Some recent views of the lovely geology of the south coast of Gozo. Lovely limestone. ❤

The continuing saga of the Homo naledi trainwreck www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XJd...

Important new paper on early Neolithic pottery in Malta. Congrats to the authors. www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

#OTD 19 September 1991, walkers in the high Ötztal alps on the Italian border, found a body melting out of the ice. It turned out to be the remains of a c.5200 year old man preserved with all his kit. Of course, it was essential to replicate him in Playmobil. 1🧵 #PlaymobilÖtzi #PlaymobilInfestation

Nubian Levallois technology associated with southernmost Neanderthals🏺🧪 J Blinkhorn @clement-zanolli.bsky.social @huwgroucutt.bsky.social @elliescerri.bsky.social @chrisbstringer.bsky.social @mdpetraglia.bsky.social et al www.nature.com/articles/s41... Btw ~ 70 and 50 kya they expanded into Levant

#FieldworkFriday. Biscuits with the coffee today.

Fieldwork essentials

Nice coverage of our ongoing research timesofmalta.com/article/cave...

Lovely Maltese olive oil

Summer is gradually running out of energy

Fieldwork Friday is actually Office Friday this week, but it has been a busy week of fieldwork otherwise!

Sandbags are useful!

Our Neanderthal cousins have been intensively studied. But every year we learn more and more about them. A couple of recent papers highlight the kinds of hypotheses that are being tested by ongoing research. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... and open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/5-205

#FieldworkFriday. Stone walls near the sea 👌

Lovely little fields in northern Malta near Latnija

That time of year again, fieldwork begins!

#FossilFriday. Cool new animal fossils dating to about 60 thousand years ago from Għar il-Fkieren, Malta. Congratulations Rochelle Xerri, Eleanor Scerri and co-authors. www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Yay, one of my favourite flowers is coming out. Sea Squills (Drimia maritima) emerge from a bulb. Often growing on what looks like very unpromising ground for a large plant, they suddenly appear around the time of the first rains in the Mediterranean.

Nice Middle Palaeolithic refits from India, like a 3d jigsaw, this is piecing back together stone tools made by people tens of thousands of years ago. By Akash Pandey. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A traditional Maltese village festa. The statue emerges from the church and is slowly carried around the village before returning to the church. This week is the peak of the festa season, and with impeccable timing the 'L’Gharajjex (showers) ta Santa Maria' also came today!

Old (/Upper) Qeparo, Albania. Had an amazing time staying here recently.

#FieldworkFriday. Trying to find the Paliavlako site in Corfu where Middle Palaeolithic stone tools and hippo fossils were found a few years ago.

I loved seeing these moulds for terracotta goddess figurines recently in the Archaelogical Museum of Corfu!

Anthropology collections manager job at the AMNH @amnh.org in New York! Additional info: A PhD (or PhD candidacy) is required to apply. Prior training in collections management and databases is essential. This is not a research position. Salary range $93-98k/year. careers.amnh.org/postings/4509

New paper I was an author of "The impacts of lateral obliqueness and edge angle on Levallois point morphology", led by Dr Amal Al Kassem. journals.ed.ac.uk/lithicstudie...

Was lucky to recently visit the amazing site of Butrint in Albania, fascinating and beautiful.

No, you don't prounced the 'th' in Neanderthal (it sounds like Neander-tal). In case you'd forgotten.

The return of the majjistral (northwesterly) wind has pushed away the very hot weather, and the sea has woken up. Beautiful walk this morning in the Blata tal-Melh area of western Malta.

Hammond et al 2025. 'The behavioural ecology of hominin locomotion' 👌 www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

Second go at making focaccia....good stuff!

I have to admit, this is not really what I was wondering about as I considered my options for what toppings I am going to put on my pizza....but i'm glad i clicked on this link, very interesting stuff!

#FieldworkFriday. Some nice photos of a recent visit to our Bidnija (Malta) excavation by senior colleagues including those from Heritage Malta, the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, and the University of Malta.

Made this from shells i've collected on the beach.

Well that looks like a very clear example of why care is needed with radiocarbon dating old (>40 thousand years ago ish). Luminescence dating from the same layers from this site in Iran suggests much older ages than radiocarbon (doi.org/10.1016/j.qu...).

#RockArt hints at the origin of Egyptian kings 🏺 Analysis of a rock engraving near Aswan, Egypt, indicates it may depict an elite individual from the First Dynasty, shedding light on the formation of the #AncientEgyptian state. A powerful #AntiquityThread 1/16 🧵

Coverage of our recent excavation at Bidnija www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/nationa...

Happy weekend! 🦛💙 Here’s a wonderful c. 4,000 year-old ancient Egyptian glossy blue hippo decorated with a little bird perched on the stem of a lotus flower. Egyptian Museum Cairo 📷 by me #Archaeology

The Maltese Islands in the central Mediterranean are renowned for their prehistoric archaeological record Maltese chert: An archaeological perspective on raw material and lithic technology in the central Mediterranean 🏺🧪 Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social archsoc.org.mt/full-text-ma...

#FieldworkFriday. Excavating a Pelorovis skeleton in the Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia, in 2016. Associated with the remains of an ancient lake, dating to approx. 100 thousand years ago.

Preparing samples of Maltese chert for analysis. This material was used to make stone tools in the Neolithic, but we know very little about it.

Finished our excavations. Great group of colleagues and students. Many more years work to be done at this this site (Bidnija, Malta).

Happy #InternationalRockDay! Feel free to share one of your favorite rocks below.

#FieldworkFriday. At the end of each week we do a tour of the different trenches in the site we are excavating, and the students explain what they have been doing and what they have found that week.

Strong winds meant we couldn't dig much today (gazebos, needed for shade, were becoming hang gliders!). But we used the opportunity to take our first year archaeology students to San Pawl Milqi Roman villa (preserved under early modern church) and the Salina catacombs.

Our #study finds that #male #dominance isn't the norm among #primates, and starts to unravel what shapes flexibility in intersexual power paper (OA) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2500405122 press release https://www.mpg.de/24986976/0630-evan-beyond-the-alpha-male-150495-x?c=2249

Nice lunchtime reading spot among old olive trees during fieldwork.

Early morning at Skorba. Two Late Neolithic 'temples' were built over the top of an earlier Neolithic settlement.

Cool! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...