CK Watts

YouTube video by Oxford Geoheritage Virtual Conference Geodiversity: Biodiversity's Silent Partner

Happy International Geodiversity Day! ⚒️ 🧪 #PhiGeo

@geodiversityday.bsky.social

youtu.be/LtFzkDMsYtI?...

www.geodiversityday.org/what-is-geod...

Dull gey fibrous sillimanite that's part of a pebble. From Fettercairn, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK. Specimen on display in the Natural History Museum, London.

Pale blue and transparent waterworn sillimanite crystals. From Mogok Valley, Mandalay, Myanmar. Specimen on display in the Natural History Museum, London.

262 of #365Minerals 🧪⚒️

Sillimanite:
- An aluminosilicate mineral
- A polymorph of both of kyanite and andalusite; same formula (Al2SiO5) but different structure
- Forms in high grade metamorphic rocks
- Named after Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864), a chemistry/geology professor #minerals

a poster with illustrations of 16 minerals eliminated in the first round of the 2025 mineral cup: chrysotile, okenite, jeremejevite, calcite, silver, leucite, sanidine, pollucite, azurite, wavellite, thortveitite, zunyite, topaz, ikaite, nontronite, and paddlewheelite. They have a large range of colours and shapes going from blue and green to yellow and red.

First round losers in the #MinCup25

(is this rude?)

#sciart #minerals

The professor has been fired and senior administrators removed from their post. No mention of this in the New York Times, The Free Press, The Atlantic or other outlets who drove the campus speech moral panic.

🏺 For #EAA members (past and present!) still looking to sign the call for an emergency meeting following the events of #EAA2025 - here’s the new link. ⬇️

Axe, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Axe
Class: Jade
Culture: China
Medium: Jade
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/42753

your periodic reminder that “archaeology isn’t political” is a political statement

An illustration of a woman walking up stairs in the back of another woman's head, with text that says: As a Ph.D. student, I felt unprepared to mentor—but I’m glad I took the leap.

"What mattered, I realized, was not to be some imaginary perfect mentor with all the answers, but to get to know my mentee ... and offer whatever guidance and support I could based on my own experiences." #ScienceWorkingLife https://scim.ag/3URUdys

Finishing up my Monuments and Megaliths syllabus and I only wish I could add in more fun projects for the semester! But unfortunately there is only so much time 🗿

Something that I have been thinking about with attribution of "PhD level intelligence" or "PhD level expertise" to a machine is that it reflects an increasing trend among these AI bros and their sycophants to want the products of highly skilled training without actually doing any of the work.

There’s an active shooter at a building ancross the street from the main CDC HQ in Atlanta.

I just received a photo from inside a CDC office building of a window full of bulletholes.

Call for Presenters: "Overcoming Access Barriers in Archaeology" Lightning Round, SAA 2026, San Francisco Title: Overcoming Access Barriers in Archaeology Participants: Moderators: Joshua Vallejos & Sarah Surface-Evans Chairs: Tara Larson, Jaimie Adams, Laura Heath-Stout (pending space) Up to 15 Panelist...

CALL FOR PRESENTERS 🏺♿🧵
Overcoming Access Barriers in Archaeology
A Lightning Round session at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology #saa2026
April 29–May 3, 2026
San Francisco, CA

My University has opened a virtual scholar scheme for scholars from Gaza. Please share widely and help stop scholasticide. www.exeter.ac.uk/faculties/ha...

Color photo shows an overhead shot of two buckets, one white and one blue. Each filled with green purple and red tomatoes.

Summer this year looks like syllabus prepping, writing fellowship applications, and harvesting about 10 lbs of tomatoes a day

🧵

“Some of us aren’t creative enough to brainstorm without ChatGPT!” Well then maybe you should sit this one out.

We’ve had some absolutely disastrous flooding in parts of Iowa this week & while the area I live in is largely unscathed (thankfully) the house I live in is not. Our basement flooded Friday and contractors had to remove all the flooring Saturday morning with no idea of when it will be replaced 🥲

It’s always “Ladies, if you are alienated by overwork, drop out of the public sphere and become a tradwife” and never “Ladies, if you are alienated by overwork, form a union.”

We are almost there: let's do this!
"Because of your contributions so far, we have been able to cover tuition for 9 out of the 12 students. All students are deeply thankful for your help and are currently focused on completing their semester exams" @gmandreou.bsky.social

Augen means “eyes” in German, and are formed by the metamorphic shearing and deformation of rocks. This is a beautiful example. TY Callan Bentley.

A stone axe with a light-colored, roughly shaped stone blade mounted horizontally on a wooden handle made of several jointed segments, displayed upright against a dark background.

This ca. 5,000-year-old Neolithic polished flint axe with its original ash wood handle is remarkable well preserved.

During the Neolithic period in Denmark, as agriculture began to expand, farmers had to clear the forests, which involved felling trees and burning away...🧵1/2

📷 me

🏺 #archaeology

Le Plasker in Plouharnel (fifth millennium cal BC): a newly discovered section of the megalithic complex of Carnac | Antiquity | Cambridge Core Le Plasker in Plouharnel (fifth millennium cal BC): a newly discovered section of the megalithic complex of Carnac

Hooray, dates for a Carnac region stone row! Fascinating excavation of a tomb, aligned standing stones & cooking pits at Le Plasker shows that the stone alignments were built piecemeal c.4680-4250 cal BC, and the tomb was built on the site of Mesolithic occupation: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I’ve used AllTrails a lot over the years. Both in the US for leisure and elsewhere while working and conducting surveys/gathering samples from easily accessible roadcuts. I feel like this change will render it almost unusable- not to mention the issues with increased risks to hikers & recovery teams

“Why Are We Funding This?” Long-standing myths about “silly science” have contributed to the reckless slashing of government-supported research.

My latest for American Scientist Magazine helps give scientists the tools to fight back against politicized charges that our research is silly or pointless- tools that will work whether you’re asked “why are we funding this” from your asshole uncle at Thanksgiving or an asshole US Senator.
🧪🌎

Relatedly, if you haven't been in an archives you have no idea just how much historical material is not online, not even a digital record of it. An LLM cannot research data it doesn't have. It can't even extrapolate where to find that material.

Did you know that WAC-10 World Archaeology Congress (next week) is free for students to attend online? Register here: worldarchaeologicalcongress.com/wac10/

A polished axe sits in a metal case, view from overhead.

PhD data collection is continuing for the next few days, including analyzing this beautiful piece from a historic collection 🏺

Trump administration attacks the preservation of archaeological resources Funding and staff cuts will gut the protection of archaeological sites under the National Historic Preservation Act.

Good article laying out how the administration is stripping cultural resource protections 🧪🏺

Black text on white background. There is a black and white graphic of a trowel with googly eyes smoking a cigarette in the center of the page. Above the graphic is the title, "Labor in Archaeology: How Did We Get Here?" Below the graphic is a series of header titles with arrows between them. They read, "New Deal > Sec. 106 > Power/Profit > The UAFT > Blowback > We Are Here"

Want to learn about the history of the labor movement in American cultural resource management 🏺? Check out our Labor in Archaeology Zine! A printable version is available on google drive at the link in our bio so you can print your own copies to share!