Jack Rowe

With the start of the new academic year, a topical way of showing first years the distinction between Terminus Post Quem and Terminus Ante Quem.

(Source: Middle England Male, Facebook)

Did anybody else in the Mid Wales - Shropshire area feel an earth tremor last night at about 00:40? Was as if my neighbours were slamming a barn door at the far end of our semi-detached houses!

Outer ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort in Wales overlooking the dry valley of Llandyssil. It's an overcast day, as usual.

A zoomed in and cropped portion of the same photo - rolling fields leading to wooded valley slopes with a looming dark dome-shaped hill micu further in the distance, the location of Cefn Carnedd hillfort

Haven't done a #HillfortsWednesday for ages got up to Ffridd Faldwyn overlooking the upper Severn Valley by Montgomery yesterday.

The views north to Y Gaer, the Breidden, Beacon Ring etc were expected, but not west to Cefn Carnedd further up the Severn by Caersws, really reaching into Wales.

#Solstice #SummerSolstice #Shropshire #BronzeAge

Belated Solsticemas from Mitchell's Fold Stone Circle yesterday morning.

Never thought of Mitchell's Fold as having any solar alignments but the way the sun rose perfectly behind the cairn on the southern peak of nearby Stapeley Hill... I'm sold.

Shared with curlews, skylarks, people, and dogs.

80 years ago today.
And the sun is shining!!

Having the likes of the Somerset HERs and Archwilio as readily available public interfaces as they are has made doing my PhD SO much easier in places. Neither are perfect, but they're pretty close!

In an ideal world the entire HER for England would be homogenised and be fully interactive with a public interface. I know some individual county/regional HERs have managed this to varying degrees of success, but HeritageGateway can be a nightmare to navigate.

Forgot I had this! Hope Basil and Joan enjoyed many long years together on Mendip

Repost thys to celebrate the Birthedaye of the lovelye Will Shaksper

Normally I'd agree, but the perfect, warm, still conditions, with church bells peeling and yellowhammers, black caps, blackbirds, thrushes (and the rest) singing away... the quiet was quite something.

A quintessential Englishness that even this Welshman could give in to!

Remembering sunnier days watching the 2022 Summer Solstice sunset from Hambledon Hill, on my way back from the Prehistoric Society conference in Bournemouth.
Still the most incredible hillfort (and causewayed enclosure) I've visited! The scale of the ramparts is just bonkers.

#HillfortsWednesday

"Don't attempt anything without the gloves!"

Liz Truss, our most useless and inept PM, met with Queen Elizabeth II, who promptly popped it two days later.

JD Vance, who continues to show himself up for his ineptitude, met Pope Francis only YESTERDAY, and the pontiff has popped it today.

Are these people not washing their hands or something?!

The stone at the end of the world!

Two large brown stones stand either side of an entrance gap, with hills beyond

#StandingStoneSunday the magnificent entrance stones of the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age Swinside stone circle in the Lake District

The great circle occupies a levelled terrace on a hillside & commands spectacular landscape views

📷 My own 2023

@drclairenolan.bsky.social, I got about a quarter of the way through A Crown of Lights, was really enjoying it, then got distracted with working away and have yet to pick it back up (I did say I was crap at reading fiction!) but I'll finish it one day, I promise!

Looking up along a prehistoric highway with the Walton Basin #Neolithic landscape tucked just behind the imposing Burfa Bank hillfort, the dark rounded hill right of centre, in last week's glorious sun.

#HillfortsWednesday

She was very well behaved, let's put it that way!

At a glance, instead of my brain going straight to chocolate as it would any normal person with this week's Guardian insert, mine went to the Porcellanite #Neolithic polished stone axes from Tievebulliagh, Northern Ireland.

Still high on my to-do list, there was a soundscape installation a few years ago but I got caught up in other events elsewhere - one day!

This was one of the books given to me after I finished my high school work experience placement with my local archaeology office! A must have

Do you ever get people pretending they're Pink Floyd?

Sometimes all you can do is wave from a distance!

Gladiators in Maumbury Rings Dorchester Dorset April 2025

Just another average Sunday at the amphitheatre in Dorchester #Dorset 👍

#Gladiators #RomanWeekend

Dotty saying hello to her first stone circle, Mitchell's Fold
#StandingStoneSunday

Just checked - not on the HER

Spotted this interesting looking stone on the far side of the Ogwen Valley from the A5 yesterday - not been able to check Archwilio yet, could be an old gatepost stone given the gap just along from it, but, possible standing stone?

#StandingStoneSunday

Major Hoopoe influx hits Britain and Ireland Extraordinary numbers of the colourful bird have been recorded during recent days.

Bloody foreign birds, comin over ere, eating our... worms... and....... grubs...

www.birdguides.com/news/major-h...

(Actually I remember seeing one on holiday in Britanny as a kid and being dead excited!)

Oh happy day!! Always a welcome arrival through the post