Alex Harvey

John Bannerman Lecture 2026 - Professor Fiona Edmonds | School of History, Classics & Archaeology | History Classics and Archaeology 'Dál Riata and Northumbria, c. 700‒1000: Connections and comparisons'. Hybrid.

Thurs 26 March, Prof. Fiona Edmonds will deliver the 2026 John Bannerman Memorial Lecture (in-person and online), on a topic close to Bannerman's own work: 'Dál Riata and Northumbria, c. 700‒1000: Connections and comparisons'.

Tuilleadh fiosrachaidh | More info 👇
hca.ed.ac.uk/john-bannerm...

Shows part of the inscription on the Saltfleetby spindle whorl. Follow the links in the post to read more about it.

And here's one from Lincolnshire: text here kulturarvsdata.se/uu/srdb/01d1... and discussion here doi.org/10.33063/div...

Doctor Who

It’s mine and my wife’s 9 year anniversary next week so I’m hoping this caricature of Christopher Eccleston as Doctor Who which I’ve drawn in her card gets the message across well enough

Williams was a huge inspo for this, thanks so much!

I loved Thomas Williams Lost Realms with all the detail on the minor kingdoms that people forget.
And now this pops up on my feed (thanks Greg Jenner)
Straight onto the wishlist it goes - assuming I can stop myself ordering it right now

A wolf eating The Moon

Black hole wolf

It could well be Sköll, or it could be Mánagarmr, or it could be both + Fenrir! The quantity of wolves in the Old Norse corpus probably reflects genuine everyday fears of wild beasts

A wolf eating The Moon

Black hole wolf

Super article from Maia Evill-Pearce in a recent issue of @epoch-history.bsky.social

Quick 🧵 on concerns about #AIinEducation

TLDR; if we believe AI can help create differentiated work for lower attaining pupils, then we admit the AI requires more and more sensitive data, which raises concerns over privacy and questions as to the ultimate aims of 'Big Tech'

I'm fumbling for words right now on just how important the question this thread raises is.

An excellent thread from Alex here, looking at one of classic Great Army find types. I'm going to be posting a lot more about these weights very soon...

Quick 🧵 on concerns about #AIinEducation

TLDR; if we believe AI can help create differentiated work for lower attaining pupils, then we admit the AI requires more and more sensitive data, which raises concerns over privacy and questions as to the ultimate aims of 'Big Tech'

A villain in the best movie ever made (Hot Fuzz) quoted saying 'it's all about the greater good' when being asked about why they commit horrible crimes

In short, if AI is capable of assisting with learning gaps, then it requires more student data, so the question becomes:

where is this data going?
who owns the AI?
and what is the data going to be used for?

Because we NEED to be sceptical about all of this; I doubt its for the greater good

...and the more metrics and 'insights' an AI has on indidual learners (including crazy details like the length of time a pupil's pupil rests on a word whilst reading), the less privacy that individual learner has

This is especially harmful for SEND pupils, some of the most vulnerable already

How, then, to improve these outputs so AI can actually meaningfully differentiate between learners with different starting points, as is so often claimed?

The answer is FEED LLMS MORE DATA, which is its own problem

Concerns over the 'datafication' of education are only growing...

Within History, these biases are especially dangerous

I'm not going to do it but I can imagine what an AI would spit out if asked 'what did Britain look like after the Romans left?' - a pervasive, long-disputed, and overthrown series of stereotypes

So if AI's inputs are bad, so too are its outputs

AI image generators often give racist and sexist results: can they be fixed? Researchers are tracing sources of racial and gender bias in images generated by artificial intelligence, and making efforts to fix them.

Many of these biases are themselves harmful, especially on young, formative minds: think of the different generated images when asked to create a 'CEO' (white male) versus 'cleaner' (woman)

It's not difficult to find papers on this www.nature.com/articles/d41...

theconversation.com/historical-i...

...whilst reducing the workloads of practitioners

However, time and time again, it has been demonstrated that the datasets from which LLMs like #ChatGPT draw from (e.g. Quora and Reddit) are riddled with biases and injustices, which are then promulgated through sustained use of the technology

So much of the positive-leaning language around #AIinEducation (AIED) is about the technology's alleged capability to inclusively differentiate between learners' varied starting points and (for lack of a better word) abilities, in a way that is more actionable and rapid than human teachers...

Lead-alloy weight (image credit: St Albans council)

#FindsFriday

Time for trading; this week's trinket is a lead alloy weight used in the mixed coin / bullion economies of ninth-century viking army camps

BH-1DA0A5 (finds.org.uk/database/art...)

Some AI idiot saying “Look i know ai is “not sentient” but if you went back to the 90s and told someone about this, they would tell you you had a sentient robot inside your computer”

I know batteries “do not contain fire stolen from the gods” but if you went back and showed the ancient Greeks a taser they’d say you had Zeus’s lightning bolt trapped inside it.

Further reading:

On unique weight designs and viking army identity; Haldenby & Richards 2022, www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

On Mercian sculptural inspiration; Bergius 2012, etheses.dur.ac.uk/3543/1/Bergi...

Mercian art was itself heavily inspired by Lombard designs, so our weight provides a tiny example of the multi-stage process of artistic inspiration, emulation, and re-use

In any case, it would have stood out from the crowd amongst the hustle and bustle of camp markets like Torksey and Repton

A black-and-white image of an eighth/ninth-century Mercian cross-shaft from St. Lawrence’s church, Eyam, Derbyshire. From Routh, 1937: pl. XIVb

A black-and-white image of early ninth-century swirling foliate motifs in St Margaret's Church, Fletton, Huntingdonshire, reproduced from G. Dales

Given the presence of swirling vegetal/foliate motifs, I'm reminded of 8/9th c. Mercian art, which was dominant across much of middle England

It is not unlikely that the metalwork predates the era of viking army camps by <50-100 years, reused in this weight. A vestige of, by then, a fallen kingdom

A dragon and foliate motif highlighted in red and green from object BH-1DA0A5 (image credit: St Albans council)

It is somewhat unique given the quality of the inset design; what might be a sinuous drake-like creation surrounded by the suggestions of a tendrilous tree

Not only was this likely selected for its artistic value, but it was placed in the lead extremely neatly - a proudly owned trinket, perhaps?

A cowrie shell filled with lead, possibly a unique weight (SWYOR-CC0BF1: image credit West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service)

A weight with in-set Late Roman metalwork (NLM-E2EF3B: image credit North Lincolnshire Museum)

A lead weight incised with an X motif, suggested by Dave Haldenby to signify a subdivision of the typical weight (NLM-B08E76: image credit North Lincolnshire Museum)

Many other trading weights were adorned with additional details, almost to function like a 'personal logo' of whoever owned and used the weight

Other examples of inset details include pieces of glass, silver alloy, or even Roman pottery

Our weight from Weymouth fits nicely into this milieu

While archetypal of the usual size and shape of viking army trading weights, this example, found in Dorset in the SW of England, is unique for its inset copper-alloy metalwork

As suggested by Kevin Leahy, it seems likely that this detail was carefully selected from a piece of pre-existing art

Lead-alloy weight (image credit: St Albans council)

#FindsFriday

Time for trading; this week's trinket is a lead alloy weight used in the mixed coin / bullion economies of ninth-century viking army camps

BH-1DA0A5 (finds.org.uk/database/art...)

The audio version of What happened when the Romans left Britain? with @alexharvv.bsky.social is now available
legendsandlectures.podbean.com/e/what-happe...