Last Feb I spoke at a reenactment conference: Vallhall: during the Jorvik viking festival. I was asked to talk on viking age houses and the talks are up on the organisers YouTube channel where you can watch all the speakers! #archaeology #vikings #livinghistory youtu.be/4GCt_zsjz8Y?...

📝 I'm very proud to have contributed to this great book on a hugely important Viking-Age and Late Norse site! 📚 The Earl's Bu, Orphir. Feasting, Farming and Commerce at the Heart of the Orkney Norse Earldom C E Batey with R Barrowman and I Mainland - The Orcadian on behalf of HES

My new article has now been published in the 2025 volume of Traditio. I use a little examined episode on the lower Rhine in the late 350s with the aid of agricultural archaeology to reveal fiscal dependency relations between the Empire & Barbaricum, & the consequences of their rupture. #medievalsky

The paperback is now out and available to buy. I'm very glad the book is finally available at an affordable price.

For what is worth my first book is going into paperback now, so you can actually have it for less than 40 euros. (Or even better: recommend it to your librarian!) www.routledge.com/Roman-Infras...

Me, tomorrow! How to (re)build an early medieval church: new light on the Whithorn ‘minster’ and shrine @firstmillennia.bsky.social 18:00, Tuesday 2 Dec Sydney Smith Lecture Theatre, University of Edinburgh, Old Medical School, Teviot Place (enter via doorway 1)

Some fabulous talks at this FREE day symposium on Thursday 20th November. You can even hear me chatting about how some tiny tool marks can give us some big insights into the torc makers of the Iron Age. #Archaeology 🏺

Enjoyed discussing AI and LLMs with MSc students today: we were all slightly puzzled by the recent Microsoft claim that puts Historian as the job that's no. 2 at risk from AI.

Come join us (for a little while at least)! Associate Lecturer job at Exeter in archaeology (especially people with human osteology, zooarch or forensic skills), until 30 April 2026: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPI165/a...

To celebrate the looming release of my next book, LITTLE KINGDOMS: AN A-Z OF EARLY MEDIEVAL BRITAIN, I thought I’d do an A-Z! 1 letter per day, 26 days to go! A stands for Aechse, the first ‘kingdom’ from my book, mentioned in the Life of St Cuthbert….

Five years, four authors, one book. Out now (fully open access), our new book on local priests in the tenth century 🌟 www.cambridge.org/core/books/l... @jbwaagmeester.bsky.social

We're doing a conference on the Early Medieval Period and demand that you buy tickets and then share this post immediately. sussexpast.co.uk/event/the-su...

Need cheering up on a gloomy October afternoon? The new issue of Early Medieval Europe is out! Articles on justice in Bavaria, tolls in Italy, women in 10th-c. Rome, Carolingian kingship, and child slavery: mostly available Open Access 😎https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14680254/2025/33/4

How Copper Smelters Accidentally Sparked the Birth of the Iron Age https://scitechdaily.com/how-copper-smelters-accidentally-sparked-the-birth-of-the-iron-age/

Anyone got any good recommendations for books about the Visigoths or, more generally, 4-7th c. Spain? 📚

There's a new book by Martin Carver about the extraordinary project to build a copy of the ship that was buried in Sutton Hoo mound 1. Published by @boydellandbrewer.bsky.social and available from saxonship.org/product/book...

🏺 Has anyone done functionality experiments on Bronze Age lunate spears? The holes appear to be assumed decorative (or perhaps reducing weight), but would they add anything to lethality, e.g. affecting internal tissue damage? Pics for attention (and also bc these are just gorgeous objects)

Some reflections on replicas, the internet's untethering of information from reproductions of works of art, and a lovely email I received from a stranger one year ago. sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/8/30/will-the-real-hildegard-von-bingen-please-stand-up-its-replicas-all-the-way-down

Anglo-Saxons with West African roots: DNA analysis of 7th century burials reported in @antiquity.ac.uk today reveals long-distance connections reached across continents and cultures. Read about it @science.org:

"nine of the ingots – accounting for nearly a third of the hoard’s silver – were geochemically matched to silver minted in the Islamic Caliphate"

Spread word! In memory of the late Walter Goffart, we kindly invite scholars to submit proposals for papers on a range of topics clustered around quintessential Goffartian subjects Maps, Migrations, and the Mechanics of Settlement & Taxation in Late Antiquity. To be held at @imc-leeds.bsky.social.

I'm giving an online lecture later this month on the eighth-century church in the Moray Firthlands - featuring brand new research on the 'shadowy' St Curetán (fl. 697), among other things. Booking link in the reply.

A recently-recorded Byzantine buckle made c. 540-600AD and found at Coddenham, Suffolk. @findsorguk.bsky.social SF-A6D42C. Only one other of this early type has been found in Britain - in Lambourn, Berkshire.

An excellent blog post from @samottewillsoulsby.bsky.social on a subject close to my heart - the ambiguity of the term "pagan" in eighth-century discourse. salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/08/07/a...

ICYMI: Deckers, P. 2025 All the single ladies? Detector finds, dispersed data and suboptimal sources in the study of Viking Age metalwork, Internet Archaeology 68. doi.org/10.11141/ia....

Thread.

A graphic showing the letter network of Pope John VIII (d. 882), from Eric Ware's splendid recent PhD thesis, "Papal letters and geographies, 844-896".

Buckle. Thetford Treasure. 4th/5thC. Complex gold buckles are rare finds. This one was discovered in a hoard of jewellery. Intriguing, as it was found about 40 miles from Sutton Hoo. It has interesting features, but no real connection to Anglo-Saxon buckles. www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

I'm trying to post a picture of a buckle, but the associated rabbit hole is so deep, and I can't get out.

Over 7000 pages of medieval medical recipes are now freely accessible online at the end of the Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries project. 👉 Discover more about this ambitious project and its achievements: loom.ly/XFJt-Tg

Early Medieval hinges. I wrote a paper about the hinges from Sutton Hoo: digital.kenyon.edu/perejournal/... The Great Gold Buckle (picture) was the inspiration for that paper and is still at the centre of my research, as it combines several unusual features. #earlymedieval #archaeology

One like, one history opinion

Delighted to say that I've been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for 2025-26, and we are hiring a 1-year full-time lecturer in early medieval history to replace me. Deadline 7 August. Please get in touch with me if you have any questions about the role! jobs.kent.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

It is this time of the year again! We are organising @imc-leeds.bsky.social sessions on orthodoxy and economy in late antiquity for the #IMC2026! Have a look at our CfP and come and join us next year! Do get in touch and please share widely!

Interesting hinge here - a hinged backplate. I was aware that some buckles had a recess (purportedly for a relic), like the Great Gold Buckle from Sutton Hoo, but I hadn't realised that there were others with a hinged cover. www.academia.edu/114647063/Th...

Stop press! 📣 The @archaeologyeaa.bsky.social's European Journal of #Archaeology has gathered together some recent #openaccess articles on #prehistory for this weekend's #Prehistoric Society #Europa Conference 2025. Find them here, alongside other #Cambridge #research: ✅ cup.org/43KN3ju

To write is to read… a lot. I present a long-running thread detailing (almost) every book I work my way through #BookSky

Can you recommend accounts that I should follow? I'm interested in the Early Medieval period, and historical metalworking and technical treatises from any period. I'm currently focused on complex gold hinges in the Sutton Hoo burial, and a handful of related objects that might have influenced them.

Do I have any followers who know about the history of animal husbandry in the late antique mediterranean? I'm curious as to whether oxen in the Talmud would have been castrated. (Yes, I know practicing castration would be technically prohibited, but you can still purchase a castrated ox).

'It epitomises the strangeness of Sutton Hoo - it has ship burials, horse burials, mound burials and now bath-bucket burials.' Nice to be ushering children out of the house while listening to the marvellous @helengeake.bsky.social from @timeteam.bsky.social on Today. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

JIAAW doctoral student Jenna Martin recently had her research on Iron Age Roman silver published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Her paper considers how silver helped shape historical trajectories in Iron Age Scotland. The full article can be read at go.shr.lc/4meQSpG (or scan QR code).

And you may find yourself living in a thatched-roof hut And you may find yourself living in the Holy Roman Empire And you may find yourself negotiating with your lords And you may find yourself in a beautiful hall, with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

Does anyone have any recommendations for recentish articles on medieval social history or the history of everyday life? I'm looking for good things to add to a reading list.

Friday 2 May, 5pm, @regentsox.bsky.social and on zoom I'll be talking after the AGM of the Henry Bradshaw Society @oxmedstud.bsky.social. #medievalsky

This stunning bow fibula (a decorative pin) was found in Wittislingen, Bavaria. At nearly 16 centimeters in length, it is among the largest and most elaborately decorated examples of early medieval fibulae of its kind. Made of gold and silver inlaid with garnets and glass. A Latin...🧵1/2 📷 me

In the seventh century, it became a thing for women across the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to wear pieces of old Roman glass framed in gold settings as pendants on necklaces. Top left is a new find recorded this week on @findsorguk.bsky.social with others on PAS & the necklace from Sarre.