Archaeology @ Uni of York

Handheld microscopes are used to study the textile impressions

An image of gold thread found from the infant burial under high magnification

Updates from Dr Sarah Hitchens and Prof Maureen Carroll on Seeing the Dead.

Sarah shares how she studies ancient textiles in the Roman York gypsum burials through impressions and mineralised remains and Maureen discusses the infants and children found in the burials.

seeingthedead.ac.uk/blog/

Digital Lunches at the University of York

We are happy to welcome Maki Wardle, @uoyarchaeology.bsky.social PhD student to talk about their placement at the European Space Agency (re-scheduled from last autumn):

Moonlighting at ESA: A Postcard from a Digital Archaeologist in Space 🏺

To sign up for the zoom link:

forms.gle/G8htZwmrhY6V...

A short video for #IWD2026 with a few of our inspiring female academics!

Don't miss this new article in the Journal of Archaeological Science!
Our Lecturer in Sustainability, @adamsgreen.bsky.social and @simonmair.bsky.social have applied Material Flow Analysis to the excavation archive at Wharram Percy!

From Museum Studies to Pit-Firing: My Journey into Experimental Archaeology at York - Student Voices Explore the York Experimental Archaeology (YEAR) Centre. Learn how students use ancient techniques to fire pottery and connect with the past.

Museum Studies and Experimental Archaeology - a match made in York!

Lovely little blogpost by one of our MA students, Els, who is on the Museum Studies MA, but really enjoyed her Experimental Archaeology option module last semester

blogs.york.ac.uk/student-voic...

Both @johnschofyork.bsky.social and @haraldfred.bsky.social were invited to write responses to Marte Spangen's keynote in the latest issue of Current Swedish Archaeology: "Participatory Archaeology for Heritage Preparedness"

You can read the full #OA issue here:
publicera.kb.se/csa/issue/vi...

Congratulations Alice - so great to see this article published!

York Staff, Students, and Alumni present at CAA-UK Big presence at conference demonstrates strength of digital research at York

Thanks to @clmorgan.bsky.social for this news story on all our fantastic digital archaeologists at @caa-uk.bsky.social in December!

www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/...

Kevin Deng, speaking to the camera on the deck of the ship.

Immensely proud of @uoyarchaeology.bsky.social Digital Archaeology MSc Kevin Deng who has been featured on ITV for his work on Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory. This is part of his job as a digital archaeology specialist with the National Museum of the Royal Navy.

www.itv.com/watch/news/d...

Will smiling and holding a copy of his dissertation, which has a photo of a fractured bone on it.

Congratulations William Wells and supervisor Paola Ponce!

'An Exploration of Two Cases of Unhealed Proximal Ulna Fractures in Skeletons Excavated from an Early Medieval Cemetery in Lincoln, UK' has been awarded the 2026 BABAO Don Brothwell Award for the best UG dissertation in Bioarchaeology!

Chromatograms showing fatty acids most likely derived from a mixture of terrestrial animal fats and aquatic oils, and from the heating of aquatic oils (figure by authors).

A reconstructed York Ware Jar (Image taken by York Archaeology, cc-by-nc 4.0)

Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Saxon Vessel Forms (Drawn by Gareth Perry

This publication is the largest Organic Residue Analysis study of early-medieval pottery we know of, and is an interdisciplinary piece that brings together involving ceramic analysis and textual research too, showcasing the breadth of research we do in the department.

A Different Kettle of Fish: Vikings changed their cooking habits when they settled in England Departmental team demonstrates that pottery from Viking-Age England was very rarely used to cook fish

Vikings! Bioarchaeology! Artefacts!

New publication from Steve Ashby, Gareth Perry, Alexandre Lucquin, Oliver Craig and Anita Radini at @ucdarchaeology.bsky.social shows culinary differences between Viking-Age England and Denmark.

www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/...

Digital Lunches at the University of York

Our Digital Lunch this week is Dr Katherine Fennelly, "Storytelling, Collecting Cultures and Transmedia Archaeologies in (K-Pop) Fandom"

We're in the DAH lab at the King's Manor @uoyarchaeology.bsky.social at 1pm, or online. Sign up:

forms.gle/SNNGkXpmGtB8...

20 February Katherine Fennelly Storytelling, Collecting Cultures and Transmedia Archaeologies in (K-Pop) Fandom 27 February Jeff Sanders Carved in Stone 6 March Tom Schofield AI Heritage Imaginaries: Critical Fabulation against Machinic Hallucination 13 March Maki Wardle Moonlighting at ESA: A Postcard from a Digital Archaeologist in Space 20 March Zack Batist Investigating archaeological information commons as coordinated, collective and community-driven action 27 March Émilie Pagé-Perron Access and "Digital Repatriation" of Cuneiform Heritage 17 April Peter Cobb Data for Data's Sake in Archaeology 24 April Loes Opgenhaffen The automated archaeologist. An app to record archaeological visualization practice

Yay! It's a new series of Digital Lunch, hosted by the DAH Lab at the @uoyarchaeology.bsky.social. Check out the fantastic series of speakers we have below. To sign up for the zoom link, fill out this form:

forms.gle/GkbwzVZwBH3G...

You have until the 8th of April to apply for up to £20,000 to access cutting-edge equipment, collections and expertise in heritage science, including mobile units!

Open to individual researchers, academic institutions and museums www.riches.ukri.org/funding/rich...

As part of the Medieval Green Revolution project, a postdoctoral position is available at the University of Reading on sedaDNA. jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Drawings of Anglo-Scandinavian pottery forms: (a) Stamford Ware pitcher with red paint. (b) Ipswich-Thetford Ware jar with flat base and shoulder grooves. (c) Torksey Ware jar with simply everted rim and roulette decoration, (d) Stamford Ware jar with flat base. (e) Thetford Ware jar with roulette decoration, lid seated rim and sagging base

New article from Dr Gareth Perry!
It looks at the introduction of the potters' wheel to late ninth-century England - why was its use restricted to areas settled by Scandinavians, a group traditionally viewed by English archaeologists as aceramic?

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

New article in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics by @adamsgreen.bsky.social and colleagues! They analyse house sizes as a proxy for economic productivity and inequality over time worldwide.

Front and back cover of the book showing a castle in a landscape context

Table of contents showing full chapter titles and author names

New Open Access book co-edited by Prof Michelle Alexander, this multidisciplinary study dives into the frontier landscapes of medieval Spain and Southern France 🇪🇸🇫🇷. Features isotopic analyses from Michelle & Maite García-Collado via York’s BioArCh labs! 🧪 www.jstor.org/stable/jj.36...

Students walking through the fields at Skipsea toward the dig-site

Don't miss our students, @jimleary.bsky.social and the beautiful shots of Skipsea on Digging for Britain!
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

There was also an article about the dig in The Times over New Year www.thetimes.com/uk/history/a...

Thank you @antiquity.ac.uk for sharing our research. Keep tuned, this project, led by our resident Danish DFF postdoc Patrick Nørskov Pedersen, has more to come!
@nessofbrodgar.bsky.social
@uoyarchaeology.bsky.social

Fingerprint impressions in gypsum from a Roman Burial in the York Museum Trust collection

Update from Prof Maureen Carroll's Seeing the Dead project. This time on fingerprints found in the gypsum placed over bodies in their coffins in Roman York, now in the @yorkmuseumstrust.bsky.social collection!

seeingthedead.ac.uk/blog/fingerp...

Two photos showing two women in each smiling at the camera, one of them is the same person. In one photo they are in front of a black curtain, in the sitting in a restaurant.

Photo showing two of the women on stage, one is talking with a microphone. Photo courtesy of Speaking Archaeologically Instagram account. Caption says "Nothing more inspiringfor an organisation run majorly by women archaeologists in India to see TAG Award being awarded to @trowelblazers !".

Photo showing woman with dark hair and glasses holding a ceramic vessel with strap-like handles, and smiling. The vase is white, pink, red and dark red in colour.

Photo showing a lecture in progress with woman speaking on stage. The slide shows text, titled: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of an accidental archive" with boxes showing further information in a "good vs bad" format.

We've been up in York for @tag2025york.bsky.social conference where 3 of us met, Brenna gave a talk on the challenge of creating an accidental archive, AND... we only went & won the Outstanding Achievement Award for Archaeological Theory In Action 🏆!
Huge gratitude to the entire community ❤️ 🏺

Alumnus @theneanderoll.bsky.social presenting to a full room in the Invisible Threads session at #TAG2025: Love Letters from the Oldowan🧡🧡

Increasing human ecological impact over the Holocene (11,700 - 150 years ago) led to biodiversity gains in Europe.

Why? From ~8,500 years ago, the spread of farming created heterogeneous, habitat-rich landscapes that enhanced biodiversity.

Read our new paper: dx.doi.org/10.1111/geb....

🌏 🧪

Fantastic work from Madeline Meltesen, @uoyarchaeology.bsky.social Digital Archaeology MSc, working in coordination with the Avebury Papers project. Madeline digitised and rectified all of the old Avebury plans, made an interactive resource & examined archaeological knowledge production over time.

All @uoyarchaeology.bsky.social Digital MSc students. They’re amazing!

Do you or any of your colleagues (especially those who teach STEM) have an interest in recreating medieval technology?

Inspired by my all-too-brief interactions with the late Dr. Tom Mcleish and @uoyarchaeology.bsky.social I'm looking for friends or collaborators to try a thing!

Tabea Koch, a former @uoyarchaeology.bsky.social PhD student, now a postdoc at the British Museum, gave a @cama-york.bsky.social talk entitled "Divine creatures: New molecular research on Egyptian animal mummies at the British Museum". With a title like that, it was no wonder we had a full house!

Kristy-Lee has dark brown hair, is wearing a white shirt and smiling at the camera

An AI generated image created with the prompt "challenging assumptions on the reuse of digital archaeological data", showing grassy and sandy hills with a selection of artefacts and digital technology

Kristy-Lee Seaton passed her viva with minor corrections last week. Congratulations Kristy-Lee and supervisors James Taylor, @hollywright.archaeo.social.ap.brid.gy and @juliandrichards.bsky.social 💐 🎓

KL's thesis focused on the re-use of archived digital data from @ads-update.bsky.social