Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥

I am trying to adapt by giving more pass/fail assignments: any serious try is a pass. No need for perfection, no need to pull an all-nighter just to get an incrementally higher grade for an assignment etc.

I am really hoping this helps relieve the pressure a bit.

And sometimes back again. There is much greater flexibility in tech organisation than we expected.

The main driver of the work is Viola Schmid @heasvienna.bsky.social, also many thanks to Irini Sifogeorgaki, Tullio Abruzzese, @sofieblik.bsky.social and Lijia Huang.

@leidenarchaeo.bsky.social

Instead, we show that tool changes went hand in hand with shifts in how people organised land use provisioned themselves.

We also find that the initial transition wasn’t linear: Middle Stone Age–like elements briefly reappear after the shift.

In South Africa, it is Homo sapiens all the way down. So what drives the change? The start of the Later Stone Age used to be seen as the final development of modern human behaviour, we now know better.

Homo sapiens already developed sophisticated societies and technology in the Middle Stone Age.

Wind(ow) of change: The end of the Middle Stone Age and the beginning of the Later Stone Age at Umhlatuzana rockshelter showcasing concurrent technological and techno-economic shifts The site of Umhlatuzana rockshelter contains a key sequence documenting developments in human behaviour from ∼70 ka throughout the Late Pleistocene an…

The change in technology is so great, archaeologists use it to mark the start of a new era. The Middle Stone Age gives way to the Later Stone Age.

In Europe, similar changes are associated with the disappearance of Neanderthals and the arrival of modern humans

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Between 50,000 and 20,000 years ago, South African societies radically reorganised their stone tool technology.

Does this reflect cognitive evolution, or something else? Our analysis at Umhlatuzana suggests the latter.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

With the extension of the EAA 2026 deadline, it may be good to reiterate the need for a boycott of the event until the EAA executive steps down.

Figure summarizing the Table 2 of the article: Overview of the four relatively adequate world hypotheses and their onto-epistemological commitments and imports as well as their broader implications for archaeological typo-praxis.

1/3 New recommendation: Shumon T. Hussain (2025). The Loss of Typological Innocence: Pluralism in the Epistemology and Ontology of Archaeological Typo-Praxis. v3 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Archaeology doi.org/10.5281/zeno... @shumon.bsky.social 🧪🏺

Het feit dat een gekwalificeerd land af zou zeggen is hoe dan ook een belangrijk signaal, ook al haalt Trump/Infantino gewoon iemand anders.

(Ik heb dan weer weinig fiducie in de "moral fibre" van KNVB en de voetballers).

Ook al is dat het geval. Maakt dat wat uit?

Op het WK cricket in India/Sri Lanka wordt Bangladesh vervangen door Schotland omdat Bangladesh niet in India wil spelen. Dat devalueert sowieso het toernooi.

(Interessant genoeg krijgt Pakistan wel de garantie dat al hun wedstrijden in Sri Lanka zijn).

Handmotieven in Indonesische grot zijn oudste grotkunst ooit gevonden Lange tijd werd gedacht dat Europese rotskunst de oudste ter wereld was. Maar uit Indonesië komt de ene na de andere spectaculaire ontdekking.

🖐️ Handmotieven in een grot op Sulawesi mogelijk de oudste grotkunst ooit gevonden 🌍

De datering is 'absoluut spectaculair', vertelt @dussel.bsky.social (@unileiden.bsky.social) in @trouw.nl, maar wie de kunst maakte blijft zeer onzeker.

@dearcheoloog.bsky.social @leidenarchaeo.bsky.social

I assume for most people doing tests the purpose is more spiritual, and provides ideas about ancestry (which in these commercial tests may not be very representative)

Testen hoeveel Neanderthaler-DNA je bezit? ‘Heeft echt geen meerwaarde’ Hoeveel Neanderthaler-DNA bezit ik? Met een simpele DNA-zelftest kun je een antwoord krijgen op deze vraag. Maar hoe representatief zijn deze percentages? En...

@avrotros.bsky.social asked me what the use of commercial DNA testing for Neanderthal ancestry is? Does it tell you anything about the state of your health?

Functionally, knowing your percentage seems meaningless.

radar.avrotros.nl/artikel/test...

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Gevonden op Sulawesi: de oudste handafdruk van een mens. Maar wie maakte hem? In een grot op Sulawesi hebben archeologen een vervaagde menselijke handafdruk opgeduikeld van zeker 67,8 duizend jaar oud, de vroegste tot dusver bekend. Fascinerende gedachte: is het misschien de ha...

So: what is the argument to attribute the pre-40 ka stuff to Homo sapiens in this case? The authors choose this interpretation because there is rock art on Sulawesi dated to before 40 ka.

All possible, but to my mind not the most convincing yet.

www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/g...

The post-40 ka stone tools really look much more as what you would expect for sapiens. (📷Burhan et al.2025).

Looks alone are not sufficient to attribute stone tools to species. So the pre-40 ka could be made by sapiens. But we know for sure that similar tools were made by other species.

A near-continuous archaeological record of Pleistocene human occupation at Leang Bulu Bettue, Sulawesi, Indonesia Prior research has indicated that the Indonesian island of Sulawesi was host to archaic hominins of unknown taxonomic affinity from at least 1.04 million years ago (Ma), while members of our own speci...

At nearby sites, assemblages older than 40,000 years look as pictured here. These assemblages are, according to the authors, similar to much older, Middle Pleistocene tools. These older tools were made by other species of humans, such as Homo erectus.

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Handmotieven in Indonesische grot zijn oudste grotkunst ooit gevonden Lange tijd werd gedacht dat Europese rotskunst de oudste ter wereld was. Maar uit Indonesië komt de ene na de andere spectaculaire ontdekking.

Amazing new ages for human handprints in Sulawesi at 70,000 years-old. 🏺

I was asked to provide context for Dutch newspapers. I radmire the work, but think it calls for a serious evaluation of the possibility of other humans than Homo sapiens making some of the art.
www.trouw.nl/wetenschap/h...

Their reason for this argument: there is pre-40 ka art, so the lithics _must_ be sapiens-made. This strikes me as slightly circular reasoning.

Leads to authors to argue that e.g. ~50ka assemblages look very much like those produced by earlier archaic occupants of Sulawesi, but were actually made by sapiens perhaps as convergent solutions.

A near-continuous archaeological record of Pleistocene human occupation at Leang Bulu Bettue, Sulawesi, Indonesia Prior research has indicated that the Indonesian island of Sulawesi was host to archaic hominins of unknown taxonomic affinity from at least 1.04 million years ago (Ma), while members of our own speci...

Should we perhaps consider the possibility of non-modern authorship more seriously here too?

Lithics of nearby site show interesting shift from pictured stuff to blade-based stuff around 40 ka. (journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...)

A group of current and past EAA members and action groups are calling for a (first) Counter Conference open online meeting for all of you to join to get information, voice your concerns and discuss next steps (date TBA).

Stop sign in red over the EAA Athens call. In black the text reads: “Save EAA. Vote. Boycott.”

Tired of excuses and obfuscation from the EAA Executive?
Want a collegial and supportive society fit for its members? Then #boycottEAA
Read our call for voting and boycotting below!

If you want a detailed description of the events so far please read: drive.google.com/file/d/1jdGO...

Told you so...

Buiten Julianus de afvallige heb ik het niet zo op dat rijk. Maar nu moest ik er door je post toch weer aan denken. En dan specifiek aan bijgevoegd voorwerp in het museum in Xanten.

Het was vlak voor sluitingstijd dus ik was zo stom om de reconstructie niet te fotograferen.

The Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the National Museum, Bloemfontein (South Africa) is inviting applications for the James Brink Field School in Pleistocene Archaeology and Palaeontology. For more info see image below :)🦣⛏️

Fossilised ideas from 2024

In 2023/4 I wrote a book review. Due to mission creep it expanded into a review article changing understanding of the Levantine Middle Palaeolithic over the last 20 years.

Publication took so long that I completely forgot about it.
poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?...

Zorgen onderzoeksjournalist Vermond nemen toe na PFAS-memo waterschap Rijnland: 'Zware vervuiling Ringvaart' | 1Amstelveen De zorgen van onderzoeksjournalist Bas Vermond over PFAS-vervuiling in en rond het Amsterdamse Bos zijn toegenomen na inzage in een interne memo van het

Grote zorgen om kwaliteit water Ringvaart en daarmee ook Amsterdamse Bos. "Dit water is zo zwaar vervuild dat het daar zelfs de ruime advieswaarden voor veilig zwemwater overschrijdt."

Archaeologists: D.C. Capitol May Have Once Been Used For Legislating

Archaeologists: D.C. Capitol May Have Once Been Used For Legislating https://theonion.com/archaeologists-d-c-capitol-may-have-once-been-used-for-legislating/