Rocco Rotunno

PanAF Sessions The Local Organizing Committee is excited that almost 70 sessions and workshops will occur at PanAF Moz 2026. Pan-African Association members and non-members are welcome to submit paper abstracts t…

📢CALL FOR PAPERS🚨
@martinadm.bsky.social @mariannafusco.bsky.social @Olivier Scancarello and I are running a session (#24) @Panaf26 titled: Archaeology of liminality and transition: eco-cultural strategies in African prehistoric ecotones. More @ panaf2026moz.com/panaf-sessio...

Differential Taphonomic Behavior of Flint Types: Experimental Insights and Implications for the Middle Stone Age Assemblages of Wadi Lazalim in the Northern Sahara (Kebili, Tunisia) - Journal of Archa... Several syn and post-depositional processes are responsible for different degrees of site and assemblage formation and disturbance. Understanding the processes that lead to archaeological site formati...

Hot off the press! Led by Olivier Scancarello, in collaboration with amazing colleagues and institutions in Tunisia, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Shelters and bones: Site-specific archaeofaunal taphonomy for identifying formation processes in Saharan Holocene rock shelters - Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences This study investigates natural syn- and post-depositional processes affecting terrestrial mammal bones from the Takarkori rock shelter in the hyper-arid Tadrart Acacus massif, south-western Libya. Th...

Happy to share with you the new paper on taphonomy in arid environments in collaboration with my friend and colleague @roccoro.bsky.social. Check it out!

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

External Long Bone Morphology as a Tool for Sex Identification in Great Apes: The Case of the Humerus and Femur Objectives Sexual dimorphism in primates reflects evolutionary, ecological, and social pressures and varies widely across species, complicating its analysis. This study builds on previous research t.....

🚨 New paper out!

This work combines 3D geometric morphometrics, multivariate statistics, and machine learning to assess sexual dimorphism in great ape long bones — aiming to classify unsexed skeletal remains and reveal patterns relevant to human evolution.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Algeria, Tassili n'Ajjer National Park, Sahara desert, broken neolithic pottery

📣 PUBLISHED OPEN ACCESS 📣

Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dates suggest multiple origins of ceramic technology in Early Holocene Africa in Nature Communications by Rocco Rotunno & Enrico Crema

👉 www.arch.cam.ac.uk/news/statist...

📸 Westend61

Happy and honoured to share this paper with @ercrema.bsky.social about pottery in Early Holocene Africa! Check out more in the thread!

#SAFA 25 just ended... amazing week meeting friends and colleagues...thanks to all!

Partigiani of the resistance movement. Four people (three men and a woman) stand in the front of a crowd of fighters. Image from the book "Noi Partigiani, memoriale della resistenza Italiana".

Today, the 25th of April, in Italy 🇮🇹 we celebrate the #Liberation from NaziFascism. We celebrate to remember the people of the resistance, we celebrate to remember that we kicked fascists' asses once and we can do it again.

The precision land knowledge of the past enables tailor-made environment therapy and empathy for nature - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - The precision land knowledge of the past enables tailor-made environment therapy and empathy for nature

🚨 new paper alert: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In @nature.com we report the presence of the Mesolithic on Malta - upending everything we knew about the seafaring capabilities of late European hunter-gatherers and pushing back Maltese prehistory by 1000 years. Watch the clip, link to open access paper is below. 1/5
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

www.uniroma1.it/it/notizia/d...

Ancient DNA from the Green Sahara reveals ancestral North African lineage - Nature Pastoralism spread through cultural diffusion into the Green Sahara, where an isolated, distinct North African ancestry persisted.

I'm beyond excited to share our new paper in Nature! We sequenced the first ancient human autosomal genomes from the Central Sahara, two ~7,000-year-old individuals from Takarkori in Libya, revealing a long-isolated North African lineage: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Here's a short thread: (1/n)

All this ⬇️
"It sounds ridiculous to say such things. It sounds unbelievable even to me. But it is where we are and the sooner we accept it, the sooner we can organise to change it." 🧪

Congrats to all the team! New seeds (!) for plenty of discussions!

Exploring the use of Wild Cereals at Takarkori (Central Sahara, Southwestern Libya) Through Stable Carbon and Nitrogen Isotope Analysis of Prehistoric Desiccated Seeds Stable isotope analyses of archaeological plant material have increased in the last few decades with questions arising about climate, environment, and subsistence strategies. While the available st...

I'm very happy to share with you our latest work on stable isotope analysis on dessicated wild cereals from Takarkori rock shelter 🌱🌾
What a challenge!
Do not hesitate to contact us for a free copy ✨

#prehistory
#archaeology

📣Don't miss our CAAG's last talk this term... Saharan prehistory and pastoralism with @martinadm.bsky.social . Tuesday 18th, 1pm, McDonald Inst. @cam-archaeology.bsky.social

Join us tomorrow for Prof. Amanuel Beyin's talk at CAAG Seminar Series...@McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research @cam-archaeology.bsky.social

Join us tomorrow for the 2nd talk of Cambridge African Archaeology Group Seminar series...with @edwindejager.bsky.social at @cam-archaeology.bsky.social

Hot off the press! 📢
Honoured to have contributed to this special issue with @ameliebeaudet.bsky.social and team celebrating the iconic #Taung child for this centenary event. Stay tuned for more! #Palaeoanthropology #FossilFriday

📢Less than two weeks to the SAfA deadline!
Submit your abstract to our session on Digital Pathways (#56) and join us in Faro for an open discussion on the use of digital technologies to advance our understanding of the past.
@edwindejager.bsky.social

safa2025.icarehb.com/poster-and-o...

Thanks 😊

All set for the new term!here the line-up for the next African Archaeology Seminar Series... save the dates🗓👈join us the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at UniCambridge

Deadline is approaching!but you still have time!👈⏳️

📢🚨call for papers open @SAfAarchaeology 2025 @ICArEHB ....if you're interested in early POTTERY adoption and diffusion throughout time and space in AFRICA then share your research 👥

Wow! Well done to all of you!

Call for papers open...join us for our session at the next SAFA 2025. Hope to see you there