Tom Booth

Join us for the biggest UK Palaeolithic event of the year.
Tickets on sale at Early Bird Rates. 🦣🏺
Submit your papers and posters!

He Built a Server to Protect Indigenous Health Data

1/3

"Joseph Yracheta was in charge of a repository that compiled and protected tribal health data. Then its funding was cut."

@standupforscience.bsky.social events happening today!

Locations: fight2win.standupforscience.net/Rallies-2026/

Sneakily Building Neolithic Rock Art on Archaeo SMP! (S2 Ep.8) YouTube video by ArchaeoPlays

Throw back to this amazing Minecraft video on Atlantic Rock Art by Heather Christie of @archaeoplays.bsky.social who will today deliver a talk at the University of York. I am so happy this video exists!! Always makes me feel like doing some Minecraft(ing) myself!

The Black Death’s counterintuitive effect: as human numbers fell, so did plant diversity New study finds that plant biodiversity collapsed in landscapes where arable production was abandoned during and after the Black Death era.

Very interesting! Thank you @beccyscottuk.bsky.social

theconversation.com/the-black-de...

I’m here to buy a Range Rover – no one mentioned a passenger: the Stephen Collins cartoon There seems to be somebody in the back seat …

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

A black & white line drawing/engraving of a pig headed trumpet raised above a spear carrying army.

For #FindsFriday this gorgeous depiction of the Deskford carnyx by Keith Henderson in Piggott’s Scotland Before History, 1958.
Found c.1816 Near Deskford, just south of the Moray coast, it dates to the later 1stC AD, deposited in a bog c.2/3rdC. Now in the National Museum of Scotland.
#CarnyxCrazy

Better late than never.

You asked for more mixed-up Goths, you got 'em!

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

If the first Lammoth is two years away, that means gene-edited embryos are about to be implanted into surrogates any time now.

I have always argued that the use of elephants in experiments like this is unethical.

My opinion has not changed.

Bury St Edmunds Iron Age coin hoard sells for more than £33,000 Finder Prof Tom Licence plans to use some of his share to fund archaeological work in eastern England.

"It was an honour to see expert collectors taking these coins into their care,"

Really?? REALLY? and there was me thinking you just enjoyed making a fast buck, with at least two of the most important coins now off to the USA...

#Archaeology #Detecting #Treasure 🏺

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

This archaeological research really captures the enchantment of trying to understand human life across the barriers of time and evidence. A warm July day, grief and sadness, colour, scent and precious things.

Earliest Animal Cranial Surgery: from Cow to Man in the Neolithic The earliest cranial surgery (trepanation) has been attested since the Mesolithic period. The meaning of such a practice remains elusive but it is evident that, even in prehistoric times, humans from this period and from the Neolithic period had ...

Trepanning on a Neolithic French cow.

My writing really does take me to some weird places.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Beaker holding a mug with his face on it in front of a trilithon at Stonehenge

#BeakerPeople

The Slaughter Stone Legend: Iron Oxides, Algae, and the “Blood” Pools of Stonehenge For generations, the Slaughter Stone (Stone 95) at Stonehenge has captivated imaginations with its pools of vivid red rainwater collecting ...

How algae gave rise to the legend of the Slaughter Stone - www.sarsen.org/2026/03/the-...

Selective culinary uses of plant foods by Northern and Eastern European hunter-gatherer-fishers Carbonised food deposits preserved in pottery vessels, often termed ‘foodcrusts,’ are frequently encountered on hunter-gatherer-fisher (HGF) pottery throughout Northern and Eastern Europe. While lipid...

🏺

The developed cuisine of ancient hunter-gatherers in northern and Eastern Europe.

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Love a thread full of north arrows

I don’t know - I’d have to have a deeper dive to clarify. As this is based on the X chromosome they could just be reflecting different processes, or could be they are actually incompatible!

Why This Ancient Cave Is So Controversial YouTube video by New Scientist

🧪🏺 Recent 30 min New Sci doc on #RisingStar & #HomoNaledi, gives c. 5 mins to expert critique.
Re burial claims: "Berger's team have managed to convince many experts" 🤔
Trusted #scicomm on disputed scientific questions is crucial; not sure this gets balance right...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQj6...

Yes exactly and it would help make clear the separation between what is observed in the genetic data versus the interpretation in terms of a social relationship.

Stone Age woman was buried like a man, revealing flexible gender roles 7,000 years ago in Hungary A study of 125 skeletons from two Neolithic cemeteries in Hungary has revealed that men and women had clear gender roles — but sometimes those roles were fluid.

Gender roles in Neolithic Hungary may have been more flexible than researchers previously expected. 🏺🧪

Detecting and Quantifying Networks of Biological Kinship via Exponential Family Random Graph Models Abstract. Genetic relatedness between ancient humans can help to identify close and distant connections between groups and populations, uncovering signatur

Ah sorry, downside of me hastily trying to share from linked in.

academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

Applying this method to networks within these huge genealogies in early medieval Avar cemeteries they find that burial position is associated with biological relatedness suggesting it was an expression of one form of kinship.

With the slight reservation that I’d favour discussing genetic ‘relatedness’ rather than ‘kinship’.

🏺

Patterns of DNA IBD-segment sharing representing networks of biological reproduction have a lot of potential for exploring who was having children with whom in the past and how that does or does not relate to archaeological variables. This is a cool method for integrating all of these things.

Could have nicked some of the ones that were already here! Yes I see the logistical challenges, but it had to have happened at least once. If communities were moving (which it looks like it was) there could have been several trips.

Archaeologists Found a Skeleton Wearing a Silver Amulet. It Rewrote the History of Christianity. Incredible discoveries keep happening in the most unlikely places.

Archaeologists accidentally found a skeleton in Germany with a silver amulet containing a fragile folded inscription. Using CT scans, they read text invoking Christ, showing Christianity reached that region earlier than thought — rewriting part of early Christian history

Ah sorry - I was looking for an excuse to do a deep dive on this as well so this would have been good. Have to do a redux!

I found this half finished one. I have no memory of the context.

Good lord, I think we’ve found out who dug the big pit next to the trilithon - he was after the menhir!