Andrew Gault

Book cover with painting of giant ice age deer Megaloceros

Stunning images by Julian Friers of extinct and lost Irish animals from #Megaloceros, #Mammoth, to Great Auk, with the full story of Ireland’s ice age animals and human impacts on the fauna by Mike Simms. Published by National Museums Northern Ireland August 2025 ISBN 0-900761-69-5

The most picturesque house in the Mournes, seen at the end of a loop of the Annalong Valley today. And a horse, who I caught napping.

Similarly, where the hell are fair skinned gingers like me evolved for, in a pre sunscreen world? I can only assume beneath trees and mud covered. Sounds good tbh.

In my youth my mother once mixed up the calamine lotion with milk of magnesia. I had an upset stomach... It wasn't good.

A flint knife featuring a curved stone blade secured into a wooden handle using black birch tar adhesive. The dark handle has a small perforation at one end. The tool is displayed on a neutral surface, showing the craftsmanship and natural materials used.

A more than 5,550-year-old well-preserved #Neolithic knife. The blade is crafted from flint and secured in a wooden handle using birch tar. Furthermore, the handle features a hole, intended for attaching a cord.
From the pile dwelling settlement...🧵 1/2

📷 me

🏺 #archaeology

It's a remote exposed upland area and on a different day I could have been in diffs as I was basically in shorts and a long sleeve top. Food for thought to never take the familiar short upland runs lightly. There's a 3 mile stretch of trail where I'll now forever be looking for that key 🫣😆

Trail running woe in the Antrim Hills yesterday. At the furthest point from my car just as I was turning to head back I realised my key was gone. Small hole in the pocket 🤦
Luckily I met a chap (the only other person!) who let me use his phone and I was able to get my spare key. Lessons learned 🙌

Surveying a house in Leicestershire. Its all about the brickwork. Early 18thC bricks w/ angled skintlings & mid-19thC bricks w/ horizontal skintlings. Skintlings are the creases where the bricks were stacked in the kiln. This changes from angled to horizontal in early 19thC.

The capstone covering the 10m long chamber of the dolmen angevin of Briande (aka Pierre du Marais) in Arçay (Vienne) has broken in two but still rests rather dramatically on 7 surviving orthostats. #TombTuesday. Card by Dando-Berry c.1905.

Liam sent this to me at dawn on the Solstice 🙂

A small grassy cairn and a man, Liam McQuillan, running around with carrier bags of demonstration slides !

Millin Bay is a kinda cool place as nobody's really sure what's going on with it, apart from.maybe the wondrous Liam McQuillan and Lisa White who are currently working on it.
It is one of the highly strange sites across Ireland, and has more than a whiff of @hookland.bsky.social about it. A thread

Our alternative interpretations of the ‘king’ of Newgrange (a skull fragment from an individual who was born of incest) and his distant relations have been published! We argue for the importance of careful integration of aDNA results with detailed archaeological evidence. Such a great team effort!

The ‘king’ of Newgrange? A critical analysis of a Neolithic petrous fragment from the passage tomb chamber | Antiquity | Cambridge Core The ‘king’ of Newgrange? A critical analysis of a Neolithic petrous fragment from the passage tomb chamber - Volume 99 Issue 405

Cover image from 'The ‘king’ of Newgrange? A critical analysis of a Neolithic petrous fragment from the passage tomb chamber' - Jessica Smyth et al.

🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

I can smell the permatrace from here

Sorry (not sorry)

Finally starting to feel myself again after completing the Mourne Way Marathon yesterday. It's the first marathon I've done, and to add to the type 2 fun it's a trail marathon on forest tracks, rough mountain trails and bog with >1100m elevation gain. With heavy rain showers and hail thrown in 😆

Yeah, Valetta is Council of Europe, not EU

Ratified by UK in 2000... I'm sure someone would have noticed if we'd withdrawn, right? Compliance is another matter of course 😆

Are you interested in re-wilding? We have a questionnaire on re-wilding and the historic environment open, and keen to hear from ecologists, land managers, and archaeological practitioners. Access the questionnaire here - uofg.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

He also supervises at the allotment

You may not realise it, but somewhere, quietly, a miniature schnauzer is watching you.

A rolling landscape of ploughed fields fresh sown with potato ridges, drumlins, a historic house in a clump of trees in the distance, set against blue sky on a sunny day.

Ballylesson, south of Belfast and Edenderry, in the sunshine today. Impressive landscape, not far from the Giant's Ring.

Archaeology is built heritage.

I keep seeing the term being applied to refer only to historic buildings, as if archaeological heritage were a separate thing. It isn't.

It constitutes the material remains of human cultures and agency, distinct for example from natural heritage.

Khal Drogo?

Factor 50 ftw 😆

Stunning day in the central Mournes ☀️

Peak long run today in the sunny Mournes, now tapering to the Mourne Way Marathon in early June. What a day for it!

Loving evening walks in our local woods these days

Stretched after getting out of bed this morning and pulled something in my shoulder. Forties innit?

Apple blossom and first plantings at the allotment. Potatoes are up and enjoying the sunshine.
It's getting colder though, and that breeze! 🥶