Tom Booth

I had the pleasure of speaking to Amy Matthews & Dr Jennifer Wexler about my latest book, #CircleOfDays, on the English Heritage Podcast. You can listen to the full episode here: playlist.megaphone.fm?e=EHE4085886...

Solid-gold rant incoming… by Tess Machling [A download/print PDF version can be found at the end of the paper] Before I go any further, I want to state that the theft and destruction of heritage across the world is not unco…

My thoughts...

#Archaeology 🏺 #Gold #Torcs #Robbery

bigbookoftorcs.com/2025/10/07/s...

Parley with Pääbo.

A black and white ink drawing of the neolithic tomb known as Wayland's Smithy

This is my ink drawing of Wayland's Smithy, a Neolithic long barrow close to the Ridgeway in Oxfordshire. It is said that if you leave your horse there with a coin then Wayland will magically reshoe it.
The original artwork is now available on my Etsy shop here: shorturl.at/HDzSI
#TombTuesday

Bronze age gold jewellery stolen in raid on St Fagans museum in Cardiff South Wales police issue public appeal for information after burglary at one of Wales’s most beloved museums

Awful news! Following the theft of the Ely Bronze Age torc & a Bronze Age bracelet in 2024,now more Bronze Age gold has been stolen from St Fagans Museum in Cardiff. 😔

#Archaeology 🏺 #Gold #Torcs

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

As always with C14, you’ll get what you’re given!

oprah winfrey is wearing a red dress and holding a microphone in her hand . ALT: oprah winfrey is wearing a red dress and holding a microphone in her hand .

Radiocarbon date day!

You get a radiocarbon date!

You get a radiocarbon date!

You get a radiocarbon date!

Druids Circle (Penmaenmawr): This fantastic ring of around 30 stones #StandingStoneSunday stands on the headland of Penmaenmawr above Conwy, close to a prehistoric trackway and three other stone circles.

Oof this hits a sweet spot for me

Chuffed that the project I nominated has been shortlisted! Fingers crossed for the award night now🤞

Lost Worlds The creator of the hit podcast Tides of History offers a new look at humanity’s deep past, showing us how our world was built not by inevitability, but by t...

Today's the big day, friends - my new book, Lost Worlds: The Rise and Fall of Human Societies from the Ice Age to the Bronze Age, is available for preorder! Smash that link and purchase from your retailer of choice, if that's the kind of thing you're into. www.harpercollins.com/products/los...

How Copper Smelters Accidentally Sparked the Birth of the Iron Age Copper smelters once used iron oxide to refine copper, unintentionally advancing the path toward iron metallurgy. Research conducted at Cranfield University provides new insight into the shift from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, suggesting that copper smelters experimenting with iron-rich rocks may have unintentionally paved the way for the invention of iron. The [...]

How Copper Smelters Accidentally Sparked the Birth of the Iron Age
https://scitechdaily.com/how-copper-smelters-accidentally-sparked-the-birth-of-the-iron-age/

Excited to share our new study in @natcomms.nature.com. It reveals surprising protein variability in birds 🐦, reshaping how we use ancient proteins to reconstruct the past. Curious about the implications? Read the paper here: rdcu.be/eJi3h. With @beademarch.bsky.social

Towers of a huge stone and tile wall with a tarmac road and central white painted line in front. Red car and small modern buildings in the distance

The chunky, tile-embedded stone bastions of Roman ANDERITVM (Pevensey in East #Sussex) date from the late 3rd century AD

Today, these towers of the coastal fort protrude menacingly out into the road, threatening unwary motorists

📷 May 2010

#RomanFortThursday

Four scientists in lab coats in a laboratory space, talking and listening.

Are you a researcher at @ucl.ac.uk, @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social, or @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social looking to keep up with the Crick?

Sign up to our monthly newsletter for researchers at our partner universities to hear about events, opportunities and news ➡️ www.crick.ac.uk/research/res...

Was this podcast generated by AI? Listen and assess!

Always good to have options.

If a penchant for naming subtly different types of road crossings after famously mostly black-and-white animals is weird, then I don’t know what’s right.

I maybe have cleared out my last ancient lug hole (for a little while at least). One last malleus located for DNA sampling today, first day teaching at @uclarchaeology.bsky.social tomorrow.

Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers - Nature Combined analysis of new genomic data from 116 ancient hunter-gatherer individuals together with previously published data provides insights into the genetic structure and demographic shifts of west Eurasian forager populations over a period of 30,000 years.

Population continuity in Western Europe is the actual model, see:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Early Gravettian lithics do look wildly similar the whole way across Europe. It's from about 30 cal kya that an obvious east-west difference appears. I'm not sure about Isturitz being a major crossroads for people though, so I wonder if their alternative explanation will win out in the end...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

30,000-year-old Gravettian-associated people, moving and mixing over considerable distances, plus a dollop of further discoveries from sedimentary DNA. 1.15 billion reads for 16,000 human SNPs though...eeeeeessh.

Scientists targeted by dark PR tactics: Several academic scientists critical of de-extinction projects have become the targets of anonymous smear articles and weaponized copyright infringement claims:... EMBO Press is an editorially independent publishing platform for the development of EMBO scientific publications.

www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

Fab for freelancers, self-employed, independent researchers:

Oooh so close, better luck for self immolation next time, microwave.

How long does DNA last? The world's oldest DNA comes from a 2.4 million-year-old ecosystem in Greenland. Will scientists eventually sequence even older DNA?

"To be honest, had I been asked in 2003 how long DNA could last, the absolute wisdom of all the people in the know would have been 100,000 years," Gilbert said. "So we're off by a factor of 20 already." 🏺🧪

GOAT 🐐 PAPER

The Megalithic Portal's Top 15 Stone Rows in England: Something we did in our book The Old Stones, #StandingStoneSunday was to attempt objective ratings of the best of various types of megalithic monuments to visit in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland.

A hemispherical cup with a round base and a single loop handle, displayed on a narrow metal stand. The handle is on the left in my photo. The cup was carved from a single piece of Baltic amber about 3,500 years ago. The amber is a translucent deep burnt-orange colour, which glows as it catches the light, resembling burning embers of a fire. About half an inch from the rim, a band of incised parallel grooves encircle the body of the cup, except for under the handle. There are two chips on the rim. Cup dimensions: height 2.5 inches, depth 2.4 inches, external diameter 3.5 inches.

The Hove Amber Cup.

A beautiful and rare Bronze Age amber cup which glows when it catches the light! 🤩

Carved from a single block of Baltic amber some 3,500 years ago!

Found in 1856, inside Hove Barrow, a large burial mound in Sussex.
Brighton Museum 📷 by me

#FindsFriday
#Archaeology

The Swine!