Day 6: Clay. What Bronze Age Cypriot craftspeople could achieve with clay has to be seen to be believed #Museum30

#HillfortsFriday 🧐🤔 The enormous & majestic Treryn Dinas coastal promontory fort, West Penwith, Cornwall 🤩, seen with a dawn sun rising through cloud. Home of the magical Logan Rock, perched high on a wall of granite at the heart of the liminal outcrop 📷 Yesterday

Dover Bronze Age boat. Excavated in September 1992, the boat it thought to date to 1575–1520 BCE, which may make it one of the oldest substantially intact boats in the world. The boat was constructed using oak planks sewn together with yew lashings.

Such empathy with these huddled beasts on a 10th/11thC whalebone chesspiece, perhaps a rook or a bishop, snuggling up against cold and damp autumn days… www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

Today's Knowledge Commons share 'Warfare and Peoplehood: The Vikings and the English' from Y. Stouraitis ed. War and Collective Identities in the Middle Ages East, West, and Beyond (ARC Humanities Press: 2023) works.hcommons.org/records/sass... #medieval #viking #history #archaeology #warfare

Today's Knowledge commons share "Coastal Communities and Diaspora Identities in Viking Age Ireland" (2016) #medievalsky #diaspora #history #archaeology works.hcommons.org/records/dhde...

NEW Satellite imagery reveals 76 hunting traps and 100s of undiscovered settlements in the Andean highlands, indicating hunting and foraging were still major aspects of life long after researchers believed people transitioned to agropastoralist farming. #AntiquityThread 1/11 🧵 🏺 #Archaeology

Funnels on common grazing enabling easy movement of livestock onto tracks, one of the first features you learn to look for on a map. Link is to a paper from Karst Plateau of the Adriatic where funnels were used for hunting in the Bronze Age compare with Andean study. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Workshop: Monastic Landscapes in Northern Mesopotamia in the 6th–10th centuries, 24-25 Oct, University of Frankfurt www.uni-frankfurt.de/177344484/Po...

I know I’m not team bovid, but it would take a heart of stone not to admire this 10,600 year old Aurochs from Vig in Denmark. #archaeology 🏺

'Thor's stone' rising above Thurstaton [=Thorstein+tūn] Heath (Wirral), the latter used for common grazing since time began. The stone’s encircled by a broken ring of peaty ponds, the result of quarrying - but I can't help thinking of other monuments where the juxtaposition was deliberate

People are constantly asking me — what can I do? Here are five, practical next steps you can take to make a difference. https://youtu.be/8W-lVRQQGtI?feature=shared

Thanks to the excellent work by Annemarie Franz and Prof. Driscoll of UofG Archaeology, producing and editing the latest Govan Early Medieval podcast was an absolute breeze, and what an exciting early medieval discovery in Govan Old's 1,500-year-old churchyard! open.spotify.com/episode/06EP...

Resurrecting ponds and lakes would add biodiversity and possibly also provide more freshwater fish for our diets (presumably there's a whole possible thread about historic fishponds). And we just need to make ponds where the landscape tells us they should be!

PS I wrote a very short piece some years ago about the 'Flood and Flow' project to map ancient place names and their relation to water: www.tim-waterman.co.uk?p=376

Inspiring #research in action from @carlsayer.bsky.social, restoring #ice-age ponds in Norfolk. The resurrected ponds include rare species lost from other, surviving ponds, such as various-leaved pondweed, which is only found on one other site in Norfolk. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

One of the highlights of Words on the Wave at @NMIreland is Cod. Sang. 51—an 8th-c. Irish Gospel book with rare depictions of the Crucifixion & Second Coming. On display until 24 Oct. 🕊️ More: www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collec...

Benedict Cumberbatch reciting powerful words by the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish at the Together for Palestine concert at Wembley, London. Happening right now and live streamed (link below).

A quick reminder: if you read something you love, don't forget to write to the author to thank them for it, and tell them why you loved it.

*EVENT* Brean Down Guided Walk Sunday 28th September 11am - 1pm Places are limited - please book via email [email protected] or call 01823 272429 Families welcome - we kindly ask for a £5 donation per adult

The thick time mountain clapper bridge forever crossing the black waters of the Afon Arthog stream and leading to the enigmatic ancient hut remains of Llys Bradwen #Meirionnydd

The fabulous wall paintings of Pickering church, which cover both sides of the nave. Done c1460, they were whitewashed over 100yrs later at the Reformation. Uncovered again in 1852, they were restored in the 1870s. Here’s the martyrdom of St Edmund (below) & St Thomas Becket (above).

What research! What a story! It seems the statue of the winged lion in Venice may have been a tomb guardian brought from China by Niccolò & Maffeo Polo - &, once in Venice, it was modified to resemble the Republic’s emblem – the winged lion of St Mark ... www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

WHAT?! I just can't .....

With all the current commotion of a new landscape sculpture to come 'Dijk van een Wijf' (dyke of a woman) of artist Nienke Brokke, read our short blog post earlier:

The Freddy Mercury hoovering display team were also a particular highlight...

Worth a read. labourlist.org/2025/08/nige... – via LabourList

❗The biggest neo-nazi music festival in over a decade is coming to Great Yarmouth and we need your help to stop it. hopenothate.org.uk/2025/08/28/g...

A federal court ruled that ANTHROPIC illegally copied MILLIONS of books to train its AI. All authors and publishers whose books were downloaded by Anthropic from pirate websites are subject to receiving compensation. This could involve your work. For more info: authorsguild.org/news/anthrop...

AI & authors' rights... (short thread) I had an email on 10 August from the publisher of one of my books. It said I'd shortly be receiving another email from them inviting me to opt in to licensing them to use my work for AI. And they listed the principles underpinning that usage .....

Today we’ve turned a new illuminated page in the Irish Gospels of St Gall (Cod. Sang. 51). Explore the beauty of cross-carpets and Chi-Rhos in our latest blog, then see them in person at Words on the Wave 📍 National Museum of Ireland – Kildare Street 🔗 www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collec...

I say words in public sometimes.

The "Words on the Wave" exhibition is featured in @smithsonianmag.bsky.social The article explores medieval marginalia—scribbled notes and doodles left by monks over a millennium ago. Visit in person at the National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street. 🔗 www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/t...

Appropriate joke for my Eurostar journey.

CFP for Borders, Boundaries, Barriers: Real and Imagined in the Middle Ages (20-21 April 2026). Deadline 15 September 2025.

🏺 #Archaeology isn’t just about the past. It's about solving the future with help of the past: 💧 In #Ecuador, an 18th-century map and a pre #Inca myth helped revive ancient #WaterManagement systems - tackling present-day drought with #Indigenious knowledge. 📰 www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

A bit on the tardy side for #HillfortsWednesday (I am busy putting the finishing touches on the new book you lovely people are all going to buy!) but here is Castle Hill, Wittenham Clumps, #England as a treat. "A beautiful, legendary country haunted by old gods long forgotten" Credit as shown.

This story of mahogany is one of the most thought-provoking and illuminating approaches to teaching the transatlantic slave trade I've ever come across. @hannahcusworth.bsky.social has blended her original research into a mesmerising story for Y8, evoking contrasting but connected worlds #Soane25

Farm pond restoration is important...for many reasons

‪🎧 Listen: @niamhwycherley.bsky.social‬(Maynooth Univ.) Explores the unique exhibition Words on the Wave: Ireland & St. Gallen in Early Medieval Europe on the Medieval Irish History Podcast—joined by Dr. Diarmuid Ó Riain & Matt Seaver (NMI). open.spotify.com/episode/3o3x...

I refuse to give the NYT my eyeballs, so I can't speak to the specifics of this article. But any historians attempting to use AI for either writing or research should be run out of the field. AI is inherently unable to do anything we need it to do to understand and communicate history.

The city is often a mirror of our scholarly approaches. Therefore, very excited to see this out—my overview of the recent views of late antique and early medieval urban worlds and a sketch of new methodologies for the city in the first millennium. In open access: books.openedition.org/cvz/54316

Ancient Manuscripts, Modern Science! What links medieval monks, secret ink recipes & ancient cow DNA? Learn how Scientists used X-ray technology and genetic sequencing to uncover the secrets of 1,200-year-old Irish manuscripts in Switzerland Read more: museum.ie/en-IE/Collec... #NMIBlog #MuseumBlog

@jmharland.bsky.social’s ‘Aduentus Saxonum’ was a marvel: a thorough, eye-opening reexamination of ethnicity within the Early Medieval Period I read this in Jan 2024 just before I started work on LITTLE KINGDOMS; safe to say it was a bible throughout

Place-names make a unique contribution to our understanding of how we humans have interacted with our environment over the centuries. Join us for six lectures exploring Scottish place-names, sponsored by Ordnance Survey. Free online tickets are still available: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rhind-lect...

Woden Law in the Scottish Boarders is a complex Iron Age fort with multiple phases of construction and remodeling and the fort is associated with earthworks outside the fort. The fort's relationship to these remains a question to be answered. canmore.org.uk/site/58068 #HillfortsWednesday 📸HES

Curiously, the Roman roof tiles used to build the Saxon arch were brought from Leicester, over 40km from Brixworth, despite there being the ruins of a villa about a mile from the church. Brixworth was originally a Romanesque basilica, and the Saxon arch was internal and flanked the nave.

If you’re interested in the concept of historical periods as discretionary but not arbitrary, I wrote about it in print in this (open access) paper, penned with my good friend, on literarisation in premodern societies. heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/catalog/book...

🎺🎺 A striking 47-cm tall carving of the winged #Roman #goddess of victory has been discovered at #Vindolanda, at barracks built in AD 213. The stunning image, found by volunteers on an official excavation, may have been part of a larger relief. 🎺🎺 #archaeology www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Archaeologists reveal entire base of 6th century Byzantine Bromeswell bucket was found intact and contains early Anglo-Saxon cremation burial. It was discovered in the last week of a month-long excavation by Time Team in 2024, working with FAS Heritage at the National Trust site.