Rob Hedge

🤫. I’ve got away with this for 428 years, only to be outed on Bluesky. The archive always gets you in the end… 🗃️

Photograph of a small child sat at a dining table, enthusiastically adding purple to the picture from the previous post.

…and this definitely falls into that category. But I had an assistant for this one (who rightly thought it needed more purple), and she wanted to ‘put it on social media for her fans’. No idea where she picks these concepts up. She’s 5. But she worked hard and helped me think, so here it is.

Photograph of an A3 sketchbook page with a rough ‘mood’ sketch in oil pastels, showing an archaeological excavation of one of several undulations in a pasture field. A single archaeologist fills orange buckets. In the background, the land rises to a range of hills.

Working on 🏺 artefacts, there are times when you need to take a step back, to think conceptually about a site at a distance from the stuff. One method I use is to think through sketching.
These are usually quick, rough sketches that never see the light of day…

Alternatively, y’know, you could get an AI trained on 20th century potboiler pop sci to generate you a chest-beating Neanderthal. 🤷
If you want your work to be taken seriously, invest in serious interpretation. 🏺

Wonderful thread on the amount of thought and depth of knowledge that goes into an archaeological illustration, and on living with the uncertainty:

This is terrific, I love how it captures multiple universal human experiences: the end of long journeys, the anticipation and easy familiarity of a group coming back together, the generational dynamics… brilliant!

I’ve not written about him (yet - it’s on my list of ‘one day’ projects…), but Kathryn Warner wrote this tantalising little biography: edwardthesecond.blogspot.com/2009/02/brie...
One of those characters you’d struggle to fictionalise - almost a cartoon villain!

Absolutely! Struck by how relatively infrequently crimes by itinerant outsiders crop up. Whereas the most notorious, almost implausibly villainous robber of the c14th around my study area was Malcom Musard, Lord of many manors in Worcs/Gloucs!

There were many moral panics around these hordes of landless, idle vagrants as evidence of societal decline—I’m looking at some in c15th church court records at the moment—and as Elise highlights, they tend to emerge when comfortable hierarchies start to wobble…

This is an excellent thread. Worth adding: the legislation didn’t work. It didn’t work because that imagined class of peasant—the able bodied idle poor—did not exist. The legislation imagined a paradoxical peasant, simultaneously being too entrepreneurial and too lazy.

Great effort, congratulations!

Selfie of a red-faced, sweating bespectacled man in a running vest, standing in front of the dead tree that is a landmark at Worcester Pitchcroft Parkrun

Perfect cool and breezy #Parkrun weather at Worcester Pitchcroft this morning; racecourse sprinklers adding extra refreshment! Just a terrific and brilliantly inclusive start to the weekend. Shaved a few secs off the PB for the first time in months.

Photograph of Mesolithic lanceolate point held in a hand: it is a point in light grey flint, 25mm x 7mm, with ‘nibbling’ retouch along both edges to form the point.

Photograph of a broken early Neolithic leaf arrowhead, held up to the light with the sun coming through the orange translucent flint. It is leaf-shaped, with ridges running across the face from the invasive retouch that thinned the flake.

Rounding off a flinty week with some beauties for #FindsFriday / #FlintFriday. From a Bronze Age burial mound dug by @rachelcrellin.bsky.social, showing that there was a human presence here at least 2000 years before the mound was constructed.

Change starts here Join over 500,000,000 people creating real change in their communities.

I should add that there is a change dot org petition you could sign, if you feel so inclined:
www.change.org/p/save-acade...

Yes, this is cause there are lots of postgrads (esp in History). Yes, undergrad numbers in many of these areas are stable or rising. Yes, undergrad recruitment in history was boosted by schools liaison work. Yes, that work was ended by a uni-imposed hiring freeze. No, none of this makes sense to me.

History is not the only area targeted for cuts. The others are:
Chemistry
Education
Film Studies
Geography, Geology and Environment
Modern Languages
Professional services.

The criteria seems to be that these subject areas have too many staff in relation to undergrad students.

History at Leicester | University of Leicester Studying for a History degree at the University of Leicester will enable you to learn from leading academics in the field, ensuring you undertake a course that is both challenging and rewarding, and w...

The university is inviting feedback. Email historyfb@leicester.ac.uk by 5pm, 4th July.
Yes, History at Leicester was ranked #2 in the UK in REF2021. Yes, it is the home of Centre for Regional & Local History (inc. my PhD). Yes, it has fostered extraordinary work for over a century. le.ac.uk/history

Leicester responds to sector financial pressures | News | University of Leicester

Hate to be the bearer of more grim HE news, but things are afoot at the University of Leicester. History is one of a number of subjects currently in 'pre-change engagement'.
What does this mean? Cuts.
Of what magnitude? We won't know until the Autumn. #skystorians 🗃️🏺🏛️
le.ac.uk/news/2025/ju...

Wow! Knows his onions when it comes to archaeology too…

📣 Monday is the deadline for applications for the John Hurst Memorial Prize: present online or in person. Travel bursaries available.
If your postgrad research touches on medieval landscapes, get your applications in! 🏺🗃️🏛️
#medievalsky

Screen shot of email. Text reads: Morning Rob, Attached is the finalised [site name redacted] report, which you dated some Iron Age scored ware for us, we had some C14 back from the same fill/feature and you were pretty bang on and [name redacted] thought you may like to see the final report.

This little email brightened up my day. It’s rare for freelance archaeological specialists to get feedback like this, but it’s so important, cause:
a) if we’re right, it assuages the imposter syndrome;
b) if we got it hopelessly wrong, there’s probably a typology somewhere that needs updating. 🤔🏺🗃️🏛️

The Corolla takes it in its stride… I spent decades running dilapidated Land Rovers and French vans/cars held together by patience and a prayer. But my Corolla… I could probably rivet the bonnet shut and it would still outlive me.

The Acids that Etch Through Time On Solstice, Thin Time, and the Making of Iron-Gall Ink

Some gentle reading for a very hot morning: how finding oak galls let me and my daughter think about slipping through time at Midsummer. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/the-acids-...

It’s an excellent answer!

Photograph of a sketchbook page showing a pen and ink sketch adapted from a medieval illustration of a crane holding a rock whilst watching over her sleeping flock. If she drifted off, the rock would fall and the sound jolt her back to wakefulness. Cranes were thus celebrated in the medieval imagination for their vigilance and loyalty.

… And an excuse to sketch some of my favourite creatures from medieval bestiaries: cranes holding rocks! #medievalsky

Spent a highly enjoyable evening listening to @drmjwarren.bsky.social talk about birds and place names. Get yourself a copy of #TheCuckoosLea, it’s a terrific book.

Virtual branch: The Cuckoo’s Lea In his recent book The Cuckoo's Lea Dr Michael J Warren provides a beautiful exploration of how birds are entwined with British history, particularly in our place names. Join us for an exclusive Q&A ...

I’m with @histassoc.bsky.social tonight talking all about how birds have been shaping and transforming our relationships with place for a very long time. Old places and old ways. Come join! Online, free, 19:30: www.history.org.uk/events/calen.... #thecuckooslea #naturewriting

Isaac Mohammed’s intro to the New Road crowd: 32 from 15 to get the chase off to a flyer. Against a quality Durham attack. Rode his luck but played utterly without fear.
Here he is with a deft ramp on his way to ruining Matthew Potts’ figures: 🏏

A brown-coated Irish Terrier with greying eyes and muzzle reclines in a dog bed in the corner of a wooden garden office, front paw resting on a chew. In the foreground, placed on a patterned rug, is an electric fan.

The Office Manager has demanded a fan.
She simply cannot complete her busy schedule of chewing and snoozing without the vapours of a tray of ice cubes gently misted across her desk.

The county archivist at my former employers got so fed up of hearing ‘can’t you just digitise it all?’ that he calculated the resources needed: 2 full time archivists for 500 years. 1000 person-years. Not including the new material arriving weekly. 🤷🗃️