture practiced #tattooing in antiquity, especially of women, as a mark of high social status (Xenophon). Domestically, Greeks would usually encounter Thracians as slaves. This woman's short hair suggests her status as a slave, the child suggests her occupation as a wet nurse. #ancientsky

Latest entry in my niche collection of early medieval people whose album I would buy. #medievalsky

Horrific news from across the ditch today. The #humanities are an essential pillar of higher education and of society in general. Without the humanities, #STEM is a soulless husk. This continuing global evisceration of knowledge and #research is intolerable. #academicsky

Historical #films have an obligation to not misrepresent history, either actively or by omission. Numerous factual errors in the script notwithstanding, the 'colour' of #gladiator, from the scenery to the protagonists, perpetuates 18-19th c fallacies about Roman society. #ancientsky #badhistory

This is one of my favorite, low-tech, ways of visualizing the past! Doesn't oversell the reconstruction, shows possible past and present in same view, works, rain or shine and without power.

A tour-de-force of scholarship and detective work: Fara Dabhoiwala reveals that a portrait of an 18th-century Black scientist, long dismissed as a caricature, is in fact a record of the man's mastery of Newtonian physics—and the only painting made in 1759 of the return of Halley's comet.

It's arguable that the later Victorian/Edwardian popular trend of cheap and accessible #tattoos using electric tattoo guns (a) led to the demise of aristocratic 19th c tattoos, and (b) prejudiced middle and upper class scholars against identifying tattoos in #ancient and #medieval European sources.

Obsessed with Emily Wilson saying that for most of the Iliad, Achilles' job was beach

Fantastic example of a newly discovered #earlymedieval Christian #tattoo (or 'stigma' to use the ancient term) located on the foot of an adult male, interred nearby to a local monastery (suggested he may have been a monk) The other #medieval Nubian tattoo: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

What does guest-blogger @em-ehx.bsky.social make of the 'carrot-shaped' #Orkney island place-name #Egilsay?! Find out in our latest blog! shorturl.at/UnbgU

There's something for everyone here! #arthurian #beowulf #literature #materialstudies #photography #openaccess #medieval #earlymodern

Publisher: Do you want to put an LLM clause in the copyright statement? Me: Definitely. How specific can we get? Publisher: As specific as you like.

Odd nibbling behaviour for a dolphin... but what if the animal is a #shark instead, specifically the Ganges River Shark (Glyphis gangeticus), now critically endangered but once plentiful. World's only freshwater shark, locally labelled a man-eater. #medievalsky #manuscript

Researching #ancient and #medieval #tattooing is often #literature heavy - to help interpret and provide colour to the texts, I find it useful to turn to comparative traditions in other pre-modern societies, especially where #material #archaeological or #artistic evidence exists.

Odd how contemporary tattoo culture often relies on prefiguration - marking your beliefs and actions before they have taken place. Historical tattoo cultures were far more likely to record achievements or events. Hegseth's ink is about where he wants to position himself, not where he has been. 1/2