Dr Huw Groucutt

And no, Neanderthals were not some kind of yeti-like creature, hanging out in the snow. They were mostly a Mediterranean species, with pulses northwards during occasional warm periods.

No, you don't prounced the 'th' in Neanderthal (it sounds like Neander-tal). In case you'd forgotten.

The return of the majjistral (northwesterly) wind has pushed away the very hot weather, and the sea has woken up. Beautiful walk this morning in the Blata tal-Melh area of western Malta.

Frontiers | The behavioural ecology of hominin locomotion: what can we learn from landscapes of fear and primate terrestriality? A defining feature of the hominin clade is bipedality, often parcelled together with terrestriality. However, there is increasing evidence of locomotor diver...

Hammond et al 2025. 'The behavioural ecology of hominin locomotion' 👌 www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

Focaccia recipe (it's incredible) An incredible authentic Italian Focaccia recipe - crispy on the outside, yet moist and fluffy inside with the great signature chew!

www.recipetineats.com/focaccia-rec...

Second go at making focaccia....good stuff!

I have to admit, this is not really what I was wondering about as I considered my options for what toppings I am going to put on my pizza....but i'm glad i clicked on this link, very interesting stuff!

#FieldworkFriday. Some nice photos of a recent visit to our Bidnija (Malta) excavation by senior colleagues including those from Heritage Malta, the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, and the University of Malta.

Made this from shells i've collected on the beach.

Well that looks like a very clear example of why care is needed with radiocarbon dating old (>40 thousand years ago ish). Luminescence dating from the same layers from this site in Iran suggests much older ages than radiocarbon (doi.org/10.1016/j.qu...).

The rock art panel, engraved with a depiction of a boat supporting a human figure on a palanquin-like structure (credit: Dorian Vanhulle, AKAP).

#RockArt hints at the origin of Egyptian kings 🏺

Analysis of a rock engraving near Aswan, Egypt, indicates it may depict an elite individual from the First Dynasty, shedding light on the formation of the #AncientEgyptian state.

A powerful #AntiquityThread 1/16 🧵

WATCH | Post-Roman burial ground unearthed at Bidnija Heritage Malta noted that the burial site is the latest in a number of findings that shed light on the area’s social and agricultural history

Coverage of our recent excavation at Bidnija www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/nationa...

Yes, the evidence does seem to strongly point to them not doing so. But it would be amazing if they had!

I mean it depends what we mean by seafaring. Homo erectus was getting to southeast Asian early, but could be what Prof. Cyprian Broodbank has called 'culturally aided floating'. Long distance crossings e.g. to Sahul etc, only our species yes it seems.

My photo shows an ancient Egyptian statuette of a standing blue hippopotamus on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It is made of Egyptian faience, a ceramic material coated with a bright blue glossy glaze. The hippo is viewed from the side profile with head on the right. It is decorated in black pigment with outlines of lotus plants which grow in the hippos Nile habitat. A little bird is perched on the stem of one lotus flower. Dimensions: Height 11.5 cm, length 21.5 cm. Excavated by Auguste Mariette in 1860 at the necropolis of Dra’ Abu el-Naga’, western Thebes. Dated Middle Kingdom, 11th Dynasty, c. 2134-1991 BC. Egyptian faience is a ceramic material made of quartz. Blue hippos are decorated with black pigment outlining depictions of Nile river plants, in particular lotus flowers. In ancient Egypt lotus flowers had religious symbolism; the flowers close at night and reopen with the rising of the sun in the morning, which was associated with regeneration and rebirth. Blue faience hippos have been found in Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate period tombs. It’s thought they were placed there to help the rebirth of the deceased. Associated with the life-giving Nile, regeneration, and Tawaret, the ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility and childbirth. Hippos were also seen as dangerous to humans so the legs of faience hippos have often been broken off the statuettes found in tombs, perhaps to make sure the hippo could not harm the deceased in the afterlife.

Happy weekend! 🦛💙

Here’s a wonderful c. 4,000 year-old ancient Egyptian glossy blue hippo decorated with a little bird perched on the stem of a lotus flower.

Egyptian Museum Cairo 📷 by me

#Archaeology

Sapiens got there and carried some Denisovan DNA with them.

What is the evidence for Denisovan seafaring, i'm not aware of any?

Examples of translucent fine-grained chert matrix, with abundant angular limestone clasts. From between Miġra l-Ferħa and Ras id-Dawwara (H. Groucutt).

The Maltese Islands in the central Mediterranean are renowned for their prehistoric archaeological record

Maltese chert:
An archaeological perspective on raw material and lithic technology in the central Mediterranean 🏺🧪
Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social
archsoc.org.mt/full-text-ma...

For our publication on this see: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

#FieldworkFriday. Excavating a Pelorovis skeleton in the Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia, in 2016. Associated with the remains of an ancient lake, dating to approx. 100 thousand years ago.

Maltese chert: An archaeological perspective on raw material and lithic technology in the central Mediterranean - The Archaeological Society Malta Article By: Isabelle Vella Gregory

On what is known, see my paper: archsoc.org.mt/full-text-ma...

Preparing samples of Maltese chert for analysis. This material was used to make stone tools in the Neolithic, but we know very little about it.

Finished our excavations. Great group of colleagues and students. Many more years work to be done at this this site (Bidnija, Malta).

A photo of me hugging a large, natural, spherical rock on a rocky pedestal out in the middle of nowhere of a desert landscape in Arizona.

Happy #InternationalRockDay!
Feel free to share one of your favorite rocks below.

#FieldworkFriday. At the end of each week we do a tour of the different trenches in the site we are excavating, and the students explain what they have been doing and what they have found that week.

Strong winds meant we couldn't dig much today (gazebos, needed for shade, were becoming hang gliders!). But we used the opportunity to take our first year archaeology students to San Pawl Milqi Roman villa (preserved under early modern church) and the Salina catacombs.

Our #study finds that #male #dominance isn't the norm among #primates, and starts to unravel what shapes flexibility in intersexual power

paper (OA) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2500405122

press release https://www.mpg.de/24986976/0630-evan-beyond-the-alpha-male-150495-x?c=2249

Nice lunchtime reading spot among old olive trees during fieldwork.

Early morning at Skorba. Two Late Neolithic 'temples' were built over the top of an earlier Neolithic settlement.

Identifying late Pleistocene and Holocene refugia for baboons - Communications Biology Hindcasted species distribution modelling of baboons illuminates potential refugia across Africa and Arabia, with predicted maxima and minima of habitable ranges pulsed by orbital precession and obliq...

www.nature.com/articles/s42...