Tom Booth

Last chance to see? The ‘Crisis of Preservation’ and pathways to a sustainable future for Europe’s peatland archaeology | Antiquity | Cambridge Core Last chance to see? The ‘Crisis of Preservation’ and pathways to a sustainable future for Europe’s peatland archaeology

'Despite repeated calls for action from various sources, peatland archaeological sites continue to deteriorate; the passive strategy of preservation in situ is failing'.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
#Holocene #peat #archaeology

Some very fine voices here!

Septopus?

…question of indigeneity as it’s commonly discussed which is complex and isn’t necessarily defined by genetics.

This was the view around 20 years ago but a startling amount has changed since then - there have been at least 5 major shifts in ancestry of people in Britain since the end of the Ice Age as a result of migration. Although that’s not to say I think this is necessarily all that relevant to the…

We don’t talk enough about how the English are a people of the Baltic - the Angeln region from which they originated borders the Baltic Sea

Blood incantation The most (in)famous example of heavy metal and prehistory harmonising is surely the undersized Stone’enge that is slowly lowered into the midst of guitars and spandex in the 1984 mock-rock-do…

First new #UrbanPrehistory blog post for a while. Here, I reflect on two fake 'megaliths' I recently saw at a prog thrash metal gig in Glasgow, Blood Incantation.
'Because allusions to prehistory, however wrong or baffling, seem to be everywhere'
theurbanprehistorian.wordpress.com/2025/12/08/b...

❗ Our RemAaRCs: on Mutualism - The Science of Interrelatedness has a new date and time ❗

3-5pm London time / 4-6pm CET / 10-12am ET

@aarc-community.bsky.social #aDNA

Wow! Huge congratulations to @mdpetraglia.bsky.social and everyone else at ARCHE on this massive news, a major Australian Research Council grant to fund the Centre of Excellence for Transforming Human Origins Research. www.arc.gov.au/news-publica...

I’m really excited to be hosting @evoroseman.bsky.social for a 1 hour online workshop for the Biomolecular Humanities group on December 10th (8am to 9am PST : 11am to 12pm EST : 5pm to 6pm CET) on the intersection of evolutionary theory, demography and race/ancestry!

I see it!

PhD funding | PhD and Research Degrees | University of Exeter

Thinking of studying for a PhD? I'd be happy to hear from anyone considering research into British or Irish prehistory, monuments, radiocarbon dating, heritage. Part-time, distance options. There are funding schemes here at @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social - but be quick, deadlines are in Jan/Feb!

A ferrous blocky sculpture of a despondent-looking human form in front of a Christmas tree elaborately decorated with pink-themed decorations. It stands in a large atrium of a building.

The new Gormley sculpture in the entrance of The Crick. Can’t decide if the addition of a Father Christmas hat would make this scene feel more or less tragic….

Yes as Cate says the most I’ve seen in-text is 3, although typically it’s just 1. Without guidance I’d go with whatever’s convenient as long it’s consistent - some styles just use the first author, others do the first 10 and others do what Cate says - first and last then numbered in between.

…there are plenty of systems which use et al. over a certain number of authors.

One of the things I missed out on discussions of things in archaeogenetics papers which annoy archaeologists! It might depend on what format the platform you are writing for prefer. There are systems that do, for our sins, insist on having all the authors written out. But it it’s your choice…

MALDI Deamidation Score (MDS): A fast and flexible method for assessing deamidation in ZooMS data and its application to the Denisova Cave bone assemblage Estimating deamidation from ZooMS spectra has frequently been achieved using the q2e method due to its high-throughput capacity and ease of use. Despi…

🧬 MALDI Deamidation Score (MDS) — a fast, scalable method for estimating collagen deamidation directly from ZooMS data. Peptide- and sample-level deamidation from team from @cam-archaeology.bsky.social and @unituebingen.bsky.social

#ZooMS #Paleoproteomics #DenisovaCave

Contra, girls who like boys who like boys to be girls who do boys like they’re girls who do girls like they’re boys.

YouTube video by Wiltshire Museum Rose Ferraby and her 'Downland: art and the archaeological imagination in Wiltshire' exhibition

Downland: Art and the Archaeological imagination in Wiltshire. Rose Ferraby talks about her exhibition at the Museum and the inspiration that she found in our collections, the Wiltshire landscapes and fellow artists. Open Tues - Sat 10-4. youtube.com/shorts/Ib2rH...

The access page to Vianello et al. "Venice’s Hidden Time Capsule: Lazzaretto Vecchio as a 300-Year Molecular Archive of Epidemic Pathogens," Posted Date: 3 December 2025 doi: 10.20944/preprints202512.0373.v1 .

More plague news today. This piece has just been issued in pre-print, meaning it has not yet undergone peer review. For those who might want to watch the process by which scientific work develops in peer review, this might be worth tracking: doi.org/10.20944/pre... #histmed #aDNA #YersiniaPestis

I can already feel the FOMO building! Feel free to- always happy to help if I can!

Ahhhh I’m sorry, I’m sure there will be plenty of people willing to jump into the breach!

If only! I’d have loved to have been there this year, but I can’t make it, sadly…

Everyone on Euston Road
Is taking photos
Of the moon

Homo sapiens-specific evolution unveiled by ancient southern African genomes - Nature The genomes of 28 ancient southern African individuals dated to between 10,200 and 150 years before present offer insights into the evolution of Homo sapiens.

Our new ancient DNA paper has just been published!
We present 28 new genomes from southern Africa - several of them high-coverage whole genomes.
Exciting to be moving towards population-level representation of ancient southern African genetic diversity!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An illustration by Kathryn Killackey of late formative ceramics from Highland Bolivia

A recently published illustration by @kjkillackey.bsky.social . screw AI, hire an artist.

It's that time of year again!

A new feature in the ‘Spotify Unwrapped’ end of year package telling you your ‘listening age’. A big orange ‘54’ sits on a patterned black and white background.

Just when you thought Spotify had run out of creative ways to make you feel irrelevant in their latest end-of-year summary.

We’ve all been there.

Palate-cleanser: just one stunningly beautiful AND accurate human-made archaeological image (by the extraordinary @tombjorklundart.bsky.social) 🏺

"Lola", a girl whose DNA was extracted from c. 6000 yr old chewed birch tar
(& she's in #Matriarcha!)

museumlollandfalster.dk/en/stiftsmus...