Anatolijs Venovcevs

Analysing lead bullets from an 18th century Russian Pomor site on Svalbard. Four different calibers of lead bullets plus lots of evidence of shot manufacture - from lead bars to waste to cut sprues.

17th century whaler's shoe found on the surface in northeastern Svalbard.

DOGE Cuts Reach Key Nuclear Scientists, Bomb Engineers and Safety Experts Firings and buyouts hit the top-secret National Nuclear Security Administration amid a major effort to upgrade America’s nuclear arsenal. Critics say it shows the consequences of heedlessly cutting th...

What can possibly go wrong? 🫠☢️

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/u...

An untimely artifact of archaeology - an artifact tag from the Institute of Archaeology of the USSR - written in 1994.

Today at Svalbard Museum - figuring out how to conserve a 400 year old piece of boiled whale fat 🐳

Coles Bay, Svalbard - the shipping harbour for the Soviet coal mining operation at Grumant from the 1930s to 1961. At one point, Grumant and Coles Bay had a combined population of 1,100 people making it the largest population centre in Svalbard. It was closed in 1961 due to dwindling coal reserves.

Artifact packaging of cigarette and medicine containers can be seen as artifacts in themselves 😂

Though the item conservation practices leave much to be desired...

Five months into my new position and I'm finally starting the job I got hired to do - working with the archaeological collections. First is the Russian Pomor material of which we have around 20,000 items, mostly excavated by Russian archaeologists in the 70s, 80, and 90s.

Stuck in snow on a glacier. I've driven in white out conditions before (thanks for the experience Canada!) but this was something else. The world was a white sheet of paper and the only thing that existed was the snowmobile in front of me.

Getting back into Bluesky with shots from my new home - Svalbard - an incredible glacial land of ice and snow with even more incredible archaeology.

John Oliver discusses deep-sea mining, whether or not it’s worth doing, and which undersea creature he most wants to eat.Connect with Last Week Tonight onlin... Deep-Sea Mining: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

John Oliver on Deep Sea Mining. An alarming and growing development that should be keeping you up awake at night:

youtu.be/qW7CGTK-1vA?...

Off to Nordic TAG (@nordicarchtag.bsky.social) in Turku.

My babushka is a sewing grandmaster.

Keep also in mind that at age 83 her eyesight isn't the best... she sews a lot by the feel of the needle. All of this is made from discarded clothing.

Ukraine’s Stolen Children Thousands of young Ukrainians were separated from their parents by the Russian authorities in the early stages of the war. They are among the most forlorn victims of the invasion.

The kids’ accounts “have helped officials and investigators build a picture of a Russian effort to remove children from Ukraine — often under the pretext of rescuing them from the war zone — to turn them against their homeland and into loyal Russian subjects”

Battle for the past: the Ukrainians trying to save their archaeological treasure amid war In Ukraine’s history-rich east, the war with Russia is hastening both historical discoveries and the destruction of treasures

History, culture, identity under threat - how Ukrainians are trying to save their archaeological heritage 🏺 amid the war:

www.theguardian.com/science/2023... via @theguardian.bsky.social

Humans are changing the moon's surface so much it's entered a new geological era, scientists say Researchers hope their proposal of declaring a new geological era on the moon — the Lunar Anthropocene — will encourage discussion around human impact and help preserve important cultural artifact...

Humans are changing the moon's surface so much it's entered a new geological era.

If we start something, we're really pulling it off. Introducing: The #LunarAnthropocene. 🌖👣

www.livescience.com/space/the-mo...

An incredible icescape on the Baltic Sea by Oulu during the five hours of daylight. The temperature was around -21 C with windchill.

Quick reminder to anyone interested in participating in our session (or any other session) at @nordicarchtag.bsky.social - the abstracts are due on December 1st.

Picture taken at a former pulp and paper mill waste dumping site, now redeveloped into a local park. Photo looking out over the Gulf of Bothnia, Baltic Sea.

Oulu sunset, 14:53, 19 Nov 2023.

A memory of the mushroom season - admiring the sporing body of an inocybe genus fungus growing on an unidentified iron interconnecter left behind by the retreating German troops in northeastern Norway while working alongside the local mushroom society.

I guess I'm officially a doctor now 😃

For those interested about the archaeology of twentieth-century single industrial mining towns in the (sub-)Arctic can find and read my thesis here - munin.uit.no/handle/10037...

If you want to contribute, please send an abstract to me by December 1st. And even if you don't feel like presenting - come to what will surely be a great session!

For my part, I can promise you fungi and charming Norwegian mushroom ladies and Nazi ruins.

For the multidisciplinary-minded people out there, check out Session 3, "Entangled Worlds, Entangled Methods: Archaeologies of Nature" organised by me and my colleagues at the University of Oulu.

How does working beyond the nature-culture binary reconfigure our approaches to studying the past?

Welcome to my fungal musings for a possibly better future.

I bring you this lichen growing on crushed and melted glass from the scorched earth retreat by the German forces from Sør-Varanger, northeastern Norway in October 1944.