🔥Wood, Smoke and Science! #LivUni’s Dr Ceren Kabukcu was a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science podcast. Drawing on her archaeobotany expertise, she explained how carbonised plant remains and dental evidence reveal how fire shaped human diets and eating habits. 🎧 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Join us in Poznań for the XXI #UISPP2026 congress: Session S -1F: Multi-method, multi-proxy: promoting multidisciplinary approaches in #pyroarchaeology organized by @segovandevelde.bsky.social Chris Miller and myself. Abstract submission deadline Feb 28th! uispp2026.syskonf.pl

New paper out! Does fire erase use-wear? Using experimental burning and 3D confocal analysis, we show that heating modifies surfaces but does not erase use-wear signals. @hcelab.bsky.social

Almost ready to start sampling for analyses from this amazing stalagmite from Wookey Hole Caves. Fingers crossed for nice results.

After a major grant rejection this week only one thing for it. Sack it all off and go climbing Instead! At least I understand the grading system in climbing 😂

Unravelling the Palaeolithic 2026! Join us for two days of all things Palaeolithic, Pleistocene and Early Human Origins at UCL Institute of Archaeology 19-20th June. Call for papers is now open and tickets are on sale! Check out our website for more information. sites.google.com/view/unravel...

MatrixERC StG works across archaeological sites from all over Europe, following the microscopic traces of late Neandertals and the first modern humans. We study intact sediment samples, checking whether the archaeological layers are truly preserved and looking for ancient DNA, proteins, and lipids.

We are delighted to announce our timetable of talks for Semester 2 of the 2025/26 academic year! 🥳🤩 As always, all of our talks will be streamed online and are open to anyone. Our first talk will be on the 12.02.26. More details will be released closer to the time. We hope to see you there!

Breaking News! ✨ @annemiekemilks.bsky.social , @katharv.bsky.social , @harvatilab.bsky.social and colleagues publish important artefacts from the MIS12 cold stage in Greece. Great forensic work and a little glimpse of what we are missing from sites without the preservation of wood. 🌳🦣🏺1/3

Science article on the discovery here from @andrewcurry.com with great recon art by G. Prieto www.science.org/content/arti... 3/3

Some inspiration for a cold day during bleak times. Half million year old handaxes from Boxgrove, Sussex, laid out for a photoshoot with Dr Claire Harris at the @britishmuseum.bsky.social #MondayMotivation 🦣🏺

More Breaking Palaeo-news! 🐘 Boxgrove preserved oldest Elephant Bone beyond Africa. 🐘 Early Neanderthals using bone to shape beautiful tools. 🐘 New research from Simon Parfitt @uclarchaeology.bsky.social Silvia Bello of the @nhm-london.bsky.social. 🦣🏺🐘https://share.google/20WUjY5TybDAr4QoT

The earliest confirmed evidence of an adult cremation pyre has been discovered in Malawi! 🔥 theconversation.com/oldest-known...

Another of my excellent colleagues, trained by the very lovely Emeritus Prof. John Gowlett.

Featuring the flame-tastic work of the Faculty's Dr Sally Hoare @sallygeoarch.bsky.social 🔥

🔥🔥 We're very proud to see Dr Sally Hoare from the University as one of the bright sparks (ahem) who helped discover humans had been able to create fire much earlier than previously thought. Read about this amazing work here 🎇

BBC coverage of breaking news announcing the earliest evidence for humanly made fire. From Barnham, UK. Quite probably early Neanderthal people with a late Acheulean culture 🦣🏺🔥 www.bbc.co.uk/news/resourc...

Congrats to the authors for a very nice paper, inc @sallygeoarch.bsky.social from @livancworlds.bsky.social [and in case anyone is interested in the nuts & bolts of science, the peer review file is available and shows that this system can indeed work well, even for 'controversial' discoveries]

🧪🏺🦣 Strong case for *oldest fire-starting* 🔥 capacity, before 400 Ka, suggested by multi-stranded analysis: geochem, magnetic, sedimentary evidence of anthropogenic burning, + heated lithics + remains of iron pyrite. Behaviourally heading towards #Neanderthals. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Are we... Yes... Another experiment of #FLAHME and #PALFUEL project... This time exploring embers and braziers with temporal coverture 🪵 Fire emission #health @iphes-cerca.bsky.social

QRA ADM in Brighton, abstract submission deadline 10th November!!! Submit your abstracts for a talk or a poster @quaternaryra.bsky.social sites.google.com/view/qraadmb...

New paper! Cave site formation processes, climate change and hominin activities: A high-resolution microstratigraphic investigation on the terminal Pleistocene deposits at Fodongdi Cave, Yunnan Province, South China doi.org/10.1016/j.ja...

Looking forward today to the “Paleoenvironmental DNA and Human Evolution” Symposium here in our department, featuring talks by Viviane Slon, Mikel Pedersen, Karina Sand, Ben Vernot, Pere Gelabert, Mareike Stahlschmidt and Susanna Sawyer. sedaDNA, so exciting! @univie.ac.at @heasvienna.bsky.social

📄 New paper 📣 of @matrixerc.bsky.social & @welkergroup.bsky.social! We show that microstratigraphic-scale #paleoproteomics works in intact sediments - opening new ways to explore ancient ecosystems & hominin behaviour 🌍🦴 @erc.europa.eu @icarehb.bsky.social 🔗 academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Time to update your Palaeolithic palettes... 🔵 Very proud to share our new research on the OLDEST use of blue pigment! We identified traces of azurite - a vibrant blue mineral - on a stone object around 14-13,000 years old. Why is this so exciting? 👇🏺 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

#ESHE2025 Giulia Gallo ‘ Estimating fire duration through bioapatite crystallite growth in Middle Palaeolithic contexts’ Bioapatite crystals: XRD/point of calcination. Nice experiment! Roc de Marsa (~90Ka) & Le Moustier (~55Ka): 10-20 hrs fire duration, at Le Moustier assoc w burning megafauna

Don’t miss our next ICArEHB Experimental Archaeology Seminar. We will welcome Dr William Chase Murphree to talk about new geoarchaeological experiments investigating Upper Palaeolithic fire use. 14:00 (GMT) on the 7th of October. Free for all, join here icarehb.com/lexa/

We are thrilled to announce our timetable of seminars for the upcoming semester! As always, all of our talks will be on Zoom and open to everyone. Our first talk will take place on the 2nd October at 13:00-14:00 BST. The Zoom link will be available closer to the time. We hope to see you there! 🥳

Stones and Fire in the West African Savanna www.anthropology.net/p/stones-and...

Our new study lead produced enhanced paleo‑geomorphological mapping of the Ararat Depression to decode how shifting landforms shaped human movement and settlement in the Late Pleistocene doi.org/10.1016/j.qu... @humendylab.bsky.social @arikmalinsky-b.bsky.social @yannismicrooikon.bsky.social

Fantastic day (research trip) to Wookey Hole Caves - witches, dinosaurs and removal of a large stalagmite for analysis (climate and fire) 🔥

Very pleased to see our paper published online at Climate of the Past: cp.copernicus.org/articles/21/... We present model-data comparisons of Late Quaternary climate across the Northern Hemisphere, showing that increasing model resolution has little net effect on coherence with pollen proxies 😊

Fieldwork day to Creswell Crags as part of our new project "Fire & Climate: Speleothems and the British Palaeolithic" funded by @britishacademy.bsky.social with Rob Hosfield & Sam Nicholson #soot #fire #aDNA

Very pleased to see our paper now out in Communications Biology! 🥳

Really thrilled that my second book is now published! It explores the life of Tacfarinas, a C1st AD auxiliary soldier-deserter-bandit-rebel who came to lead a revolt against #Rome in NW Africa during the early reign of Tiberius. He is a truly fascinating figure in #Roman history! 🏺AncientBlueSky

Onset of extensive human fire use 50,000 y ago | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Congratulations to Stephanie Thomson winner of the UoL 3MT 2025 final. What a fantastic presentation and the first HSS winner of the competition! @uolhsspgr.bsky.social

@tommyhigham.bsky.social introducing #NickAshton for the #HEASSeminar taking place now online and in-person @univie.ac.at

Great to have you here!!

An exciting week at Uni Vienna working on micromorphology samples from the Lower Palaeolithic site of Barnham, UK! #fire #geoarchaeology

A permanent job here at Southampton in Palaeolithic Archaeology and/or Palaeoanthropology Please share widely! jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

🏺 V. excited to announce I'll be bringing new prehistory & archaeology to @chalkefestival.bsky.social next month! Our @livancworlds.bsky.social "Science From The Hearth" team led by Dr Pete Hommel will run demos & interactive stuff on ancient tech: birch tar, metals & ceramics. Details TBA!

Who made the Oldowan? Reviewing African hominin fossils and archaeological sites from 3.5 million years ago www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Unravelling the formation processes and depositional histories of the Middle Palaeolithic Ararat-1 Cave, Armenia: A multiscalar and multiproxy geoarchaeological approach www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fantastic paper just out by @ivynotterpek.bsky.social and co detecting pyrogenic carbon in charred archaeological residues journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... 🔥 🔥 🔥

Our next LEXA seminar will be a hot one🔥! With the wonderful @caromallol.bsky.social. Join us at 2pm (Lisbon time!) on Tuesday the 6th of May. Register here: www.icarehb.com/lexa/

|✨ Publication Alert! ✨| Our latest research on #pyroarchaeology has just been published with @springernature.com in the #JournalOfArchaeologicalMethodAndTheory! -> Late Mid-Pleistocene hominin fire control inferred from sooty speleothem analysis 🔥 Read here: rdcu.be/ehqag

Our paper “Climate seasonality and predictability during the middle stone age and implications for technological diversification in early Homo sapiens” has been published in Scientific Reports 🥳 rdcu.be/egqwZ