So here is a thing, I'm going on a tour to witter about my book to real people! The first few are nice and local, before I get to go hang out with @catjarman.bsky.social at Althorp Lit Fest. Come and say hi!

'Beautiful, deep and grounded... With this wonderful evocation of the changing landscape through time, archaeologist Eloise Kane reveals how humans need not be set against nature, and suggests how we may re-weave ourselves into it.' Alice Roberts on Wilderlands by @eloi.se, out 23 April 🦌

This is coming out quite soon! I loved writing it. I still mean to do some posts talking about it and how it came about. I will!

So I'm off out for the eve, to an event with booksellers and publishers and authors, and as far as I can work out it's a free bar, free pizza, and loads of people who just want to stand around talking about books. And this is my job now? Winning! 📚 #booksky

I recorded the audio version of my book recently. It was fun! Great way to just engage with the book before publication. Except for the peppering of errors we found that are too late to correct, including one where I'd creatively renamed Fatsia japonica to something entirely random. Oops 😬 #booksky

Off to London today to see if I'm allowed to read the audio version of my book 📖 Will I speak waaaay too fast? Do I *actually* know how to pronounce all the words I've written? The answer to one of those is yes, the other is no. #booksky

I saw an actual copy of my book in book form yesterday. I wasn't allowed to keep it though, it went to a lovely bookshop owner as a preview! Deep in the very last tiny edits now, hoping I've caught everything 🫣

These are apparently facial reconstructions of a 2,300-year-old Pazyryk Scythian male and female from the same kurgan in Berel, Kazakhstan and not - as I first thought - that couple I met at a Spiral Tribe soundsystem in 1992 who sold me E that turned out to be paracetamol.

Some news! 🥳 This book has been in the works for a long time, and to see its birthday now approaching is so exciting. So grateful to the team at Faber for making this dream a reality 🌳🦌🐇 When I've got more time I have so much to say, but for now it can be preordered here! linktr.ee/wilderlandsb...

Is there a phase of life called 'candles'? I think I'm in it.

Surely this is my birthday and Christmas present in one @mk.gg

Going through proofreader's queries and I can almost feel their relief when they have managed to read a whole page without finding anything wrong.

For anyone looking to live out their best witchy life in a little cottage with lots of garden for fantastical herbs and strange looking poultry: www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/1...

Slovenia might actually be the most beautiful place I've ever visited.

Peak folk horror season is loading 👏

Nailing the book proposal is much harder than writing the actual book 🫠 By the time the whole thing has a proper shape it sort of writes itself (but this time next year I'll definitely whinge about having to finish another whole book, if anyone wants to publish this one 👀)

The independent researcher joy continues. How can I get access to bits of AM Digital without doing another PhD?

It rained today, lit the spooky season candles to celebrate 🙌

Must have been a good year for crop marks, right? Or was the dry too late?

Once again, may I suggest to my future self and anyone else who would benefit from this sage advice: Don't leave adding in your references to the very end 🫠

JADE for empress of everything.

Cocktails and one of the girls' Christmas presents, like DnD-lite!

I know teens spending hours in the bathroom is a thing but also HOW?!

My home for the weekend is a late medieval manor with detached kitchen, set around a courtyard with a little-altered pentice 🥰 Happy birthday/Christmas to meeeeeee! I've told my 10yo it's not haunted but it definitely is 😬👻

Why am I seeing so many people have finished their Christmas shopping? What is going on there?

My sister has hundreds and still watches them all. My parents have to be creative in sourcing new ones for her at Christmas nowadays 📼

It was a perfect day to view things through the ears of a big cob.

Foundation of an oforu (Japanese bathhouse) from early 20th c Japanese settlement in Canada. Very cool site. No historical documents mention it. Very little arch visibility on surface. Excavations revealed evidence of about a 14 small houses, a garden, and a shrine. Sudden abandonment.

I'm giving the annual Clarendon lecture tonight and then I'm not really working at all between now and Christmas which is an absolute win after this year. Other than a chat with my agent about another book.. but that's not really work.

Spoilers! A series of small walls.

Is Wiltshire the only place without snow? 😢

Tracing loads of things on a PowerPoint slide and animating them with nice colours will make it look like I know what I'm talking about, right?

ANOTHER ridiculously cool PhD opportunity in Oslo. A call for projects on glacial archaeology - the stuff the Secrets of the Ice team work with. Applicants need a masters in archaeology, to be fluent in English, and literate in a Scandinavian language. Go for it! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

No trip to Bath is complete without visiting the Temple of Books that is Toppings 😍

A real and very special place!

There are so many massive birds of prey lining the fields filled with long barrows and battle dead that this long walk over the hills does feel a bit like I'm in the beginning of a horror film. ☠️

I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing; here is some 900-year-old charred hazelnut shell from Clarendon Palace that we had dated to the 11th or early 12th century, probably pre-dating the bulk of palace buildings 🏰

Please someone give me the strength to work on what I urgently should be working on instead of the thing that is more fun but can be done any time 🙏

It's nice to open an app like this without the accompanying creeping dread, isn't it?

I didn't have sipping wine from a box at the Royal Albert Hall on my 2024 bingo card but thanks to lovely friends that has been this evening. What a venue!

A vague aside to something I'm researching is that this guy wrote a short story in which the only vowel was the letter E. Why? Who knows. It's a headache to look at but I admire he commitment! www.futilitycloset.com/2011/08/03/e...

The best thing about having an academic affiliation back is without a doubt regaining access to my beloved Digimap 🗺️🥰

Moving here like everyone else! I've been largely off for a year while writing a book, but I'm still not allowed to talk about it so pretend you don't know. Otherwise, I research/write about wild things, landscapes, and people. And I may or may not contribute things to a podcast in secret🤫

The transition into autumn 🍁 Kids back at school, project to finish!

I'm the least prepared for a two week trip abroad than I've ever been, and we leave for Japan in like 11 days 😭

Can any prehistorians point me to any papers discussing perceptions of Neolithic cultivation and those who cultivated - was it considered specialist knowledge, or just part of the every day? 🌾

I'm actually going to start using my face on things soon, as I had some professional headshots taken today. I assumed it would be torment, but I'm still alive!

One of my greatest pleasures is coming back to something I've written and /not/ thinking it's shit. What a feeling!

Ireland!

Off to Ireland tomorrow to visit family, but being deep into reading Mesolithic stuff for A Thing I might go in search of a submerged forest or two 🌳