Philip R Nigst

The recording from the #HEASSeminar with @benceviola.bsky.social is now available on the #HEASVienna YouTube channel.

👇

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfsW...

HEAS Seminar this morning! 1030 CE Time. Bence Viola will talk about Denisovans!
‪@heasvienna.bsky.social‬

More information and registration on our website 👇🔗
www.heas.at/events/heas-...

We are hiring a Project Co-ordinator! 🚨

Are you extremely organised with great interpersonal skills?
Able to multitask efficiently?
Interested in African prehistory?
Keen to work with an enthusiastic team?
We want to hear from you!

Closing date: 17 October, 2025

HEAS Seminar Series - Human Evolution and the Palaeolithic - HEAS As part of the HEAS Seminar Series in Human Evolution and the Palaeolithic Bence Viola from the University of Toronto will give a talk on Teeth, Genes, and Taxonomy – fifteen years of Denisovan discov...

We are looking forward to welcoming @benceviola.bsky.social back to Vienna for the first #HEASSeminar in the 2025-2026 series in #HumanEvolutionandthePalaeolithic.

@univie.ac.at

More information and registration on our website 👇🔗

Wonderful HEAS Road Trip to Willendorf, Nussdorf and Traismauer! - We explored the prehistoric and Roman archaeology of the Traisen and Wachau valleys.
@heasvienna.bsky.social @rebaysalisbury.bsky.social @dominikhartmann.bsky.social @uhaunivienna.bsky.social @univie.ac.at @palarchgroup.bsky.social

Revealing Coix lacryma-jobi var. lacryma-jobi (Job’s tears) in Han Dynasty burials with evidence from phytolith identification - Vegetation History and Archaeobotany Vegetation History and Archaeobotany - Coix lacryma-jobi L. (Job’s tears, adlay, yiyi 薏苡in Chinese) is a tropical member of the Poaceae family which is widely grown in southeast...

Second on differentiating different types of Job's tears from Han Dynasty tombs, led by Jingwen Liao, in Vegetation History and Archaeobotany: doi.org/10.1007/s003...

Intent on the Paleolithic @ Sidestone Press This collection of papers was compiled in celebration of the remarkable academic career of Professor Wil Roebroeks, who has established himself as one of Europe’s leading figures in Palaeolithic archa...

Two new papers!

First on the origins of fire use, led by Femke Reidsma in a book celebrating the work of Wil Roebroeks: www.sidestone.com/books/intent...

The Last Glacial Maximum in the Tropics: Human Responses to Global Change, 30–10 ka - Journal of World Prehistory The world at 18,000 BP, published by Gamble and Soffer (The world at 18,000 BP. Vol. 2: low latitude, Unwin Hyman, 1990), represents the first, and so far the only, attempt at characterising and discussing the impact of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) on human societies on a global scale. At the time, they highlighted that research and data on the LGM in southern latitudes and the tropics in particular were scant. Since 1990, however, many sites dated to the LGM and located in tropical latitudes have been published. Many paradigms have changed regarding the peopling of the Americas, which allows the archaeology of this continent to be integrated into global scale studies of the LGM. The development of Pleistocene archaeology in tropical contexts, in parallel with methodological advances in cultural, geosciences and palaeoenvironmental studies have strongly reshaped what we know of the antiquity of human occupation in tropical regions and specific human–environment interactions. This article provides for the first time a pan-tropical perspective on the impact of the LGM on human groups living within the tropical latitudes, drawing from case studies in Southeast Asia, Africa and South America, specifically regions which have up until now never been discussed together. To this end, we focus on six different tropical regions between 30 and 10 ka. We present the archaeological and paleoenvironmental data available in these areas, along with proposed relationships for variations in these two records. Finally, we discuss at the regional scale the presence or absence of human changes (site density and techno-cultural change or continuity) before, during and immediately after the LGM.

📣New paper alert

doi.org/10.1007/s109...

How did populations in tropical regions cope with the global climatic change around the LGM?

While the tropics are often perceived as having been less impacted by the LGM, we show that -as is often the case - it is more complex than it seems!

YouTube video by Sheffield Zooarchaeology Lab The destruction of the Zooarch laboratories in Sheffield

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bEv... For decades we've worked to enhance the Sheffield Zooarch Lab & to see years of dedication destroyed by corporate executives who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing is heart breaking @watchingbrief.bsky.social #savesheffieldarchaeology

👏👏 Congratulations to our colleague Marjolein D. Bosch on receiving an #ERC Starting Grant for her COPE project. She will explore how Ice Age hunters and gatherers responded to cold temperatures, resource scarcity 💦 🦌 🌱 , and environmental changes 30,000 years ago.
More info: buff.ly/EGicG8z

Today @palarchgroup.bsky.social's Samuel Kasemann defended his Master dissertation @univie.ac.at on raw material economy at the Upper Palaeolithic sites Grub-Kranawetberg I & II. Big congratulations to Samuel 🎉
@uhaunivienna.bsky.social @heasvienna.bsky.social @philipnigst.bsky.social

Announcement at the British Academy

Fabulous news that @martamlahr.bsky.social has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy 🍾🍾🍾

Der neue Saal "Eiszeitkinder und ihre Welt" im NHM Wien. Der Saal ist als Ort für alle Generationen konzipiert. Erlebbares und Erfahrbares laden zur spielerischen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema ein. (c) NHM Wien, Chloe Potter

Der neue Saal "Eiszeitkinder und ihre Welt" im NHM Wien. Der Saal ist als Ort für alle Generationen konzipiert. Erlebbares und Erfahrbares laden zur spielerischen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema ein. (c) NHM Wien, Chloe Potter

Der neue Saal "Eiszeitkinder und ihre Welt" im NHM Wien. Der Saal ist als Ort für alle Generationen konzipiert. Erlebbares und Erfahrbares laden zur spielerischen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema ein. (c) NHM Wien, Chloe Potter

Eine eiszeitliche Höhle für Entdeckungstouren im neuen Saal "Eiszeitkinder und ihre Welt". (c) NHM Wien, Chloe Potter

Eiszeitkinder und ihre Welt!

Die neue Ausstellung im NHM Wien zeigt die Eiszeit aus Kinderperspektive. Im neu gestalteten Saal steht das Leben der Jüngsten in dieser faszinierenden Epoche der Erdgeschichte im Mittelpunkt.

Zu den Highlights: tinyurl.com/ywf7hjvb

#iceage #nhmwien #wien #fossile

Justus Erus Edung was only 25 years old when he discovered Kenyanthropus platyops in a team led by Prof. Meave Leakey in 1999.

This 3.5 million year old “flat-faced” skull quickly grabbed international headlines and changed the course of human evolution.

#fossils #turkana #humanevolution

Memories of this time last year - some of the most fun I’ve had discussing rocks. An opportunity I will treasure. Have a fab field season, your lithics there are so interesting and what a great team

Such fun & fantastic team 🤩🤩🤩

We spend long periods of time in Kenya collecting data in the collections, understanding the landscape and looking for fossils. Picture credits: Sarah Paris

The rest of the year is spent analysing data, honing skills and preparing for upcoming field work. During this time, we develop new methodologies, attend conferences, write papers and discuss our findings Picture credits: Sarah Paris, Eleanor Williams

What does the Ng'ipalajem team do?

Ng’ipalajem, meaning Ancestors in Turkana, is an ERC-funded project.

Led by @martamlahr.bsky.social, the project investigates how the emergence of Homo sapiens is deeply intertwined with Africa’s long-term environmental and ecological history.

#humanevolution

Another exciting collaboration led by @armandofalcucci.bsky.social now out in Scientific Data! It's hard to underscore how meaningful it is to have data from these four sites excavated by different teams together in a single paper and available for anyone to access! 🏺🦣🧪

#NewPaperAlert: We're delighted to present The Open Aurignacian Project — an open-access 3D database of 2,000+ lithics from four key Italian Paleolithic sites. Paper 👉 doi.org/10.1038/s415... #FlintFriday #FossilFriday #3Darchaeology #OpenScience #DigitalHeritage @julienrs.bsky.social 🦣 🏺
(1/6) 🧵

Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal - Nature Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...

after 6 years, finally out in @nature.com!
‪Huge expansion of the human #niche in Africa ~70kya likely equipped later #outofAfrica dispersals with unique ecological flexibility

co-led with Emily Hallett @eegcam.bsky.social & @elliescerri.bsky.social
#prehistory #humanevolution #paleoecology #SDM

Don’t forget to join us tomorrow at 11am (UK/Lisbon time) to hear from @roinnanluisigh.bsky.social and @tansybranscombe.bsky.social in the next @icarehb.bsky.social Alt-Ac Paths
videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/9355232390...

Come work with me! I am looking for a new prae-doc assistant:

jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

An AI-assisted workflow for object detection and data collection from archaeological catalogues Reconciling the ever-increasing volume of new archaeological data with the abundant corpus of legacy data is fundamental to making robust archaeologic…

Cool research combining #bigdata from #Archaeology legacy collections and #AI using object detection and neural networks by a team around @archaeologyeaa.bsky.social Early Career Community Chair Maxime Brami: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🥳 Bravo!

This just out from the HDRG team @SpringerNature in Nature Communications: rdcu.be/eqPpc

🚨New paper alert!🧪 Led by @armandofalcucci.bsky.social, this paper explores the internal variability of the Protoaurignacian at Riparo Bombrini by analyzing lithic assemblages from layers A2 and A1, and a previously undescribed Early Aurignacian assemblage from layer A0. 1/4 🏺🦣

A crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Alps: Lithic technology, raw material procurement, and mobility in the Aurignacian of Riparo Bombrini Riparo Bombrini is a collapsed rockshelter within the Balzi Rossi site complex, located at the intersection of the Maritime Alps, Northern Apennines, …

#NewPaperAlert: Our latest research at Riparo Bombrini shows how internal variability in the Protoaurignacian reflects shifting mobility and site-use strategies. 🏺

#Archaeology #Anthropology #Paleolithic #FlintFriday #FossilFriday

@julienrs.bsky.social

Link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The recording from the #HEASSeminar with #NickAshton is now available on the #HEASVienna YouTube channel.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1fX...

An Entire Board Just Resigned After Accusing Trump Of Illegal Interference The board members say Trump denied Fulbright awards to several people they had selected for the 2025-2026 academic year.

The entire board of the Fulbright program reportedly resigned today after accusing the Trump administration of illegal interference www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

We're excited to announce the next @icarehb.bsky.social Alt-Ac Paths conversation, with Luíseach Nic Eoin @roinnanluisigh.bsky.social and Tansy Branscombe @tansybranscombe.bsky.social, who now work at @natecoevo.nature.com and @barpublishing.bsky.social.
Thurs 19th June, 11am (GMT), Zoom link below.

There is still time to register for this talk taking place today online and in-person @univie.ac.at