My first faculty position was on an H-1B visa. Just wanna highlight that I got my MA and PhD from @arizonastateuni.bsky.social, so it wasn't even just a question of "hiring the best talent worldwide" but really for a US university to hire someone who was funded and trained 8 years in the US.

Age yourself with a film you saw in the cinema as a kid.

Hippo!

One of the constant strands in the history of the university, dating back to its medieval origins, is the attempt of authorities - especially religious authorities but not exclusively - to control what can and cannot be taught.

In Ferrara (Italy) this week for the Meso2025 conference to talk and learn about all things Mesolithic. Presented Monday about my team's work on identifying the Mesolithic in W Liguria, which was unknown until 2021. 🏺🦣 meso2025.sciencesconf.org

@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised! 3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution 2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions. Please share and apply! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

Hearing news that primatologist Prof Jeff Meldrum - probably best known as lone extant academically qualified advocate of the supposed biological reality of #bigfoot - died Tuesday after sudden downturn in health. Thanks Brandon Peecock of Idaho State University for info.

If *your department head and your dean* can be removed for supporting your colleague in teaching in their area of expertise, then you have no academic freedom. In a functional sense, you don't work at a university at all.

Our new open access paper: how do we understand plastics as a contemporary archaeological record, and what does this mean for how we mitigate their environmental impacts? 🧪 🏺

Today, I found out that I'm old enough that some of the very first undergrads who took classes from me are enjoying their first sabbatical leave. #midcareer

Holy fucking shit

There have been a ton of 20th anniversary "best of" podcast lists lately, and it has started to feel a bit like an obituary for an industry. [gift link] defector.com/the-future-o...

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

Slightly diminish a band: Godspeed You Black Baronet

*screams in paleoanthropologist*

Yesterday I discovered that ChatGPT's PhD-level expertise didn't extend to bird anatomy. This morning I thought, perhaps I was being too hard on the half-trillion-dollar company. Birds are a little weird, anatomically speaking. Let's try something more familiar. A mammal. Behold.

Since search is dead, how soon do you think Google Scholar is headed for the Google Graveyard? I'm betting it's soon, and academia is NOT prepared

A beautiful illustration by Tom Björklund accompanying this great write-up by @killgrove.bsky.social of the Arene Candide 12 artificial cranial deformation study: www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

Job Alerts!🚨 We are looking to fill three Independent Junior Research Group Leader positions in the 'HUMAN ORIGINS' Cluster of Excellence at the University of Tübingen Application deadline: Sept. 10, Starting Jan. 1, 2026 1. Genotype-Phenotype interactions: uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...

Paleolithic evidence for artificial cranial deformation in an Epigravettian individual from Arene Candide Cave (Italy), dating to ca. 12.4ky BP. This new study adds to a host of diverse ritual, mortuary and social behaviors documented at the site. 🦣🏺🧪

Paleolithic evidence for artificial cranial deformation in an Epigravettian individual from Arene Candide Cave (Italy), dating to ca. 12.4ky BP. This new study adds to a host of diverse ritual, mortuary and social behaviors documented at the site. 🦣🏺🧪

📣 Work with us! 📣 The Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge is looking to appoint an Assistant Professor in Zooarchaeology. 📅 Closing date: 15 September 👉 More info and how to apply: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...

If you work in higher ed, you need to get your folks together and end the use of course evals or at least bar their consideration in evaluation, promotion, and hiring. This needed to happen yesterday because they don't measure learning, they measure instructor gender, but now it's a snitch pool.

This is a super thread that really puts the whole "Neanderthal fat factory" into much broader context and highlights the multiple dimensions of hunter-gatherer diets. Very interesting to get a crop scientist's perspective on this topic! Definitely worth a read!!

This is a super thread that really puts the whole "Neanderthal fat factory" into much broader context and highlights the multiple dimensions of hunter-gatherer diets. Very interesting to get a crop scientist's perspective on this topic! Definitely worth a read!!

"Comprendre une autre humanité, c'est donc aussi apprendre à mieux habiter la nôtre." Petit texte par Amélie Vallerand et moi-même sur l'intérêt de faire l'archéologie de Néandertal en 2025. www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idee...?

"Comprendre une autre humanité, c'est donc aussi apprendre à mieux habiter la nôtre." Petit texte par Amélie Vallerand et moi-même sur l'intérêt de faire l'archéologie de Néandertal en 2025. www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idee...?

Part of my answer to "how'd we get here?" is an elite, institutional culture deeply opposed to calling bullshit. To do so is uncouth, uncivil, biased. Stated rationales must be taken at face value. There's no such thing as bad faith. Questioning motives is wrong. It's just debate, have some respect.

Glad my graduate alma mater cut 60 degree programs in subjects that require people to think so that they could offer this. Looking forward to living in a world full of Prompt Engineers.

If it has ever been clearer that teachers and universities are simply an impediment to these companies seeking to make students a captive population and then making trillions off those students it’s here

Needless to say, the Peer Community In outperforms all of the major publishers on this criterion, despite a budget many orders of magnitude smaller - again illustrating that the big money we pay for publishing is not used for the good of science. (5/5) @peercommunityin.bsky.social

In terms of their commitment to open science, Elsevier and Springer-Nature are in the same cluster as MDPI and Frontiers In... says it all!

Wait, wait, wait... I've seen this pose before!

Not the point of this fascinating article, but it remains darkly ironic to me that the Humanities have fallen backwards into being the safe financial bet of degrees

Wait, wait, wait... I've seen this pose before!

« Ce sont des démarches plurielles, qui partent du terrain en engageant un travail à la fois social et culturel avec les personnes et les milieux concernés, plutôt que d’appliquer une méthode unique. » reporterre.net/Anna-Tsing-a...

Happy to share our new paper introducing the Animal Culture Database in Scientific Data: We’re putting together a resource consolidating primary research on cultural behaviors in wild animal populations and how they’re affected by human activity (1/5) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Free Talk "V for Viking: TikTok, Viking Archaeology & the Far Right" - Tomorrow 17.30 British Summer Time - sign up here: archaeologistsrfa.wordpress.com/events/

This is how insane people sound when you tell them why A.I. is bad

Petition for sociology-adjacent folks to stop using "Archaeology of" willy-nilly

Petition for sociology-adjacent folks to stop using "Archaeology of" willy-nilly

Bye forever, WeTransfer.

Great media piece by my PhD student, Colombe Sehenomalala, on state of lemur research & conservation in home country of Madagascar. Did you know lemurs are important seed dispersers? @theconversation.com @anthropologieudem.bsky.social @umontreal-en.bsky.social theconversation.com/lemurs-can-h...

In a new paper published earlier this year in the Journal of Marketing, we uncovered a surprising pattern: The more knowledge people have about lead poisoning, the less likely they are eat paint chips for a snack.

Academic freedom: universityaffairs.ca/news/whos-af... @rgwhitaker.bsky.social: "Politicians are comfortable publicly attacking academic freedom only because they think they can score points with their base.." "...we must relentlessly explain how it works & show how it benefits society as a whole"

*INDIANA JONES AND THE EXPENSE SYSTEM THAT WON'T ACCEPT NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE RECEIPTS*

Good morning 🫡

*INDIANA JONES AND THE EXPENSE SYSTEM THAT WON'T ACCEPT NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE RECEIPTS*

*INDIANA JONES AND THE CLOSURE OF THE ARCHAEOLOGY DEPARTMENT*