And the second news: my project "PRE-CRAFTS: Body Adornment Technologies, Craft Specialisation, and Social Identities in Anatolian Prehistory" received funding from TÜBİTAK for a 2-year postdoctoral research at Bilkent University in Türkiye.

I have two great news to share! First one below: This semester, I am teaching two new courses in the Core Program at Kadir Has University. I am super excited to share insights from archaeological material culture and its public reception with students from diverse backgrounds and departments.

Currently advertising: PhD project on Neolithic waste, based with Henny Piezonka. Project focuses on spatial analysis and the Neolithic. Deadline is 9th Feb. A chance to work with a cool range of sites from Serbia to Poland and you get to live in Berlin, so what's not to like! Link in next post.

The article grew out of a sense of unease we had while reading debates over decolonisation in archaeology, especially about where the conversation is being shaped. I’m really glad to finally see it out in the world. 🧵 I highlight in this thread some of our core arguments.

📢 New article out in Public Archaeology: Invisible Archaeologies of Decolonization: Western Asian Archaeology, a View from Türkiye 🔓 Open access: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

🏺 Loved this fresco when I was a child with a Minoans fascination but it's not so much 'restored', as mostly imaginary. Look closely, only one figure has substantial original parts, and all the heads are made up! The real fragments however share precise costume elements with more complete frescos.

For #FrescoFriday here's a classic: 'Ladies in Blue' is a restored Minoan fresco from Knossos. The colour blue often appears on frescoes in garments worn by the elite, indicating blue was a status symbol in the Bronze Age Aegean and East Mediterranean. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

Melted marbles from Moria, the largest migrant camp in Europe, which burnt down in 2020. The material culture of border crossings is often intentionally erased. Preserving and studying it is essential to understanding this contemporary #archaeology 🏺 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

We make a strong start to 2026! 🎉 Our new chapter “Bodies and behaviours: archaeological material culture & the interpretation of identity at the Neolithic transition” critically revisits how identity has been approached in Neolithic SW Asia. link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

New paper. Recording the female experience of UK archaeology 1990-2010. Anne Teather and I document how an industry EDI agenda evolved in the 1990s and was dismantled, uncovering the ramifications of that for women archaeologists over the next decade. www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #openaccess✅

NEW Finds from 13,200–10,700 cal BC Eşek Deresi Cave in the Central Taurus Mountains 🇹🇷 The material culture shares features from both Central Anatolia and the Levant, indicating Epipalaeolithic connections via the Taurus Mountains. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

One other I’d add is that this means that senior people—and many already do—need to grasp the mettle and act like this is no longer business as usual.

'It is so cataclysmically bad' for #ECR now. So painfully true. It's abt historians, but has been like this in #archaeology since yrs. I'm one of the privileged ones, and has taken me 10 ys post-PhD to land a permanent position after changing countries eight times. frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/6691/

A separate but equally important point: we *still* need to get rid of the unilineal evolutionary narratives! You can’t rope in later people on the other end of Europe in order to recreate a narrative that patrilineslity replaced matrilineality as some kind of universal process. 16/

There is a lot going on here but these results are wonderful (even if I find some of the archaeologists’ comments problematic). Here are a few notes to be followed up with a blog post at “Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives” 1/

Since our big Science paper on female lineages at Çatalhöyük is out now, it seems like a good time to repost our related paper that we published earlier this year on material and biological ties🙂🌼

💥 Job Alert 💥 We’re currently seeking a Heritage Science Technician to join us in the Department of Classics & Archaeology at the University of Nottingham. Closing date July 24th 2025. Details here: jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx... #archaeology #archaeologicalscience

Matrilocal not matriarchal. I’m really unsure how comfortable I feel about returning to this type of a power/hierarchy discussion laden with a strict gender binary—esp when considering how far we finally managed to come along thanks to intersectional feminist perspectives.

Obsidian tools from c.8300–7900 BC Balıklı (modern Türkiye) 🏺 They are different to those nearby, suggesting despite cultural connections, the early sedentary community did not participate in wider obsidian-exchange networks in South-west Asia. Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🧪1/2 Here’s a sample of words flagged by US agencies for restriction/avoidance, according to government documents as Trump seeks to purge the federal government of progressive initiatives. Archaeology has never been so disruptive! shorturl.at/dka55 #sciencenotsilence @standupforscience.bsky.social

I'm very proud to have contributed to this new paper led by Camilla Mazzucato, which combines aDNA and material culture data in order to understand social organisation and kinship systems at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, Türkiye 🏺

We had a lovely time yesterday in Leicester talking about how we can create a decolonial, feminist perspective for Neolithic archaeology in Türkiye. Many thanks to the Wednesday Seminar Team for organising this! @emmabaysal.bsky.social @archanchistleic.bsky.social

🧪The Oxford Handbook of Mesolithic Europe is available, featuring my chapter on Identity, Gender, and Social Dynamics. Happy to contribute to this comprehensive volume alongside valued colleagues @univbordeaux.bsky.social @cnrsecologie.bsky.social #Archaeology shorturl.at/VfnRU

Don't Panic! How to fight fascism as an archaeologist. Hey, archaeologists! As archaeologists, we tend to be the doing sort, the busybodies shoveling and sorting, keeping and caring, custodians of time, places, people, it's time to lean into that! blacktrowelcollective.wordpress.com/2024/11/13/d...

Individual people making the decision to leave academia because it’s not feasible with their financial/caring responsibilities happens every day, and it doesn’t select for the most excellent people to stay in academia & become profs, it selects for those that can socially and financially afford it🧪

I’ve been saying for a long time that encouraging more girls/women(/underrepresented groups) into academia does not solve inequality @ higher ranks, which is due to the leaky pipeline ie job insecurity, high mobility onus, unconscious bias and overall lack of supports. Good but sad to see the data.

As the year comes to an end, here are some highlights from the year. We’ve been all over Anatolia and beyond, looking at personal ornaments & sharing results from the project. Read our new blog post - 2024 recap www.smallthingsbigstories.com/post/small-t... Happy new year everyone! 🎄

Great piece by SE Asian archaeologists challenging us to think beyond the Three Age system and unlinear Eurocentric models of the past: www.sapiens.org/archaeology/...

Mine is like this with short and longer-term moves bw Istanbul-Groningen-back to Ist-Edinburgh-Nice-back to Ist-Bordeaux-and now again back to Ist. Yellow dots: mostly fieldwork locations where I practically moved to for 1-2 months every summer… Not messier but def very tired already at this point 🫠

New paper out! Children actively made hand-stencils and flutings in the Upper Palaeolithic, but can we identify children's cave art without anatomical measurements? We present a new framework using universal features of young children's drawings 🏺 www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3...

Looking for a postdoc in use-wear analysis of Pleistocene expedient osseous tools? Check out this offer from the #ERCStG ExOsTech project at #universitébordeaux euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/296676

FELLOWSHIPS for Scholars at Risk Applications until 20.01.2025 at 23:59 (CET). #SAFE offers 60 fully-funded fellowships (up to 24 months) for doctoral & postdoctoral researchers of non-EU nationality. Read the call carefully, contact potential supervisor in your academic field. saferesearchers.eu

Yusra's contribution was brought to light in the 2000s by historian Pamela Smith, after which @trowelblazers.bsky.social featured her in a 2014 post. This year, she was mentioned in an article by Loay Abu Aisaud discussing pioneering Palestinian archaeologists www.researchgate.net/publication/...

🏺 The first remains of Tabun 1 were recognised by Yusra, a Palestinian woman who had already dug for years with Garrod. Here is Yusra in 1932 with other young women fieldworkers named as Rashidi and Amui Haj, and in 1934 with Dorothy Garrod.

Sharing is Caring: Central Europe’s First Farmers Lived in Equality 👨‍🌾 The results of a new study in Nature Human Behaviour, reveal that the culture responsible for the expansion of agriculture in Central Europe 8,000 years ago showed no signs of population stratification. ⤵ 🏺 #Anthropology

Please consider donating to and circulating Areej’s campaign! ⬇️

'Small Things, Big Stories' project is featured in the Heritage Türkiye podcast of @thebiaankara.bsky.social 📢 Watch @emmabaysal.bsky.social talking about the project and the fascinating stories personal ornaments can tell about the prehistory of identities 🐚 youtu.be/fvgJPUJn37A?...

A thoughtful open-access article on the role of archaeology and memorialization amidst Israel's current war on Gaza 🏺https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/archaeological-dialogues/article/baptist-hospital-in-gaza-current-ruins-for-future-archaeologists/C775E3465587591B2B60C139E8AD90B6

just a casual, friendly reminder 👇

I took the liberty of putting together one of these starter packs 👇. It's really just a very first, small collection and I would be delighted if you could help to fill it. 🏺 #Archaeology #Theory #TheoreticalArchaeology go.bsky.app/GURdkWn

I've been writing about memes in archaeology all day, which reminded me of this one that I came up with in a flash of inspiration a few months ago. Thought I'd share it here for those that didn't see it on the other place...

I’m burning the wood of a fire-surround my granddad had made to pretty up their NE pit house in the late 1940s. Curated for 75 years, across 4 houses, I’m burning it in N Wales. It’s giving excellent heat (keeping his unmet granddaughter warm). Objects and their stories travel generations too.

🧪 This Monday, my colleague S. Yelozer will present our findings on how Pre-Pottery Neolithic societies at Aşıklı, Turkey, expressed and navigated their individual and cultural identities @univbordeaux.bsky.social @cnrsaquitaine.bsky.social @pacea.bsky.social

"Children had a critical and defining (but often underappreciated) influence on how human culture developed and continues to develop. As the ones carrying cumulative culture forward into the next generation, they are the primary drivers of human cultural evolution."

I took the liberty to create another niche archaeologist starte pack: go.bsky.app/CSr9gQh

Prehistorians starter pack: go.bsky.app/R1ejt58

And in summer 2024, we finished our pilot experimental study on #prehistoric #beadmaking techniques We replicated the production process of a #Neolithic bead, from preparing the drills to grinding, polishing, and drilling using experimentally produced stone tools

Spring 2024 was very busy with our PI @emmabaysal.bsky.social presenting our ongoing research at METU and Bilkent in Ankara, Türkiye 🇹🇷 and several other places

We are back! Lets catch up 🎉 This summer we had a great session at the #EAA2024 discussing small things and identities all over the world from Palaeolithic to the Viking Age 🐚💎🗿 We are now working on publishing a collection of brilliant papers presented there. Keep an eye here for more updates❗️

I knitted these during lockdown Zoom meetings. One colour was when men were speaking, the other was when women were speaking. Guess which was which. 🤔