I will (try to) take a social media break over summer! Contact me through email or other means if necessary😉

My blog for Pasture for Life on their #Biodiversity case studies is published! I explore the most common methods to farm for – and with – biodiversity, how to turn biodiversity efforts into economic profits & what support is available. #Farming www.pastureforlife.org/news/pasture...

This week, I am with the Amman Citadel Excavation in Jordan to analyse animal bones and take samples for stable isotopes!

I am making an academic poster for the very first time! Having seen many boring posters, I am trying to make it fun. What are things you have seen on posters that you loved or hated? #Academia

Today's task: editing a video of me talking about archaeological methods for my video course. First mini task? finding the appropriate funky tunes 🎥😎 #SciComm

This Friday is all about job applications... and one collaboration meeting. It is interesting to experience how much more difficult it is (mentally) to apply for non-academic jobs! What have your experiences been when transitioning out of #Academia?

Reposting this since I still am looking for inspiration on how to treat small sample sizes in #Zooarchaeology. One might say that publishing anything less than a 100-200 bones is not worth it. However, with precarious funding and contracts, I think it is well worth it so data does not disappear.

Seeing foxes wandering around town in #Oxford in such close proximity to humans will never lose its magic to me.

Working on a blog about farms who have a #Biodiversity approach. Quite a nice setting here at my parents!

Rate my set-up 😄 Today, I'm taking pictures of charred barley from a Syrian site. Documentation is important when you're about to destroy samples for stable isotope analysis in #Archaeology!

I had so much fun giving this webinar! Lots of people in the comments shared their experiences with past farming technologies (which I unfortunately forgot to download to look into later on).

Tomorrow at 1PM UK time, I am giving a webinar for Pasture For Life to talk about how #archaeology can give us insight into #farming of the past and how it can contribute to current discussions on #sustainability. Tune in here (for free): www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/winter-web...

We went to 66 Books yesterday for the first time and got quite the #Book haul! Besides fiction, I am excited to have gotten my hands on copies of 'Rewilding' and 'Eat, Die, Poop' 💩🌿 Not featured: some books we got for friends!

This term I joined a video class, which means I am now preparing my script for filming an in-person interview next week. Excited to talk about how #Archaeology can contribute to discussions of major present-day issues 🎥

Today, it's back to analysing Pasture For Life's #Biodiversity casestudies. Doing this work definitely is helping me rethink how to include #Archaeology on discussions about #Farming. 🧑‍🌾

#Archaeology provides (ecological) baselines for animals which can help #Reintroduction of extinct animals. However, I can't help notice the lack of mention of archaeology with the recent #Beaver reintroductions in the UK. 🦫 Am I missing something? If so, please send it my way!

Does anyone have some good (published) case-studies in #Zooarchaeology that use small sample sizes? Defintely looking for some inspiration to make my small dataset a bit more interesting 🥹

Today, I am running the last batch of animal bone collagen samples from Jordan through the mass spectrometer for stable isotope analysis! It's good to know I processed all the samples collected in September before going to the field again in May 👩‍🔬💪

For 2 weeks now, I've ordered the UK only organic veg box from Sandy Lane Farm (Oxfordshire) in an attempt to eat a bit more sustainable. It's been fun trying out new recipes and discovering veggies I'd never heard of/used before! 🧅🥔🥬🥦

What a random Friday: started the day with Arabic class, followed by taking samples out of the freeze-dryer. The afternoon was then spend on reading biodiversity cases studies from Pasture For Life! 🐄🌿

Totally forgot to mention that I finished my collagen pretreatment this week! Now, I just need to check quality, interpret the results, and write them up 🧪👩‍🔬

I am working on an article presenting the first #Zooarchaeology & stable isotope results of 3 sites in Jordan. The specimen numbers are low, as are the number of isotope samples. I want knowledge to be accessible ASAP, but what are your thoughts on publishing preliminary data? (1/2)

Saturday, I finally got to visit #Bath and its famous Roman Baths! It was a wonderful visit with one of the best (free!) audio guides. 10/10 would recommend, even if the ticket is a bit pricey.

The past two days, I have been weighing collagen to make samples for the mass spectrometer. This will (hopefully) be the last run for the Jordanian material I collected last September! 🧪👩‍🔬 #Archaeology

Four years ago, on this day, I submitted my PhD thesis during a pandemic! Time flies! Since then, I've done 2 years as support staff and now have been a postdoc since 1.5 years.

Lately, I've been busy pretending to be an archaeobotanist! Jokes aside, I've been learning a lot about how to properly conduct stable isotope analysis on plants 🧪🌾 Here, you can see charred barley seeds from a Syrian site. #Archaeology

It took me way too long, but I finally uploaded my new blog about the daily life of a zooarchaeologist in the Athribis Project in Middle Egypt! shyamavermeersch.wordpress.com/2025/02/13/e... #Archaeology

Today, it's International Day of Women & Girls in Science 👩‍🔬💅💪 Even though we have come a long way, there still is so much more work to do. In the meantime, here's a pic of me analysing animal bones from Medieval refuse layers of the Temple of Repit, Egypt, last month! #Archaeology ##WomenInScience

Ever since being back from fieldwork in #Egypt, I have been caught up in a whirlwind of tasks. So, instead of a long post, here is a picture of the site! This is the Temple of Repit in Athribis, of which I have been analysing the early Islamic animal bones 🦴

Does anyone know case-studies where #Archaeology actively contributed to solutions for #Farming or #FoodSystems (successful or failed)? I am thinking of examples such as the failed revival of raised field farming in South America in the 80s... or maybe some positive cases 😅

Tomorrow, I am leaving for #Egypt to work on the faunal remains from Athribis! I will be there for about 2 weeks and will wrap up the #Zooarchaeology of the Temple of Repit and continue work on the new Pylon excavations!

I am (virtually) attending #ORFC25 (Oxford Real Farming Conference) this Thursday! It has been a long time since I have been so excited for a conference. All talks are so interesting, it is hard to choose which one to attend live! And the organisation for virtual attendees has been amazing!

ICAZ has finally joined Bluesky, so if you are interested in past animal-human relationships, give them a follow!

Speaking of stable isotope analysis, I finally published part 2 of my #SciComm explainer on how we get bone collagen from ancient animal remains in #Archaeology! shyamavermeersch.wordpress.com/2024/12/18/s...

I just got the results from the first stable isotope run for my project! Unfortunately, interpretation & quality checks have to wait until February when I'm back from fieldwork. In the meantime, what are good resources to help interpret results from the mass spec? #Archaeology #StableIsotopes

My archaeological animal bone collagen samples are all weighed out, along with the standards! Everything is ready now for running them in the mass spectrometer tomorrow. I am so excited to finally get some results! Fingers crossed that they pass quality checks 😍 #Archaeology

Reflection time: while I love many aspects of #Archaeology, the big thing that makes me want to leave is the high levels of endorsed toxicity. Especially as an early career researcher, you deal with so many (fragile) egos, condescending emails, & disrespect. I am just tired & want to get work done 😅

Success! I managed to get bone collagen from two Iron Age Jordanian sites 🥳 The next step is running these through the mass spectrometer and hoping the quality checks pass. #Archaeology #Jordan

Yesterday, I put animal bone samples from Iron Age #Jordan in the freeze dryer. If all goes well and with a bit of luck, these should yield collagen tomorrow! This will then be used to find out what the animals ate and their place in the food web. #Archaeology

I am new to Bluesky, so here is my #Introduction! I'm an archaeologist interested in researching past farming, food, and land use. I study animal & plant remains 🐐🌾, apply biochemical analyses 🧪👩‍🔬, & investigate ways on how #Archaeology can contribute to #Farming and #Food #Sustainability today 🚜