🥇Trampota et al.: A child, twelve goats, three sheep, a cow, and a horse: An unusual grave from the Late Eneolithic in Brno-Slatina (South Moravia, Czech Republic) doi.org/10.35686/AR....

JOB ALERT! 3-year postdoc at @girtoncollege.bsky.social - research anything you like in History, Archaeology or Anthropology in a wonderful, welcoming scholarly community. PLEASE SHARE! Closes 12 January www.girton.cam.ac.uk/job-vacancie...

Scientific funding is a net negative: "European taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself, and the scientific ecosystem has been drained" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Toulouse School of Economics offers jobs for Postdoctoral Researchers with a PhD in psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, or related disciplines. Deadline for application: January 23, 2026 www.tse-fr.eu/groups/depar...

** CALL FOR PAPERS ** I am co-organizing a session for the #EAA2026 conference in Athens on "Cross-cultural patterns in small-scale societies: Insights from comparative ethnology" Submit through EAA website: www.e-a-a.org/EAA2026/EAA2... and please share with others who might be interested!

🎄 New paper! 🎁 Since the 20s it's been said that "the Hadza don't use traps". Except sporadic snaring, none have been reported. So I was excited to find baited cage traps in use. More exciting, this was cross-cultural transmission — seldom seen in action! 1/​5 tinyurl.com/cagetrap

Working on ancient textiles or fibers? We invite you to submit a talk proposal and join us at EAA 2026 in Athens! www.researchgate.net/publication/...

We looked at 10 years of archaeology tenure-track job ads (2013–2023) to see what departments actually ask for: topics, methods, regions, and application materials. Open-access paper: doi.org/10.1017/aaq.... Data and R code used for the study are openly available here doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 🧪

** CALL FOR PAPERS ** I am co-organizing a session for the #EAA2026 conference in Athens on "Cross-cultural patterns in small-scale societies: Insights from comparative ethnology" Submit through EAA website: www.e-a-a.org/EAA2026/EAA2... and please share with others who might be interested!

Preview of an upcoming book chapter, discussing (amongst other things) transmission and innovation in Tibetan Buddhist sects. This is a phylogeny of the main sects

One would think that knowledge of certain key innovations, such as the bow-and-arrow, simply cannot disappear. "But there clearly were long periods when the bow was little used or completely forgotten in particular regions, such as in the eastern Arctic during Dorset times." doi.org/10.1002/evan...

*** CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS *** The #EAA is pleased to announce that the Call for Contributions for #EAA2026 is not open. The conference will take place in Athens, Greece on 26–29 August 2026. The submission period is between December 19, 2025 – February 5, 2026. 1/

Final preprint in this year (I guess), by our doctoral student David Snee, Luca Ciucci, and myself: Variation in Language Phylogenies May Result From Variation in Concept Translation doi.org/10.17613/dpa...

"Santa has failed to develop a community of true believers and cult. Nevertheless, Santa concepts approximate a successful god concept more closely than ... Mickey Mouse and the Tooth Fairy, in part explaining Santa’s relative cultural prominence" doi.org/10.1163/1567... #AcademicXmas

Spotify Wrapped is effectively now a national holiday. Why? I argue that the appeal of these year-in-reviews lies in how they feed our cultural obsession with individuality -- Wrapped makes us feel special, and we just can't get enough. Link below! unpublishablepapers.substack.com/p/why-is-eve...

Did incoming farmers replace hunter-gatherer populations in Western Europe, or did they live side-by-side? An ancient DNA project seeks to examine this by comparing hunter-gatherer ancestry with that of farmers 🧬 #MesolithicMonday 🏺 #Archaeology 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 📷 W.G. Smith

New paper: Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity

Want to make nice graphs with me, starting next year? I'm hiring for a position at the University of Witten/Herdecke. uni-wh.softgarden.io/job/61280592...

A curated global dataset of social contact between diverse language communities www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cultural transformations followed different regional trajectories, especially in areas of the inner peripheries. 🏺 #archaelogy #Neolithic

A simple yet very apt paper title 😃

North African populations genetically distinct over a long period from both sub-Saharan and Levant populations www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Yes, there are genetic differences between human populations. But how big are they? Diyendo Massilani's lab has produced a fascinating analysis on this. What a pleasure to have him on! open.spotify.com/episode/043H...

On a roll with papers this week. PNAS paper with @michealdebarra.bsky.social giving some evidence to the idea that people turn to the supernatural because of uncertainty about causal processes. BONUS of curing whooping cough with donkeys and warts with snails 🐌

In a new Review for @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social -- and my first first-authored paper! -- @manvir.bsky.social and I argue that experience shapes the emergence and evolution of seemingly extraordinary beliefs. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

📰 >11,000-year-old statues from Şanlıurfa Province, Türkiye hint at death rituals and symbolic expression within #Neolithic communities in southwest Asia 🏺 #ArchaeologyNews via @the-independent.com www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

New study led by anthropologists from our Faculty at @unikarlova.cuni.cz provides the first direct physiological data from real persistence hunts 🏃‍♂️. Results in the Journal of Human Evolution show this ancient hunting strategy is energy-efficient and feasible even for modern humans 💪. 1url.cz/GJOpL

Opie and Atkinson conduct a global phylogenetic analysis of 868 cultures and find evidence indicating that cereal grain cultivation, not agricultural surplus, drove state formation. Their findings also link taxation and writing to state emergence.

Today, we published a paper on the strength of language universals (if language has X, it also has Y) given spatial & phylogenetic autocorrelation in @nathumbehav.nature.com ! It is a cool research project, led by the brilliant Annemarie Verkerk at @uni-saarland.de www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Good bit of Saturday morning reading. All the 'revolutions' in human prehistory are evaporating. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

"Then something went terribly wrong. Vráble and other mass graves across Europe attest to a wave of brutality around 5000 B.C.E., about the same time as hundreds of LBK settlements across the continent abruptly vanished." www.science.org/content/arti...

The deadline has been extended - there is still time to get your abstracts in to join us in Morocco!

This @uliwestphal.bsky.social illustration of earnest efforts to draw elephants by medieval artists who clearly had never seen an elephant is great. ""So, it has two horns coming out of the face, and big ears, and also a tail... I know, I know, but my cousin said he knows a guy who saw one once..."

Fully funded #PhDposition in Comparative Cultural Psychology @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social. We will use touchscreen experiments & eyetracking to study mental simulations in nonhuman apes & human children across different cultures. All info here: www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit... Please share / apply!🙏

Research on more than 3,000 people found those who binge drank in their late teens and twenties later achieved higher education and income levels 🍻 BUT There is no evidence that alcoholism itself is a sensible career strategy 😅 www.thetimes.com/world/europe...

#Vacancies: we are looking for not just one but three #postdoctoral researchers interested in bridging #genetics, #archaeology and #linguistics in exploring the #humanpast. shorturl.at/B3Qdd @haam-community.bsky.social @cschlebu.bsky.social

From the archive. Inspired by pop culture depictions of cavepeople, an archaeologist searches for elusive evidence of ancient wooden clubs. Read more: www.sapiens.org/archaeology/...

The fitness costs and benefits of hunter-gatherer locomotor engagement | Evolutionary Human Sciences | by George Brill and Mark Dyble. Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

How men and women spend their days, a view into responsibilities and priorities between the sexes flowingdata.com/2025/11/04/s...

Ancient DNA studies usually link changes in lifestyle and language in the past to population movements. But not always! A new study in @nature.com reveals a South American ancestry that stayed steady for 8,500 years, despite major cultural and linguistic shifts. @science.org 🏺 🧬

Deadline approaches for our open professorship here at @au.dk @auarcher.bsky.social. Get in touch if you have q international.au.dk/about/profil...

This November, like every November, I am teaching basic research proposal writing to the new phd cohort at my institute. Here is the 2 page template we start with and adapt. Link to LaTeX github.com/rmcelreath/P...

Did you know these facts? Let us know in the comments. And if you want to know more, head to the website of our report, Uncontacted Indigenous Peoples: at the edge of survival uncontactedpeoples.org

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... Probably posted a preprint version of this before but good to see some formal testing of different hypotheses of descent/residence in prehistoric cemeteries of Europe, rather than just eyeballing the trends.

Thanks to @slatestarcodex , I'm pleased to announce that a fundraising page for my fieldwork on psilocybin use in Lesotho is now live on Manifund! Share (or support) if you want to further our medical and ethnographic understanding of psychedelics🍄🌍 manifund.org/projects/doc...

Have you heard that we’ve just published “Uncontacted Indigenous Peoples: at the edge of survival”? After years of careful research, Survival’s put together the world’s 1st comprehensive report about uncontacted peoples, and why it’s so important to support them. Learn more: uncontactedpeoples.org

Happy to announce that reflections on our workshop about non-biological kinship in Vienna last year is already published! @anahcorral.bsky.social @sabinacvecek.bsky.social www.sciepublish.com/article/pii/...

Looking for a PhD or Postdoc position in archaeology? @clusterroots.bsky.social at @uni-kiel.de has currently 14 (!) positions advertised for start in 2026. Feel free to contact me or any of the other PI's for more information. Deadline is 15th December. Link: www.uni-kiel.de/personal/de/... 🦣🏺👇

No. The spark of humanity was not a sudden climactic shift from forest to savanna. Yet we should miss the forest from the trees! The general pattern is still there. 1/👇 🏺 #paleosky