We are over the moon! Our archaeology department at the University of Aberdeen ranked no. 1 in the UK for Archaeology and Forensic Sciences in The Times Good University Guide 2026. Many thanks to our wonderful students, our staff, and our wider archaeology community here in the bonnie north-east!

Our field season at the historic Old Kinord settlement is a wrap! The #archaeology of standing buildings is like an iceberg! The simple, surface story gives way to complex biographies that hint at changes in use, and how dwellings were maintained, altered and abandoned🪏

Come and meet the PALaEoScot team this Sunday 14th 11am-4pm at our old aberdeen campus

Ever wondered what life was like at the end of the Ice Age? What did people eat? How did they make tools? Come and meet the PALaEoScot team at Explorathon on Sept 14th 11am-4pm at UoA’s King’s College in Old Aberdeen and meet our living prehistorians at their camp! Link below ⬇️

Drs Jeff Oliver and Michael Stratigos are running our historical archaeology field school out at Loch Kinord - revealing secrets of past Scottish farming practices and rural life just under the surface!

A Nature feature highlights recently published research by a member of our team on an ancient Egyptian genome, placing it in the context of ongoing and future genomics research in Egypt: www.nature.com/articles/d44...

Day Three is excursion day at the SEAA 2025 conference here in Aberdeen and our delegates have been touring north-east Scotland’s beautiful and bountiful archaeology. From stone circles to Pictish forts!

There was a shout for find of the day at 9:21am this morning and it did indeed turn out to be the find of the day - found by our University of Aberdeen Certificate student Andy! What a beauty of a bone pin from the Pictish fort at Burghead! #historicenvironmentscotland @uoa-archaeology.bsky.social

Day two of the SEAA 2025 conference in Aberdeen is off to a flying (and rather metallurgic) start! Now for refuelling in beautiful Elphinstone Hall 😋

Yesterday saw a wonderful first day at the SEAA conference which we have the privellge of hosting this year. Fantastic talks, wonderful food, restorative chats, and a warm welcome at the Town House by the Lord Provost!

One of our @uoa-archaeology.bsky.social lecturer's recently had an article in Nature, and published a research briefing to go along with. www.nature.com/articles/d41... These plain language summaries can help expand the impact of your research by making it understandable to a wider audience

Antiquity authors feature on the @archpodnet.bsky.social Heritage Voices podcast to discuss the Nunalleq Digital Museum🏺 It highlights the rich #archaeology of pre-colonial Yup'ik culture whilst maintaining sovereignty for Quinhagak, Alaska's descendant community. buff.ly/LMoInPr

Charlotta Hillerdal, Alice Watterson, Lonny Alaskuk Strunk, Jaqueline Nalikutaar Cleveland all appear on the podcast! Check out their #ProjectGallery (co-authored with John Anderson) in Antiquity 🆓 buff.ly/eFzqooU And explore the museum: buff.ly/omwz2ZY

This week #PALaEoScot has been part of a team testing this wee rock shelter, hopeful for signs of Late Glacial/early Holocene archaeology (or palaeontology!). So far just some cracking lithology (literally) and a very friendly dog - but watch this space! 🦴 🦌 🦣 🪨 @ukri.org @willmills.bsky.social

Aberdeen's Jeff Oliver along with a team from Sheffield, Eryri National Park with local volunteers recently surveyed and excavated the remains of post-medieval cottages & their landscape. This research helps us to understand more about the lives of the rural poor & landless, less visible in history.

We’ll hopefully see you again at some point Prof. Britton! 😅

This week the Northern Picts team are in Shetland investigating the context of the fabulous Pictish stone from Mail, Shetland. This carving was found during grave digging in the 1960s and shows a figure carrying a Rhynie Man style axe. We’ll be test pitting at islet broch site and the adjacent coast

Great coverage of the Edinburgh’s First Burghers exhibition in the Scotsman - it has been brilliant to see this HES-funded work go from the lab to exhibition! @orshicz.bsky.social @boothicus.bsky.social www.scotsman.com/heritage-and...

Great to be at the Europa conference today, a celebration of landscape connectivity in prehistory and the career and work of the wonderful Martin Bell. First up, a fascinating and rapid-fire tour of 900,000 years of island (and not island) Britain with Matt Pope

Congratulations to our newest PhD, Dr Ellie Graham. For her thesis, Ellie tracked erosion and damage to vulnerable coastal sites using drone technology - well done Dr Graham! #climatechange #archaeology #scotland supported by @ukri.org @quadratdtp.bsky.social

Not Pictish but the 3D print of one of our University of Aberdeen archaeology third year student’s 3D models came out super well. A carved stone ball from Aberdeenshire

The view from my window. Caught between overdue books and overachieving rainbows. 🌈📚 #rainbows

Last day in Aberdeen! Wishing you all the best in your new postdoctoral job Lucy @lucyjkoster.bsky.social @uoa-archaeology.bsky.social

Join us for a day of free fun-filled activities on June 14th in Abbey House Gardens, just next door to the Borders Book Festival! All activities are free and there is no need to book. Visit the link below for full details: zurl.co/SkBVi

Jeff Oliver and collaborators from the University of Sheffield, Eryri National Park and the local community were up a mountainside in Gwynedd, Wales, surveying the abandoned farmsteads of settlers, encroachers and other landless folk who once called these parts home.

We are running two free events in June to give beginners a basic understanding of the geophysical survey process and what it can tell us. #archaeology #geophysics #orkney #NessofBrodgar #Neolithic

Surveying at the spectacular Cullykhan fort, Pennan, Aberdeenshire. Using our Sensys gradiometer cart for student projects. Cullykhan was dug by Colvin Greig and team in the 1960s and 70s, the fort has been shown to have Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, Pictish, Medieval and 18th century phases of use.

Call for Contributions! The Student & Early Careers Conference 2025 is back 🎓🏺 🗓️ 30 July | 🕒 3 - 8 pm | 📍 Online Share your work in a friendly space: talks, posters, or videos welcome! Submit by 2 June, 9 am 👉 [email protected] Find out more 👉 www.archaeologyuk.org/youth-engage...

Today our 3d year students are presenting their dissertation research topics - with much excitement, anything from witches to hillforts to sheep :)

This week our super Cultural Heritage MSc students led us on a cheekily-titled ‘Shitty Heritage Walk’. Together we explored 19th C public health & urban reform, & were also reminded that the treatment of waste & waste workers reveals a great deal about who we are, then & now💩🚮

Today our students in the MSc Cultural Heritage took their spring project ‘Filth and Fury in 19th c Aberdeen’ on the road. Michael Cairns from Celsius Plumbing gave a tour of Edinburgh’s smelly history - from murky reservoirs, wooden drainage pipes, public wells and Victorian innovations.

A recording of the recent talk for Founder's Week for the University of Aberdeen at Aberdeen Art Gallery. A talk on Rhynie, Tap o' Noth and recent results of our Northern Picts research. Please watch and share! www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA-W...

For #Hillfortwednesday we are off to geophys Crathie Point promontory fort- a site that has seen some dramatic erosion recently 🥲

An absolute belter of a day surveying a promontory fort near Findlater Castle for #hillfortswednesday. Images by Ellie Graham

Come join us for this funded PhD opportunity! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

www.socantscot.org/uncategorize... Our Interdisciplinary Fellow Michael Stratigos has been working with NOSAS and the Nautical Archaeology Society to investigate a medieval crannog in the Highlands. Excavation planned for September check back then for some early results.

Come join us! PALaEoScot is now offering a fully-funded PhD to work on ZooMS and sedaDNA studies at Scottish Late Glacial and Early Holocene sites. Closing 13/4/25. www.findaphd.com/phds/project... 🦌 🐴 🦣 🦬 🦊 🐺 (please note, full funding only available for U.K. domiciled candidates only).

Who says Buchan flint is not knappable?! Lovely work from our in-house stone-whisperer Dr Will Mills #flintfriday #experimentalarchaeology #mesolithic #palaeolithic #iceage

Two familiar faces on the Archaeology Scotland Student Award. Congratulations to our own fabulous runner-uppers Tracy Brook and Thomas Macmillan!

New open access book: “Cultural Landscapes of North-East Scotland: Collaborate Research in History and Archaeology” featuring contributions by members of the Department, community and professional collaborators from around the North-east eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

Read about our fishy bears from the Assynt bone caves that roamed north-west Scotland 40,000 years ago - we aren’t sure if they are polar bears yet, but luckily the press are 😅 www.scotsman.com/heritage-and...

Check out our new open access paper on analysing metabolites of vitamin D in modern and archaeological human hair. A pilot study for sure, but one that demonstrates a world of possibilities in assessing vitamin D health past and present www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Some lovely coverage of our recent archaeometabolics research www.scotsman.com/heritage-and...

NEW A digital museum of Yup’ik archaeology in Alaska places sovereignty in the hands of the Indigenous descendent communities, making the important archaeology widely accessible whilst ensuring it is relevant to the community today. #AntiquityThread 1/17 🧵 🆓 https://buff.ly/3PL5aix

Hello world, we’ve migrated towards bluer skies :)