nmbetancur

A detailed close-up photograph of a limestone relief plaque featuring an owl face. The owl has large, circular eyes with intricate dotted borders, a prominent curved beak, and decorative patterns around the eyes and neck, set against a plain gray background.

It has been quite a week! We all need a timeline cleanse.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

An Egyptian relief plaque with a face of an #owl 🦉.

The owl hieroglyph represents the sound m.

Late Period–Ptolemaic Period. From Egypt, 400–30 BC.

📷 Metropolitan Museum

Tynesiders, 1950, photo by Bert Hardy (1913-95).

Small flock of sheep cowering behind a standing stone in a stone circle in windy wet weather.

Everyone loves a standing stone! Sheep communing with the ancestors at the Stones of Stenness on Orkney a couple of years back. #StandingStoneSunday

Villa Farnesina Cubiculum B fresco depicting the Nymphs of Mount Nysa caring for the infant Dionysus.
The baby is shown being nursed or tended to by female figures in a lush setting. It is painted in a "Neo-Attic" or "lekythos" style, which mimics the look of 5th-c. BCE Greek pottery.
#FrescoFriday

Morning all.

Photographer Martin Parr ‘Spending Time.’
Salford, Greater Manchester 1986.

Smooth, Neolithic stone axes, knapped flint tools and two awls made from bone.

Archaeologists have uncovered one of the first instances of interaction between #Neolithic farmers and #Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in central Europe, indicating a level of technology transfer not observed before.

🏺A communicative #AntiquityThread 1/10 🧵

Symbols of the XX legion Valeria Victrix.

This special roof tile, also on display at the Grosvenor museum in Chester, bears the marks of the 20th Legion and their symbol, a wild boar.

A gleaming greyish-green polished stone axehead, lying on a pink baise background on display in the National Museum of Ireland.

Jadeitite Axehead • Donegal

This beautiful axe tells a story of trade, travel, and value in Neolithic Ireland.

Analysis revealed that it came from the Italian Alps, over 1500km away from where it was found in Donegal.

On display in @nmireland.bsky.social

#Ireland #SpéirGhorm #Archaeology 🏺

🌳The Crowhurst Yew, thought to be 4,000 years old, predates Christianity itself. A living portal through time. 🕰️It’s one of the locations in my Ultimate Guide to Time Travel: 👉 www.digest.andymarsh...

Black and white aerial photo looking down on a ploughed white field set within the ramparts of a roughly rectangular Roman fort with trees in the background

The heavily ploughed interior of Hod Hill #Roman fort, early September 1949

Built in the NW corner of Lydsbury Rings Iron Age hillfort #Dorset

Roman roads and buildings showing up clearly as crop marks

© Historic England see:

britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW...

#RomanFortThursday

A fragment of terracotta tile with the footprint of a dog towards the lower edge and another to the right.

A fragment of Roman terracotta tile with the imprints of a dog's paw that was discovered at Rochester in Kent. #FindsFriday

A blue glass beaker lying on its side on a reflective surface, its slightly flared rim and curved body showing numerous fine cracks and bubbles in the translucent glass against a dark gradient background.

A beautiful early medieval cobalt blue glass beaker. dating late 7th century AD. Found in a burial in Lauchheim.

This type of vessel has no foot and will not stand upright, it had to be emptied before it could be put down.

📷 @almbawue.bsky.social

Three small copper alloy figures of dogs. Larger one is 3D, with tail curling over its rear, head raised and right paw extended as if to shake 'hands'. Two smaller ones are flatter, to serve as brooches. Both have long ears, pointed noses and are in running position. Top one has gold coloured spots enamelled on body and a greenish enamel eye. Bottom one has some surviving blue enamel that coloured the body, and a blue eye.

#FindsFriday 🏺
#Roman dogs along Hadrian's wall: copper alloy figure of pup lifting a friendly paw, + 2 enamelled copper alloy brooches of hunting dogs.
In galleries @tulliecarlisle.bsky.social considering life along farthest frontier of empire.
British dogs were highly rated, and very good boys.

Walking into a field with erected stones – whether menhir, circle or portal tomb – is to cross into a territory of wonder. Archaeologist, ley-hunter, stone botherer or pagan pilgrim, we all feel a sense of marvel rippling across our psychic skin. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

Painted tile with shields at the corners. Ring with “Mediocria Firma”. Wild boar in centre with crescent on its flank.

Painted tile - 1564-8

Made by Jasper Andries & Jacob Jansen, in #Antwerp or #Norwich

The wild boar with a crescent was used by Sir Francis Bacon to show he was his father’s second son.

Made for Old Gorhambury House, near St Albans, #Hertfordshire

Now V & A Museum #London

#TilesOnTuesday

A young girl dressed in fancy clothing practices singing into a mirror

Jean-Étienne Liotard, Girl Singing into a Mirror, oil on canvas (Springfield Museum of Fine Arts). The Swiss pastellist and painter, especially famed for his portraits, also did a number of charming pictures of his family members such as this of his daughter

Wayland’s Smithy looking particularly moody in the cold today. There’s a specific kind of magic in these stones when the colors are muted.

Photo taken from within the cairn, engraved stones are visible on the left and the entrance at the end of the passage.

Looking out from within the Cairn de Gavrinis last July on the last #TombTuesday of 2025. Time to start planning where 2026 will take me.

Photo of an elephant facing right wearing a checked knitted blanket while on sandy outdoor ground under a chill bright blue sky

Volunteers created blankets for elephants during a cold spell in Myanmar, Winga Baw Elephant camp #WomensArt

Two images of colourful woven pieces, both with distinct patterning, the first has a symmetrical design with lines and diamond motifs, the other has a more fluid style with waves and arcs

Gunta Stölzl (1897-983) German textile artist fundamental to development of the Bauhaus weaving workshop #WomensArt

Ice age architecture: How mammoth bones reveal human ingenuity What do you build with when trees are scarce and winters are brutal? For hunter-gatherers living in current-day Ukraine some 18,000 years ago, the answer was simple: mammoth bones.

Ice age architecture: How mammoth bones reveal human ingenuity.
phys.org/news/2025-11...

A small, rectangular, weathered wooden pocket sundial with finely carved concentric circles and hour markings surrounding a deep circular recess in the center, where a compass once sat, all shown against a black background.

A late medieval pocket sundial from Freiburg. The portable sundial once contained a small compass in the circular recess, helping to align the sundial along the north–south axis so the correct time could be determined.

📷 @aws-almbarak.bsky.social

A relief sculpture of a blacksmith at work in his workshop. He’s surrounded by the tools of his trade. It was found in Tomb 29 at the Necropolis of Portus on the Isola Sacra. AD 160-180.

‘What we do in life echoes in eternity.’ 😊

📸 my own, #OstiaAntica.
#ReliefWednesday #AncientRome #Archaeology

Tile fragment from Roman Cirencester with graffiti depicting a house. The fragment is part of the collections at the Corinium Museum in Cirencester. 📸 My own. #TilesOnTuesday #RomanBritain #CoriniumMuseum #Cirecenster

Archaeologists have unearthed a Bronze Age metropolis in the heart of the Eurasian steppe: an early form of city as complex as those of contemporary, more traditionally 'urban' civilisations, showing how steppe polities were just as sophisticated.

🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🏺 #Archaeology

Bars of clay that have been fired at various temperatures and under different atmospheric conditions. Ranging in colour from red terracotta to very dark chocolate brown. Along with some Munsell soil colour charts used to record the test results.

Testing clay from the Roman pottery production site at Highgate Wood, North London and using Munsell colour charts to record the results. Same clay, different temperatures and kiln atmosphere. 🏺#Archaeology #AncientBluesky

Part of a coloured engraving of a Roman mosaic showing an elephant moving towards the left. There are crossed lines on the animal's body.

Following last week's monochrome elephant, this is another common type of depiction in Roman mosaics. From the Great Pavement at Woodchester, moving around Orpheus. 1/2
#MosaicMonday
@classicalalan.bsky.social

Everyone’s favourite - the ‘Wolf and Twins’ mosaic from Roman Aldborough (Isurium Brigantum) depicting the legend of Romulus and Remus. Dating to the 4th century AD, the mosaic is now part of the collections at Leeds City Museum. 📷 My own. #MosaicMonday #RomanBritain

Want to walk into and through an actual Iron Age house…and UP THE STAIRS?
Of course you bloody do.
Come with me.

Carn Liath broch, just sitting quietly beside the A9 as thousands whizz by without stopping. Their mistake.
Far too excited to wait for #HillfortsWednesday