So… exciting job news 🎉 Very happy to announce I’ll soon be joining the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research! Over the next 3 years, I’ll be exploring how artistic traditions changed over the Palaeo-Meso transition - did art play an active, adaptive role in response to climate changes?

Printing our first test bone in our RICHeS funded Ark of the North lab - next stop, a whole bear skeleton! This system will allow for efficient sharing of reference collections, bolstering zooarchaeology and palaeontology in Scotland and beyond 🦴 🐻 @ukri.org

Our preprint is now out, looking at genomic history and selection in Britain, with a focus on the Roman and early medieval periods. Comments welcome! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @boothicus.bsky.social @leospeidel.bsky.social @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social

Congratulations to Dr Sarah Barakat who passed her PhD viva today! Sarah’s doctoral research has made a major contribution to our understanding of the use of sulfur isotopes in tracking range use in Late Pleistocene fauna. Well done Sarah! (And here’s the obligatory theme cake…)

Amazing to be part of this! Never had an archaeological emergancy before - truly a once in a lifetime site! www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

PALaEoScot is in Orkney this week working with Dr Ben Elliott sampling bone from early Mesolithic site, Tarradale. Project PhD student Tayla Sanders is looking at mammalian faunal biodiversity in Scotland at the end of the Ice Age and during the Mesolithic - watch this space!

This is an amazing figure, showing the power of ZooMS taxonomic corrections in isotopic study design.

So excited to announce the publication of this paper which is the first to come from my PhD! Combing data from the PleistoHERD and DeerPal project we analyse carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur in ungulate bones from the Aquitaine Basin dating between the Ante-Quina and Quina periods.

Sulfur isotope analysis shows differences in range use between ungulates with known differences in home range sizes today. This is shown well in reindeer compared to all other fauna. We also integrate important ZooMS data to optimise palaeoecological interpretations.

New paper alert! Sulfur isotopes evidence Late Pleistocene faunal spatial ecology - 100s of data points, years of combined research effort, and an isotope-zooarch-zooms collab. Congrats to @sarahbarakat.bsky.social who led this to fruition! @ukri.org @leverhulme.ac.uk doi.org/10.1016/j.qu...

In Edinburgh this week for PALaEoScot, meeting specialists at NMS with our Edinburgh-based project zooarchaeology post-doc Alicia Sanz-Royo. We’re spending the week exploring the wonderful animal remains of the Assynt bone caves - kicking the day off with breakfast at an aptly-named cafe!

Hippos?! In Devon?! Check out this fully-funded PhD opportunity @uoa-archaeology.bsky.social focused on the isotope ecology of the non-analogue faunal communities of MIS5e Britain @ukri.org NERC/BBSRC funded via QUARTILES - open to U.K. & international applicants! 🦛 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

NEW Bone fragment with butchery marks from Middle Palaeolithic (260–45 ka cal BP) Ormagi Ekhi, Georgia. The cave was a hibernation site for cave bears, but the butchery indicates humans are responsible for the accumulation of most faunal remains. Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺#Archaeology

PALaEoScot is at the British Cave Research Association Science Symposium in Bristol today, spreading the word about the amazing MIS3/MIS2 faunas of Reindeer Cave, Assynt - great line up too! #archaeology #caving #pleistocene

At a recent outreach event we tried a bit of living prehistory to bring the final Palaeolithic and Mesolithic in Scotland to life - we opted for some body paints, sticking to white, black and red. Turns out we could have added blue! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Châtelperronian cultural diversity at its western limits: Shell beads and pigments from La Roche-à-Pierrot, Saint-Césaire | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Test audience for these wonderful colouring sheets our new PhD student Tayla has prepared for our event on Sunday 14th at UoA. Tayla is joining PALaEoScot to work on fragmentary bones from late glacial-early Holocene sites in Scotland using molecular approaches - she’s quite the artist too!

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 ⬇️

PalaeoScot is down in Pembroke for the week - it’s a PalaeoScot-PalaeoWales collab! We’ve done some isotope work at Wogan Cavern over the last few years and it’s great to finally see the site & to check out a potential new cave with some of the Wogan team too 👀 🦣 🦌 @ukri.org

(Very) Late to the party but enjoying it immensely - wonderful words @lemoustier.bsky.social would recommend KINDRED to anyone interested in learning more about Neanderthals, visiting the other-worlds of the past, or learning more about the process of field and research archaeology

A memorable, creative and restorative week at Moniack Mhor for a writing retreat. Met some wonderful people, was fed like a Queen and broke out of the academic writing bubble just a little bit - like a spa for the brain!

So proud of you @lucyjkoster.bsky.social !!

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

Spotting her first MALDI plate! Thanks to @archaeoprotein.bsky.social for offering this wonderful training opportunity to @sarahbarakat.bsky.social and helping us further develop our ZooMS capacity in Aberdeen @uoa-archaeology.bsky.social - and for running our first PALaEoScot samples with us!

Lovely to see some experimental archaeology for our PalaeoScot project!

This week we also had a full-day PALaEoScot team meeting and welcomed our new PhD student, Tayla! It was wonderful to hear updates on the incredible lithics, palaeontological and palaeoenvironmental work the team is doing, and to discuss what’s next & to have bit of social time together too! 🦣

This week I’ve scoured letters at NMS for glimpses of Pleistocene animals; celebrated Medieval life at an exhibition opening; & been immersed in prehistoric landscapes at the Europa in Reading. Archaeology is so rich and varied. Thank you to everyone who shared their knowledge & passion this week!🏺🦣

And now to the main event - the Europa lecture from Martin Bell - route-ways and paths as ‘entanglement made manifest’ for human and non-human entities. Movement is the ‘connective tissue between sites’ - inspirational! @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

Enjoy #openaccess articles on #prehistory and #prehistoric #archaeology from Cambridge, marking The Prehistoric Society Europa Conference 2025 in Reading this weekend: 🔎 cup.org/4dQdVmE

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...

For the penultimate talk at the Europa meeting we have Richard Bunning on trackways and water transport in the Somerset Levels - pondering how humans navigated and understood the very different worlds of marsh land, wetland, high ground and sea @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

Staying on the theme of connections to other worlds at Europa and to Bronze Age landscapes in Wales and the deliberate deposition of weapons and other metalwork with (a virtual) Chris Griffiths @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

Now a ‘slice of Danish’ (his words), Niels Nøtkjær Johannsen on the fascinating landscapes and graves of Neolithic Jutland. More animals too - cattle burials, along with perhaps near-invisible carts that could have traversed local trackways in death as in life @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

Jumping ahead to the Neolithic and northwards to Cumbria with Sally Taylor at the Europa meeting. Spatial relationships between monuments and enclosures in the uplands demonstrate shadowing but also respect of the cairns in time and space by settlements @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

It’s apparently National Trails Day! Not sure if it’s coincidence or intent, but what a fitting day to be celebrating landscape connectivity and Martin Bell’s contributions to our understanding of past paths taken at the Europa conference @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

While everyone else was in the session… I had a photoshoot with the @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social banner! 🤪

Now landscape connectivity and lithics at @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social’s Europa meeting with Nick Barton - wonderful insights into the Mesolithic, complete with refits, at Welsh lake sites

Closer to home again at the Thatcham Reedbeds with Catherine Barnett. Lovely to see multiple lines of env arch evidence integrated to paint such a vivid picture of these rich marsh environments that were centres of human and animal interaction in the mesolithic @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

The conference has moved to exotic Verona and the Middle Bronze Age Landscapes of Italy with Elisa Dalla Longa - the theme of rivers as connectors across landscapes is emerging as a common theme across many of the talks today - food for thought! 🐟 @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

Now for some landscape-level network analysis with Newcastle’s Tom Lawrence - making complex statistics for archaeologists is a skill! Some sneaky isotopes included too via the Coneybury as part of a connected landscape bringing together animals & people @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

We're having a great day at the @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social Europa Conference, and we wanted to let you know about our special offer for the occasion! Enjoy 25% off our selection of volumes on Prehistory with code EUROPA25 at checkout. Start browsing ➡ bit.ly/4dKntQ8 #Europa2025Reading

Chantal Conneller up now talking about Mesolithic landscapes of Britain at the Europa meeting - with a lovely nod to Scotland, Lacaille and the work of Mesolithic Deeside too! @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

Kicking things off in our first session on hunter-gatherer landscape connectivity is @mattpope.bsky.social ‘Landscapes of connection and separation in the Palaeolithic records of the Doggerland and La Mancheland regions’ Reconstructing human activity in submerged regions is just 🤯😍

The @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social Europa Conference has begun! It’s lovely to see so many folks at the University of Reading to honour Prof Martin Bell and I’m so pumped for the lineup of talks 🤩

Next up at Europa - plants in landscapes with Molly Masterson, not just their economic potential but as conduits of meaning and memory. Fascinating to think of wooden structures like those at Flag Fen being sensory mirrors for the felled forest itself @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social

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

Wonderful to be here at the opening of the Edinburgh’s first burgher’s exhibition. Part of the Edinburgh 900 celebrations, the exhibition runs until November at St Giles’ Cathedral and features DNA, facial reconstructions and our isotopic insights! @orshicz.bsky.social - this time with pictures!

Wonderful to be here at the opening of the Edinburgh’s first burgher’s exhibition. Part of the Edinburgh 900 celebrations, the exhibition runs until November at St Giles’ Cathedral and features DNA, facial reconstructions and our isotopic insights! @orshicz.bsky.social