I'm hugely in favour of mysterious 'extraordinary' archaeological discoveries that are 'like nothing else ever found at the site' and which are shrouded in secrecy. There's definitely nothing unnatural or spooky happening at Ness. Don't worry about it! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Britannia, 274 AD. A rogue general has defied Rome to form a splinter state and, somewhere in Wiltshire, 55,000 coins are buried in the dirt. Now, analysis of their alloys is letting archaeologist @kmurphster.bsky.social track an empire's rise & fall Read our blog 🔗 rdg.ac/4notWE9 #AncientSky

Now there's a soundscape!

Here's a bit of alliterative humor from the redoubtable Martin Vine. #alliterative #poetry #medievalsky alliteration.net/poetry/king-pendas-apache-attack-helicopters/

OTD in 680 CE Hild of Whitby died. Ever year I celebrate. This year by a) showing off my fabulous, specially commissioned snakestone cast in silver to wear as a lapel pin, silver jacket pin cast in silver, and her death b) my imagined version of her grave marker

Alright so I actually checked and realized I got the PDF advance copy and I did a quick read and wow, this is an absolutely essential book for anyone interested in the Picts. Combines the latest research with beautiful images and encourages RPG play as a way of understanding/interpreting the past!

Nov 17: Feast of Hild (c.614-680), abbess. She succeeded Heiu in charge of Heruteu (Hartlepool) before founding, or refounding, Streanæshalch (Whitby), where she championed the 'Irish' dating of Easter at the synod in 664. She later founded a monastery at Hacanos (Hackness). #medievalsky

Very excited for this - should be getting my copy soon!

Want to walk into and through an actual Iron Age house…and UP THE STAIRS? Of course you bloody do. Come with me. Carn Liath broch, just sitting quietly beside the A9 as thousands whizz by without stopping. Their mistake. Far too excited to wait for #HillfortsWednesday

Saying goodbye to the beautiful venue of #Haskins2025 after two and a half days of brilliant papers and even better conversations over coffee and drinks. Eagerly looking forward to the next one.

An astoundingly brilliant talk, and a great beginning to the last day of #Haskins2025 !

So what can historians of science do? Valencius answers by citing an exciting, forthcoming resource for #histSTM & #STS practitioners--A Historian's Handbook to Saving the World, edited by @alixhui.bsky.social & @emilypawley.bsky.social. More info: docs.google.com/document/d/1... #HSS2025 #histSTM

Hello again from Napoleon C, where a large crowd has gathered for the #HSS2025 distinguished lecture! Our speaker is Conevery Valencius, whose research draws connections b/w #histSTM, #EarthScience & #envhist. Her talk tonight is entitled "Boom: What History of Science Needs to know About Shale."

Something about the AI discourse, especially as I'm seeing it in the university context, that's important to note: While many students recognize that AI is, on some level, bad for work, and produces bad work (slop), many still use it to complete basic assignments.

On my way to Miami for the @haskinssociety.bsky.social conference and very excited! Planning to ditch my sweater (an absolute necessity today in Boston) about halfway to balmy FL...

Delighted that from January 2026 all research articles published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology @cambup-archaeology.cambridge.org will be Open Access view.updates.cambridge.org?qs=85c24bbd7...

The cover of my forthcoming book, out in February/March. #dogs #Roman-Britain #animalturm #archaeology

A little extra teaching money means the budget is there for a final-summer-of-the-PhD research trip to Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland! I've been there a few times now but always looking for new tips - what are people's recommendations?

Wow! 😮🤩 There's a new interactive map of Every Known Road in the Roman Empire!! 🤓 itiner-e.org We might have to have a lie-down.

A reminder that if you live in a place with elections today, no matter how local, you should get out and vote!

For those interested in thinking about rethinking periodization, especially the line between the Roman and early medieval periods in British history and archaeology; www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Save the Date! Monday, November 10 7 pm The Spot Bar 50th Anniversary of the Loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald What: History lecture on the Fitz and Arthur Anderson by yours truly Sing-along with Gordon Lightfoot

Another sealskin book cover @mearcsteppende.bsky.social, this time from Norway 🦭

Two examples of a distinctively Romano-British artefact: the sinuously gorgeous dragonesque brooch for #FindsFriday 😍 These particular copper alloy beauties, inlaid with red and blue enamel, were found in Faversham #Kent c 1895 © Trustees of the British Museum #Roman #Archaeology

so the news is that i have done the unthinkable and... started a podcast. "American Medieval" - because if we've never been fully modern, maybe it's because we've always been a little bit medieval. the trailer has now dropped! please have a listen --> patreon.com/americanmedieval

“No Sanctuary It’s Hallowe’en. The turnip-man’s lopped head Blazes at us through split bottle glass And fumes and swims up like a wrecker’s lantern. Death mask of harvest, l mocker at All Souls With scorching smells, red dog’s eyes in the night We ring and stare into unhallowed light” Seamus Heaney

Tomorrow is #Halloween 🎃, which means it's the "Season of the Witch!" Here is a little bit about the relationship between environment and witchcraft in early modern Europe, because it tells us something really interesting about how we humans have thought about weather, climate, and disasters. 🧵

LiDAR-Based Storytelling About a Historical Industrial Landscape in Southern Middle Tennessee anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... "coal mining coincided with the convict leasing system that operated across the American South" "community archaeology" -> not just for Maya centers

Engraving of stake nets wood #fishweirs in the coast #Cantabria #Spain in 1791. Archaeologically very few of these monuments have ever been found and are only known from written descriptions and rare drawings such as this. 1/5 #coastsinmind #coastalhistory

Avi's a really smart scholar and is writing some great stuff for those into #envhum and #envhist 🏺

A standing stone in a pub? Well, that's gone on the list to visit...

Leaving South Bend after a remarkably friendly and fun Midwest Medieval History Conference. Brimming with ideas and inspiration for writing (to be pursued after I catch up on grading...)

For St Cedd's day, a view of the C7th chapel at Bradwell on Sea, built on the ruined Roman Saxon shore fort of Othona. Sound on for the birdsong! 🎵🎶 #Essex #MedievalSky

The Dornoch Firth Coastal Survey (Mar/Apr2025) Report is out! Highlights: a monumental fish trap, Bonar bridge coastal engineering, & a wonderful discovery of zulu sailing drifter. Download here: scapetrust.org/wp-content/u... #coastarch #scotarchstrat #hessupported

Had the pleasure of seeing this incredible digital reconstruction of medieval Barrow-upon-Trent at a heritage event this weekend. It's kinda mesmerising. Love this level of detail. Grab a cuppa and give it a watch! #derbyshire #archaeology #medieval 🏺 Copyright 2023 Friends of St Wilfrid's.

A number of manuscripts in the renowned Cotton collection were damaged or destroyed in the fire at Ashburnham House, London, #OTD in 1731. Asser’s biography of King Alfred of Wessex was lost. The Lindisfarne Gospels was among those to survive. #medievalsky

Scottish Society for Northern Studies day conference!! lots on Picts and Vikings www.ssns.org.uk/events/ssns-... #scotland #history #archaeology #medievalsky

We will, we will Broch you #IronAge #archaeology 👇👇 www.bbc.com/news/article...

Making final preparations for travel to South Bend tomorrow for the Midwest Medieval History Conference, where I'll be giving a paper about seals, sea-birds and sea-snails and what they tell us about life and landscape around the early medieval Firth of Forth! #envhist #medievalsky

If you're in the Boston/Cambridge area, next Wednesday 10/29 I will be talking about Van Gogh, industrial pollution & climate change at Harvard's Mahindra Humanities Center mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/event/enviro...

go, student newspaper of Notre Dame and Saint Mary "employ in-class essays, oral exams+ rigorous discussions — that are far more difficult to use AI tools to complete. a close reading of the text should constitute the bulk in any introductory humanities class." www.ndsmcobserver.com/article/2025...

Very fun morning virtually "visiting" the HES collections to look at some of the excavation archive from the Isle or May, helpfully facilitated by their excellent archival staff.

Reposting my little #envhum mini-thread on seals from yesterday for anyone looking for a little Saturday morning reading!

Our new volume 📖 , Writing Enslavement, is out now—physical and digital. the editors, @jeremiahcoogan.bsky.social, @candidamoss.bsky.social, and @illdottore.bsky.social, put an amazing amount of work into a volume that is both slavery studies and book history. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Glad people seem to be enjoying this thread! I'll be presenting on this (and some other firth creatures and their implications) at the Midwest Medieval History Conference in South Bend next week!

It's Friday afternoon and I have a little time between meetings, so let's do a little mini-thread on early medieval seals in the Firth of Forth and why I think it's useful to us to study them. Join me as I bounce through a tiny bit of my dissertation! (1/11)

The reimagined manuscript pages created by Thomas for our #NLHF funded #StoriesOnSkins project are amazing pieces or art, using techniques as close as possible to how manuscript pages would have been made at Portmahomack.

Wainwright's "Problem of the Picts" is seventy years old this year, and in that time brilliant humanities scholars have built an entire field of knowledge around the Picts, bringing them into the big early medieval conversations which themselves have changed radically. New knowledge!