Carenza Murray

A large lump of sandstone with a smiling cartoonish face carved into it.

In Perth last week, I went to the museum @perthmuseum.bsky.social to say hello to my favourite smiley Pictish stone. It features four faces and was found near Abernethy. #ReliefWednesday

Have just read on the BBC that "the UK's first 'super-university', stretching across an entire region" is to be creaed by merging the universities of Kent and Greenwich, and I'm thinking it's a shame they've never heard of the University of the Highlands and Islands.

Cracker of a day yesterday at Burghead with one of the star finds being this beautiful bead found by Patrick one of our University of Aberdeen undergraduate students.

A large stone slab with an incised chequerboard

How amazing is this. This architectural stone found at Chedworth Roman Villa has an incised chequerboard!
Potential evidence of Villa residents playing board games almost two thousand years ago.

#Games #SummerOfPlay #RomanBritain #Finds #FindsFriday

@nationaltrust.org.uk

Several archaeologists wearing high-vis vests excavating graves. In the background an excavator stands amongst piles of earth. Excavation at the post-Roman cemetery at Worth Matravers cemetery (credit: Lilian Ladle).

NEW West African ancestry in #medieval England? 🏺 #Archaeology
DNA analysis of two unrelated individuals from two seventh-century-AD cemeteries uncovers the first evidence for genetic connections between Britain and Africa during the Early Middle Ages.

#AntiquityThread 1/10 🧵

📷 Lilian Ladle

My photo shows a translucent amber coloured glass bowl with vertical rib decoration around the body with marvered white glass trails. The glass bowl glows in the display lighting as if it contains sunshine which reflects on the surface of the display case. Dimensions: Diameter 9.50 cm x Height 6 cm. On display at the British Museum.

Dazzling 2,000 year-old Roman bowl made of translucent amber-coloured glass.

Like a bowl full of sunshine! ☀️

Fabulous example of the skill of ancient glassmakers!

British Museum 📷 by me

www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

#Archaeology

The gilted bronze head of the statue of Sulis Minerva in the Roman Baths in Bath. The statue was gilded with gold six times in its life time. It was found in 1727. It is hypothesised that it was from the first century AD and was deposited 300 years old. #FindsFriday

A Bronze Age food vessel from Hare Hill Ring Cairn which contained cremated remains. Located near Thornton-in-Craven in North Yorkshire, the site contained the cremated remains of at least 15 people. Part of the collections at Craven Museum in Skipton. #TombTuesday #CravenMuseum

연탄고양이

Happy Monday here’s a brilliant wee mason’s mark at Hampton Court Palace

No Eurovision here until they stop platforming a country that is actively killing tens of thousands of children.

This is an important thread - I haven't used Trove yet but I use several of these functions on Canmore and, boy, I'll miss them!

Detail from the ‘Kirkburn Sword’ which was discovered in 1987 in an Iron Age burial at Kirkburn in East Yorkshire.

Detail from the ‘Kirkburn Sword’ which was discovered in 1987 in an Iron Age burial at Kirkburn in East Yorkshire. The burial dates to the 3rd century BC. Now part of the collections at the British Museum. 📸 My own. #FindsFriday #IronAge #Yorkshire #Archaeology

A corroded iron arrowhead with a triangular shape and two protruding barbs on one side, displayed on a thin metal stand against a dark background. The surface of the arrowhead appears rough and pitted due to oxidation, giving it an aged and weathered look

An #arrowhead made of #meteorite iron: around 1,500 BC, a meteorite struck #Estonia. A fragment of it arrived - presumably in the baggage of an amber trader - at what is now Lake Biel, #Switzerland. An arrowhead was then made there from the cosmic iron.

From Mörigen, 900-800 BC.

📷 me

🏺

A small, intricately carved frog figurine made of translucent reddish-orange carnelian gemstone. The frog has a smooth, polished surface with minimal detailing, and its shape is slightly stylized. The figurine is placed on a plain, white background.

A tiny #Egyptian #frog amulet, made of carnelian (height 0.9 cm). Because of their numerous offspring, #frogs were considered a symbol of fertility.
Dating c. 1540-1296 BC, New Kingdom.

Photo: Cleveland Museum of Art

🏺 AncientEgyptBluesky

A gate decorated with Celtic crosses marks the entrance to St Fillan's Cave at Cove Wynd, Pittenweem.

Pittenweem, Fife. Petnaweme c.1150. 'Portion of the cave'. Pictish *pett + Gaelic na h-uamha. Source: Oxford Dictionary of British #PlaceNames. The cave in question is dedicated to St Fillan. 📸Andrew Curtis

The link is down here too - stuck on waiting for livestream screen

A tall standing stone in a field, with a wooded hill in the background. On the stone itself can be seen several carved circular indentations known as cup marks.

This is the largest of the five Nether Largie Standing Stones in Kilmartin Glen, Scotland. It features several carved circular depressions known as cup marks. The significance of these marks is unclear. #StandingStoneSunday

The ramparts to the Iron Age hillfort of Hambledon Hill, looking west from the air in 2016

The Iron Age hillfort of Hambledon Hill encircles a chalk spur overlooking Shroton and the Blackmore Vale in #Dorset

Covering 12.5ha, it also partially overlies an earlier Neolithic enclosure

It is quite simply magnificent! 😍

Pic © Jo and Sue Crane 2016

Happy #HillfortsWednesday

Photo of twin thatched prehistoric roundhouses reconstructed in a woodland clearing, with their doors visible

Possibly the only house one needs in a storm 🛖🌪️🌀: conjoined Iron Age roundhouses reconstructed at National Museum St Fagans, Cardiff, modelled on Bryn Eryr, Ynys Môn/Angelsey

Similar buildings have withstood gale force winds

Stay safe! #Darragh

museum.wales/stfagans/bui...

📷 My own, August 2024

We're sad to inform you that management at the University of Sheffield has asked us to discontinue our very popular #zooarchaeology shortcourses. Unfortunately one of our most enlightening piece of community engagement, which also brought funds to manage our labs, has gone @sheffielducu.bsky.social

My photo shows a woman’s bonnet laid flat for display at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. The woollen yarn is brown in colour, possibly as a result of millennia spent in a peat bog. It has an inricate lace-like appearance. It has two long strings for fastening. Made using an ancient technique known as ‘språng’ which produces a textile with natural elasticity. Discovered in 1942 in Bredmose bog on a so-called ‘bog body’ of a woman aged 20-25 years old. The bonnet was placed over her hair which was braided and coiled on top of her head.

A rare and delicate survival from Bronze Age Denmark!

A 3,400 year-old woollen bonnet made using the ancient ‘språng’ technique which produces a textile with natural elasticity.

From Bredmose bog, Jutland. National Museum, Copenhagen
📷 by me

#Archaeology
#AncientBluesky🏺

In this animation we took our new interpretation of the La Cotte site, led by @beccyscottuk.bsky.social, & worked with @jerseyheritage.bsky.social to share it!

🦣 No game drives
🦣 Ambush hunting
🦣 La Cotte as home base
🦣 Enigmatic bone structures

Read the paper free here: shorturl.at/Orr7a
🦣🧪🏺

A hemispherical bowl made of mosaic cast glass. Translucent dark blue with opaque white spirals. There is slight corrosion and weathering of the glass. The bowl has been restored. Height: 7.2 cm, diameter: 13.1 cm. The effect of the museum lighting shining through the blue glass with white swirls brings to mind the painting ‘Starry Night’ by Vincent Van Gogh.

Stunning 2,000 year-old Hellenistic mosaic glass bowl looking like a Starry Night! 💫

Tranlucent dark blue glass with opaque white spirals. From Canosa di Puglia. Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart, Germany 📷 by me

#AncientBlueSky 🏺
#Archaeology

UK HE shrinking This is a live page of all the redundancies, restructures, reorganisations, and closures taking place across the sector at the moment. Solidarity to all. This sector is vital to the country’s…

The number of UK universities now actively making redundancies has risen to 85. That number will be will over 100 by spring. I'm afraid this is happening faster, and will be worse, than even I thought. Solidarity and thoughts with and to all affected. qmucu.org/qmul-transfo...

*until they make a Pictish one

Pictish Perfection! Rodney's Stone on the grounds of NTS Brodie Castle, a #Pictish Class II carving that includes sea monsters, a double disc paired with z-rod and a beautiful cross. What's more, it contains the longest Pictish ogham inscription in Scotland, inscribed on three edges.

Part 1 of 2 🎬

An upland moorland scene with a circle of low upright stones in the foreground

Finally it's #StandingStoneSunday 🎉

The diminutive Early Bronze Age Hirnant cairn-circle, a stony burial cairn enclosed by knee-high upright stones, has somehow weathered the changing upland landscape of the #Pumlumon foothills in Ceredigion, #Wales, for 4,500 years

📷 My own, April 2022

An advent calendar decorated with twelve dinosaurs against a light background

There was never gonna be another advent calendar for me

A 7th century carved Pictish symbol stone which was discovered in 1936 during excavations at the Knowe of Burrian - a broch at Netherbrough, Harray, in the Orkney Isles. Now part of the collections at Orkney Museum in Kirkwall. 📸 My own. #FindsFriday #Archaeology #Orkney