Tom Booth

It’s a broad study of prehistoric Britain by stealth, but there is a focus on Stonehenge and the development of that specific landscape as a persistent case study. I tried not to mention it at all this week to set up the context, but next week is more or less entirely Stonehenge.

...although interestingly acting more acutely on people with ancestry from the Netherlands. Any coincidence this is 'The Lowlands'? Overcompensation or selection towards having your head above sea level?

The story the evolution of height in populations of Europe has been a bit of rollercoaster, veering between natural selection or admixture with populations who had a higher genetic propensity to be taller by chance. This preprint goes back to natural selection...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I think he’d probably rather be Michael Portillo at this very moment, you were trying to do him a favour.

A picture of Dr Who's tardis, a navy blue police box in front of Stonehenge, an arrangement of grey stones into 'trilothons' - two vertical stones supporting a horizontal lintel stone on top. 'ARCL0078: The Age(s) of Stonehenge is in navy blue bubble writing in the sky.

It's Age of Stonehenge title slide time again! Where did the week go? Continuing with innovation and consolidation in the Middle-Late Neolithic we talked timber and stone monuments, developed passage tombs, Oradian stone settlements, maceheads, squares in circles and the complexities of complexes.

We are looking for a research project manager for the upcoming FORAGER ERC Synergy Project. Based at the University of York, this is an exciting opportunity to work in a team of 37 researchers from the UK, the US, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia and Japan. Join us!
jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/rese...

Four early medieval swords found in Kent – child graves reveal they were more than just weapons Swords found in early medieval graves show the complex cultural meanings that weapons can hold.

Archaeologist Duncan Sayer on the significance of weapon burials - and the child buried with a sword at the site he led in Kent, which I was lucky enough to discuss with him on the latest series of Digging for Britain.
theconversation.com/four-early-m...

Placed in Clay, Remembered in Silence Two fetal burials from prehistoric Iran challenge simple stories about care, loss, and ritual

Two fetal burials from 6,500-year-old Iran show strikingly different treatments despite close proximity. Reused pots, selective offerings, and domestic settings reveal how prehistoric families navigated loss and care. #Archaeology #Bioarchaeology #Prehistory www.anthropology.net/p/placed-in-...

Potteries Museum seeks £150k to buy Bronze Age dress fastener The Potteries Museum has until the spring to raise the funds needed to keep it in the area.

BBC News - Potteries Museum seeks £150k to buy Bronze Age dress fastener - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Less having people get things, more calling people a ‘get’*.

*hope my mum’s not reading because ‘get’ was a pretty bombshell word to call someone when I was growing up, don’t know about the rest of you gets**.

**sorry mum.

It was incredible, I loved it. Definitely someone had been boning up on their prehistory for it.

28 Years Later: Geordies on Zombie Island.

5,000-year-old rock art from ancient Egypt depicts 'terrifying' conquest of the Sinai Peninsula Archaeologists have found 5,000-year-old ancient Egyptian rock art in the Sinai Desert that depicts the conquest of the region.

www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

Large black sailed black bottomed wooden boat in the middle of a museum gallery.

True highlight of my life today, seeing this replica Bronze Age boat, built with traditional techniques and materials. Just imagining this bad boy sailing up to the tombs on Umm an Nar island gives me chills. 🏺

🤩

Dealing With Inbuilt Age: A Bayesian Approach to Radiocarbon Dating of Rice, Bamboo and Charcoal From Non Ban Jak, Thailand New radiocarbon determinations from rice grains and bamboo have been obtained from Non Ban Jak, Northeast Thailand. These, along with charcoal, date a late Iron Age building sequence. The results com...

My dad and I published this paper this week in Archaeometry. It shows how you can avoid old wood effects when dating charcoal by using a bespoke Bayesian outlier model developed by my friends Mike Dee and Chris Ramsey a few years ago. We applied it to a Thai site.
doi.org/10.1111/arcm.70105

Friday, 30th January Exceptional Roman Cult Sanctuary in Frankfurt | Highlands Pictish Cemetery | Cologne’s Roman River Wall | Regicide! The Execution of Charles I

💥 A Whole Lot of History 💥

⚫️ Exceptional #Roman Cult Sanctuary in Frankfurt 🏛

⚫️ Highlands #Pictish Barrow Cemetery ☠️ 🪦

⚫️ Cologne’s Wooden Roman River Wall Foundations 🏞

⚫️ Regicide! The Execution of Charles I 🤴 🪓

🔗 📰 open.substack.com/pub/historyh...

Members of the Skoglund Ancient Genomics Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute. A group of intrepid young (ish in some cases) researchers staring together on a walkway with heavily lit brown orange and white panels on the background.

Latest edition of the Skoglund ancient genomics laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute. ‘If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s The Fall.’

Whilst I’m in my photos of the National Museum in Copenhagen, you’d better have this 360 of the Gundestrup Cauldron. Found in 1891 in a Jutland peat bog, there are more questions hanging over this silver Iron Age vessel than answers…only its shocking beauty is uncontested.
#FindsFriday

Long Man Lecture 2026: Raksha Dave - A Conscious Uncoupling: Public Archaeology and Disrupting the Status Quo - Sussex Past Join the Sussex Archaeological Society for the 2026 Long Man Lecture with renowned archaeologist and broadcaster Raksha Dave at the University of Sussex on Thursday 26th March.

How can archaeologists share power & challenge hierarchies, & not push pseudoarchaeology? Archaeologist/C4-C5 broadcaster/writer Raksha Dave, CBA president etc, is the 2026 Sussex Archaeological Society Long Man speaker. Join us on March 26 at Sussex University!
sussexpast.co.uk/event/long-m...

Hello, international fans of BBC YOU’RE DEAD TO ME!

You can now listen to ep1 of our latest series. It’s about Rome’s infamous Emperor Nero, and my guests are the amazing comedian & actor @pattonoswalt.bsky.social and brilliant Professor @wmarybeard.bsky.social

I was lucky enough to work on 2 HS2 excavations and was always the archaeologist digging next to the archaeologist who found fantastic things! 🤣

The 2026 Deep History Recap: Five Stories That Already Changed the Year The 2026 Deep History Recap: Five Stories That Already Changed the Year

2026 is already a massive year for human origins! 🦴 I’ve rounded up the 5 stories that have changed the landscape of deep history this month. From Neanderthal symbolism to new fossil insights, catch up here: open.substack.com/pub/deephist...

#Paleoanthropology #Science #DeepHistory

Incredible research programme of archaeological works and who knows, maybe we will get a railway at the end of it too!

Treasures found on HS2 route stored in secret warehouse Archaeological finds from the planned HS2 train line have been shown exclusively to the BBC.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It i’n’t in t’tin.

a statue of a man in a gold costume with horns and a ram 's head ALT: a statue of a man in a gold costume with horns and a ram 's head

There was a period as a child when Frank Langella as Skeletor was who I wanted to be when I grew up. Particularly when he was in the big gold number.

A photograph of the Heneb strategic plan to 2030 document in a wooden table with a woman in a green jumper in front of a wall holding a black spindle whorl

A group of people sitting listening to a speaker who is at a lectern on the right a wall of glass windows behind them all

A terracotta dragon on a building

A sliver dragon logo on a slate wall

Delighted to have been at the launch of the @henebtwa.bsky.social five year strategy in Cardiff today. Our work with Heneb and Nat Museum Wales got a good mention and I hope we continue to work in the land of the dragon for many years . 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 #archaeology #wales

New prepint on ancient human genomes from Ladakh in Kashmir revealin...well I can't really improve on the title in that regard:

Kennis & Kennis sculpture of Pontnewydd Neanderthal youngster. Modelled with brown skin, dark eyes, shoulder length dark hair. Figure is wrapped in a fur, holding a tool, and has a smile like they know something amusing about you and are trying not to laugh.

Photo of mirror with Neanderthal image on it, and reflection of a woman (me) visible.

Photo of upper jaw fragment with teeth, mounted inside a glass case. Behind it, blurred, is the furry body of the reconstruction.

Photo of butchered animal bone. Small slices visible on its surface.

🏺 Great visit yesterday to St Fagan's Amgueddfa Cymru /Museum of Wales.
Inventive themed galleries, including a close encounter with Pontnewydd #Neanderthals of 270,000 years ago.

I'm curious how different this map of proposed Neanderthal-sapiens admixture would look if we had spatially and temporally representative fossil samples. A lot of research has been done in places like Europe, so we have a lot of fossils there. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...