Hélène Rey

New paper. Recording the female experience of UK archaeology 1990-2010. Anne Teather and I document how an industry EDI agenda evolved in the 1990s and was dismantled, uncovering the ramifications of that for women archaeologists over the next decade.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

#openaccess✅

This was a great introduction to #archeoViz by Sébastien Plutniak & Élisa Caron-Laviolette! Thanks @dariaheu.bsky.social for organising it!

👉 A recording will be made available here: campus.dariah.eu

Looking forward to this!

The camp site on the left. A large rectangular structure on the right, potentially a palace of the Uyghur period.

Grave site probably connected to the palace structure.

Thanks to a fellowship from the American Center for Mongolian Studies, I'll start work tomorrow at the site of Tsagaan Sumiĭn Balgas (Khukh Ordung) in Arkhangai province. Under the excellent supervision of the Institute of Archaeology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences.

The camp for the fieldwork. Gers and sunset.

Still hard to believe: I've just arrived in central Mongolia where I'll participate in my first archaeological fieldwork since graduating from @uclarchaeology.bsky.social (2014)!

Very grateful to be able to join a project that both aligns with my research interests and expands my horizons!

CFP for Borders, Boundaries, Barriers: Real and Imagined in the Middle Ages (20-21 April 2026). Deadline 15 September 2025.

Looking forward to what’s next, starting with… 🇲🇳 Mongolia, where I have just arrived!!

I am very grateful to the professors at KCL’s new Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities, and in particular my kind and thoughtful supervisor Dr James Corke-Webster, as well as to the wonderful people at Accepted Society (www.acceptedsociety.com), who made the journey all the more enjoyable 💛

When I decided to return to #academia after a long break, and doing it alongside my full-time job, I didn’t envision how much it would change my life, reigniting my love for academia and bringing me back to #archaeology ⛏️🤗

Front cover of the dissertation, entitled “Entangled Identities: An Archaeological Exploration of East Syriac Christianity in the Turco-Mongol World of 13th-14th Central Eurasia”

🎓 Very happy to share that I have received a ✨distinction✨ on my MA dissertation on the dynamics of cultural adaptation of Syriac Christianity by Turco-Mongol communities in 13th/14th century Central Eurasia, marking the end of my Global Cultures MA journey @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social #mongolsky

Puisque c'est la saison des cadeaux, en guise de conte de noël mongol, laissez-moi vous raconter mon anecdote favorite sur la générosité proverbiale d'Ögödei. Elle est rapportée par l'historien persan Juvaynī, qui la tient cependant d'annales mongoles tenues à la cour au jour le jour. 1/17

Some reflections on my trip around some of Tolkien’s archaeological inspirations

Ph D candidate Charina Knutsson and the opponent Jonas Nordin discuss her thesis at the public defense.

The cover of the PhD thesis "Indigenous Archaeology in Sweden: Aligning Contract Archaeology with National and International Policies on Indigenous Heritage." The book is published open access here: https://lnu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1915872&dswid=2379

Charina Knutsson defends her important PhD thesis "Indigenous Archaeology in Sweden. Aligning Contract Archaeology with National and International Policies on Indigenous Archaeology" at LNU. In it she discusses the potential of integrating Sámi perspectives into the Swedish cultural heritage system.

That’s right: we tend to project current political arrangements into the deep human past in a teleological fashion and assume there were no viable alternatives to what we have .. 1/4

Alright, I wrote a rant about my feelings about the Global Middle Ages as institutional, historiographical, and moral paradigm. You can read it here.

journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/al...

Comme je l'écrivais ailleurs : dire que "sarrasin" signifie "païen" et non "musulman" "𝘁𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗮𝘂 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝘂 𝗠𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗻 𝗔𝗴𝗲" me paraît très discutable. Les voyageurs occidentaux dans l'Empire mongol qui emploient le mot le font sans équivoque pour désigner les musulmans. 1/10
#mongolsky #tengri

Card catalogs with the tops labelled in Arabic-script Uzbek/Chaghatay.

Card catalogs with the tops labelled in Arabic-script Uzbek/Chaghatay.

One of these days, someone will write a good article on the uses of "neo- #Chaghatay" in #Uzbekistan. The social dynamics of writing #Uzbek in Arabic script -- like on the catalogue at the Beruni Institute in #Toshkent -- are unlike any other language I know of that has officially switched scripts.

Constructing a De-Ethnicised Inner Mongolia | Made in China Journal ‘Northern frontier culture’ (北疆文化, umrat khiliin soyol) has recently become a trendy term in propaganda texts and academic publications in and about Inner Mongolia. Numerous activities, including cult...

Very illuminating essay on @madeinchinajournal.com about how Inner Mongolia is being de-ethnicized by the new CCP narrative of "Northern Frontier Culture".

Specifically, enjoyed the discussion on "Khil" and "Khyazgaar" as the Mongolian term of choice.
madeinchinajournal.com/2024/12/03/c...

Intronisation de Zav, dixième roi iranien de la dynastie des Pishdādides d'après le Shāhnāma de Firdowsī, représenté sous des traits mongols, assis à la turque et tenant une coupe (objet numineux dans les sociétés des steppes), assis sur un trône d'or. Il est entouré de neuf (chiffre numineux dans les sociétés des steppes) gens de cour et serviteurs, presque tous vêtus à la mongole, sauf un, en turban. Derrière eux, un palais. Les ailes de celui-ci, à droite et à gauche, comportent chacune deux petites fenêtres dont les volets s'ouvrent sur des visages féminins qui observent la scène. Miniature tirée du "Grand Shāhnāma mongol", produit à Tabriz c. 1330-1336. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.

📆🎁1/24
Comme l'an dernier, à partir d'aujourd'hui et jusqu'au 24, je posterai chaque jour une miniature persane représentant les Mongols. J'ai choisi pour commencer cette cérémonie d'intronisation parce que les petites fenêtres sur les côtés m'ont fait penser à un calendrier de l'avent...
#mongolsky

This. Three Ethiopian Christians attended the Council of Constance in, you know, modern-day Germany, in 1418 — likely quite by chance.

At least one of them had visited Jerusalem and Rome before that, and would go on to hang out in Geneva, modern-day Switzerland, after chilling with Pope Martin V.

The third curse comes from a Syriac Psalter, Sin. syr. 99, f. 1r. It reads: ‘This book is an endowment to Mt Sinai. No one has authority from God to take it away from the holy monastery. This was written by Arsenius the bishop.’

10. And what is clear is that once you dip your toe in, neither the ‘Syriac world’ nor the ‘Mongol world’ will let you go. And archaeology? Well, that’s the work of a lifetime. #mongolsky #syriac #archaeology 10/10

9. After many years away from academia, the impostor syndrome is strong, and there is so much I have still to learn. But isn’t that the exciting part of research? 9/10

8. So whenever I have time off from work, you will find me surrounded by archaeological reports, digital versions of manuscripts, lots of theoretical texts, code for a slowly growing PostgreSQL database, and, of course, QGIS to make sense of the geography. 8/10

7. In the last decades, the study of Syriac Christianity in Central Asia and China has grown beautifully, producing excellent and fascinating research. Yet one key ingredient is missing: theoretical archaeology. 7/10

6. A year ago, I took the plunge: I added Syriac to my language rotation, signed up on a Syriac Studies mailing list (such a lovely community!), and took my first Syriac course through Beth Mardutho. I followed the first class from the back of a jeep on my way to Ur. Felt fitting! 6/10

5. That research idea, far from my comfort zone, remained dormant for a while as I worked on other projects (more on that another time). 5/10

A map of the largest extent of the Church of the East during the Middle Ages. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Church_of_the_East_in_the_Middle_Ages.svg, based on Baum, Wilhelm, and Dietmar W. Winkler. 2003. The Church of the East: A Concise History. London ; New York: Routledge, pp. 98-99.

4. Through numerous travels to Iraq, I was acquainted with the modern realities of the descendants of the Church of the East and with Neo-Aramaic (Sureth). But I knew little about the Church's vast eastwards expansion from Late Antiquity through to the Mongol era, beyond the myths. 4/10

3. It all started in 2021 with a side comment during an excellent series of online lectures on the Silk Roads by my alma mater @uclarchaeology.bsky.social, which mentioned in passing 'Nestorianism' in Kazakhstan. I was intrigued. 3/10