New paper (I had a very minor role) with lovely folks interested in complex past social systems. Focusing on the Carpathian basin, the article argues that while social groups change with environmental variations, they do so in unpredictable and unique ways. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Last official day at Kings Manor. Lots of exciting things about the move, but today is is about what a place this is to have worked! 12 years in my sanctuary of an office.

Come join our team in Exeter! We're looking for a Lecturer in Archaeology for a three year teaching post, focusing particularly on practical skills and fieldwork (closing date 30 June): careers.exeter.ac.uk/vacancies/95...

real question can someone explain to me in lay person terms why university finances work the way they do? You spend the first 9 months secretly bringing your own biscuits to meetings and the last 3 months over ordering the expensive pastries to spend the cash before the end of July.

Really delighted to be speaking to the Royal Archaeological Institute in York next April, giving the Talbot Green lecture. Will be attempting to blend a "prehistoric" cheese making demonstration with talking about how Neolithic diets trouble our assumptions about human history as progress. Join us!

Definitely pre-ordering this! Cannot wait to read.

If you are in Berlin and what to find out about our AHRC-DFG project ReNEW, rethinking Neolithic ontologies of Waste, please come along to this talk on 28th May: www.fu-berlin.de/sites/dhc/pr... Part of the Forschung im Dialog series with the Freie Universitat Berlin

Now Bluesky seems to have returned to normal here is our special issue on Domestic and Funerary Archaeologies in Dialogue with World Archaeology. Lots of really interesting perspectives on how to understand death mediated and found in domestic spaces. Thanks to everyone involved!

Turns out special issues are like buses! Today marks publication day for our World Archaeology issue on Domestic and Funerary Archaeologies in Dialogue. It has 11 great papers from Europe, the Americas and northern Africa. www.tandfonline.com/toc/rwar20/5...

A great summary thread on our recent special issue in CAJ on “Kinship Trouble”

Very happy to see this special issue published! It was lovely working with @genshinimpact-en.bsky.social, @pennybickle.bsky.social on this! 👇

This is such a lovely thread of posts about Cate and Carly's paper - if you are interested in archaeologies of kinship, that so often are informed by the context in which the dead have been mourned, this is one for you!

The statement appealing for greater democracy in the EAA has now been made public. You can find it here:  drive.google.com/file/d/1ehzn...   We are still collecting signatures here: ee-eu.kobotoolbox.org/x/xZZjy6le

The special issue this is based on is now published - all papers are open access! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Hot off the press!! New open access special edition of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal on "Kinship Trouble". www.cambridge.org/core/journal... All papers are open access, and the papers, I think, really capture this dynamic moment in studies of past kinship.

Job news!! We're looking for an archaeological chemist to join us on the ReNEW project: on waste management during the transition to the Neolithic. This role will be to carry out organic residue analysis. The PDRA position is for 2 years: jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/post... Please share!

Particularly enjoyed this "journey through a cow" on my walk to work this morning: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... Very meditative and illuminating, and I'm glad to get some time to seriously think about Neolithic dung during our ReNew project!

🌟Kinship Trouble: Virtual Launch🌟 Join us on Tuesday, 14 April at 5pm CET/4pm BST/11am ET. Register below. We will present our special issue in Cambridge Archaeological Journal, co-edited w @pennybickle.bsky.social & @genscapelab.bsky.social #archaeology #anthropology therai.org.uk/events/cambr...

Reminder that the launch for the upcoming special issue on Kinship trouble in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal will be held next Tuesday (see post below for link to sign up). The issue itself will be published open access itself on the 14th before we launch. Hope you can come and join us!

1/6 Just out in @Nature ! 🌽 The history of farming in the southern Andes. In a collaboration between archaeologists, geneticists and Huarpe Indigenous communities, we investigate its origins and consequences in the Uspallata Valley. Read: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

To celebrate our upcoming issue on "Kinship Trouble" in the Cambridge Archaeological journal, we're hosting a virtual launch on publication day; 14th April, 4pm-6pm UK time. The event is co-hosted by the Royal Anthropological Institute and AGE. To join, register here: therai.org.uk/events/cambr...

New Open Access Paper! We present the site of Al Uyaynah, Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Saudi Arabia, excavated by my former PhD student Dr. Khalid Alasmari. New set of C14 dates, thanks to @isotopesuk.bsky.social funding onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @uoyarchaeology.bsky.social

Given the choice, my border terrier, Hutton, would also happily get 83% of his calories from blueberries!

New paper! Led by Łukasz Kowalski, on drinking milk in the Funnel Beaker Culture, arguing for the complex interplay between gender, burial rites, and potentially ritual drinking of dairy products. Open Access in Praehistorische Zeitschrift www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Always lovely to make a trip to Cambridge to chat to the great staff and students. This time speaking to the BioAnth crew :-)

We are looking for a research project manager for the upcoming FORAGER ERC Synergy Project. Based at the University of York, this is an exciting opportunity to work in a team of 37 researchers from the UK, the US, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia and Japan. Join us! jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/rese...

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.

Evidence for contact between LBK and hunter-gatherers, it grows at every turn, but we are no closer to really understanding the range and scope of relationships. The site of Eilsleben gives us more evidence of just how close interaction could have been. Plus that deer antler mask 🤩

Wonderful study on a cow called Veronica and her use of tools! The video abstract is a treat, as is this thread. Definitely using in future lectures to talk about how we approach animal sociality and mutuality of being in the past. We all know how good it is to scratch that itch!!

Our Don Henson Prize runner-up, Lizzie Lovejoy (@lizzie_lovejoy_illustration @lizzielovejoy.bsky.social) also produced a poem during the conference, a TAG Group Self-Portrait. We hope you enjoy it. And TAG will return. At Exeter on 14th-16th Dec. Save the Date and look out for more details soon.

This marks a rather lovely way to wrap TAG in York and formally pass on to Exeter for this year's conference! Announcing the Don Henson Prize winner and some runner ups, as the panel had such a tough time deciding. Congratulations to Liz, Max and Lizzie!!

Best part of getting back to work emails - seeing all the Christmas and New Year messages from former students with updates on what they are doing. It really is joyful.

Thank you to everyone for coming! I have loved this conference ever since my first TAG in 2003. I really hope there were people at York having the same brilliant experience I had in Lampeter. It feels so good to have given my part to keep the theory flames going. Now to sleep till January...

Absolutely delighted to give this year's TAG prize to the Trowelblazers. Great way to kick off TAG!

New article published today! Funerary Practices Among Central European First Farmers in the Light of New Radiocarbon Dates: The Case of Southern Moravia/Western Slovakia Open access: link.springer.com/article/10.1... Chronology matters when comparing different funerary rites.

Some lovely coverage of the new project in the independent :-) www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

Here’s the press release for our new project on Neolithic wastescapes in English from the university of York. The project is funded jointly by the UK and Germany, allowing us to effectively collaborate Internationally. Can’t wait to get started with Henny and the team :-)

So very excited to announce our new project - From Reuse to Resource - joint with the Freie Universitaet Berlin, funded by DFG-AHRC. Starting early 2026, we're going to be analyzing the wastescapes of Neolithic settlements to rethink ontologies of rubbish nachrichten.idw-online.de/2025/11/25/u...

New open access publication: Moving to Stay in (a Woman’s) Place: Was Patrilocality the Dominant Mode of Postmarital Residence across Later European Prehistory? Current Anthropology. Thanks to Wenner Gren for funding the workshop it emerged from! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

A great account of the brilliant Kiel team's work at the LBK site of Vrable here. Andrew does such a good job of teasing out the complexity of that century of the LBK.

Only a month to go - alternating with excitement at everyone coming to York and sheer terror of how much there is to do in the next month 😱🥳😵‍💫😆

What a fantastic day yesterday was! Such a rich set of data and perspectives on kinship. I learnt so much. Huge thanks to everyone who made it happen. Also good showing from @uoyarchaeology.bsky.social with my paper, and Sophie Charleton speaking later on about the curious site of Banbury lane.

Want to help more people come to TAG - help us by building a bursary fund.

Today is the deadline for bursary applications! Click the link to apply: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

You are an early-career scientist interested in social and environmental processes in the past? For our second phase, we are offering 5 positions for postdocs and 9 positions for doctoral students. Apply now! All the details: www.uni-kiel.de/en/cluster-r... #earlycareerscientists #jobs

Are you a student at a UK university and looking for support to come to TAG York? Did you know the Royal Archaeological Institute Cheney Bursary is available to support you? You can find more details here: www.royalarchinst.org/grants/bursa... @royalarchinst.bsky.social

Oh this is just fantastic news! Congratulations Brenna! Excited to hear more about the research and sounds like there will be two very lucky people joining the project as a PhD and Postdoc.

Donations very welcome to support bursaries at TAG YORK 2025. We want to increase the accessibility of TAG, and these donations will help us do that. You can read more about the bursaries here: tag2025.hosted.york.ac.uk/en/bursaries/

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✅

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