Announcing this year’s Jarrow Lecture: Bede, Providence, and Early Medieval Kingship. Full details here:
medievalarchaeology.co.uk/2026-jarrow-...

Drought, Conflict and the Use of Historical Data and Methodologies in Interdisciplinary Palaeoclimatic Research - Climatic Change Climatic Change - A major challenge in the interdisciplinary study of past climates is ensuring that evidence and data relating to different disciplines are analysed effectively using appropriate...

An article last year claimed that tree-ring data shows a link between drought and late Roman conflicts such as the "Barbarian Conspiracy" of 367. We show problems with such claims and appeal for interdisciplinary palaeoclimatic research to respect historical method.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We just published a brief preprint on aDNA from two Medieval Ottonic emperors. 🧬👑

We confirm via IBD segments that remains attributed to Otto "the Great" and "Saint" Heinrich are third-degree relatives. As historically attested - suggesting that they are authentic. ✅️

doi.org/10.64898/202...
(1/3)

Monte Verde, one of the earliest Indigenous sites in South America, is much younger than thought, study claims. But others call it 'egregiously poor geological work.' A new analysis of archaeological layers at Monte Verde in Chile suggests that people lived there 4,200 years ago, not 14,500 years ago as originally proposed. But many experts point to errors in the m...

This year's archaeology conferences are gonna be interesting. 🔥🧪🏺

This is Archaeology. Collaboration in Action: the excavation and conservation of the Melsonby Hoards A talk with Prof. Emily Williams, exploring the wonders of the Melsonby Hoards.

Join us on 18th March for the next This is Archaeology lecture with Prof. Emily Williams, exploring the remarkable Melsonby Hoards, one of the largest groupings of Iron Age metalwork ever discovered in England.

Free to attend (donations welcome) 👉 tinyurl.com/un9kp8z4

Pity Me – really? - SNSBI Many place-names are deceptive, so it's not surprising that many people have assumed that the striking name Pity Me (best known from County Durham, but found more widely) can't really be what it seems...

Many place-names are deceptive, so it’s not surprising that many people have assumed that the striking place-name Pity Me can’t really be what it seems. What is it, though?
Today's name story is written by Emeritus Professor Diana Whaley of @newcastleuni.bsky.social.
www.snsbi.org.uk/exploring-na...

A montage of images showing three people smiling at the camera, holding an award, a close up of the award and the Iron Age hoard being excavated from the ground.

Readers of Current Archaeology Magazine have voted to make the Melsonby Hoard Iron Age find its ‘Rescue Project of the Year’.

The hoard was excavated by @arcdurham.bsky.social, including Archaeological Services, with support from The British Museum and Historic England 👉 tinyurl.com/cjfmauj9

The first meeting in Ancient Biomolecules in Latin America is here! 🤩 and it will be held in Peru 🇵🇪 on Nov 2026 . More info 👇

Medieval Diets Varied by Social Status in England, Study Finds - Medievalists.net New isotope research reveals how social status shaped medieval diets in England, showing differences between friars, townspeople, rural residents, and hospital burials.

📰 Chemical signatures preserved in human bones show how social inequality in medieval England could be "measured at the dinner table" 🍽️

🏺 #AntiquityResearch #ArchaeologyNews via @medievalists.bsky.social

www.medievalists.net/2026/02/medi...

🏺 Brilliant stuff Harry! Genetics of people inhabiting the Lower Rhine-Meuse area through prehistory highlights the variable dynamics and regional diveristy in the interactions between groups carrying disparate ancestries. Lots of complicated stuff to unpack. Rhine-Meuse ancestry associated with...

🚩première conférence de la CRABi (Communauté de Recherche en #Archéologie #Biomoléculaire et #isotopique) à Bordeaux les 12 et 13 novembre prochain.
toutes les informations sur crabi.sciencesconf.org

L'appel à communication est ouvert jusqu'au jeudi 2 avril (23h59 CET).

📢Fellowship alert! We are recruiting 6 ECR Addison Wheeler Fellowships starting 01 Oct 2026 (for 36 months). Any discipline, any nationality. Details at www.dur.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/advanced-study/fellowships-funding/addison-wheeler-fellowship/ and durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

The Gefrin Trust is delighted to announce the publication of a landmark volume by Roger Miket entitled "Ad Gefrin: Brian Hope-Taylor and His Quest for the Early Medieval Kingdom of Northumbria." Get your copy at the Ad Gefrin Shop in Wooler! #Yeavering

They do point out that their methods recover damaged aDNA and will probably not pick up currently active bacteria, so we can't really say whether any of the species are active or not.

I finally found time to read this. They don't discuss that their major identifications are soil-dwelling bacteria and not gut bacteria, which represent different hypotheses of the causes of bioerosion. Perhaps soil bacteria are what one would expect under both hypotheses after centuries of burial.

PhDs being offered across the Iapetus DTP for an October 2026 start:
www.findaphd.com/phds/program...

Please broadcast details of our Diversifying Talent Scholarship scheme too:
www.findaphd.com/phds/program...

@ukri.org #BlackAFinSTEM #firstgen

New paper out, mostly the work of my brilliant PhD student Meng Zhang!
Isotopic evidence for changing diet and agriculture in China from the Neolithic to the Early Han period (10-2 ka BP)
doi.org/10.1016/j.qu...
Changing exploitation of millet & rice, and animal husbandry regimes over 8 millennia.

Help deliver a unique FreePROBATE search service – Big Give Free UK Genealogy provides free online access to over 500 million family history records, so anyone can build their own …

The #BigGive #ChristmasChallenge is in progress! This is your chance help Free UK #Genealogy deliver its FreePROBATE service – and to have the value of your donation doubled by those (including the Society for #OnePlaceStudies) who have pledged match funding. To find out more and to donate... 👇🏻

📢 IMEMS and University College (Durham Castle) are delighted to invite applications for the 2026/27 Slater Fellowship, a three-month residential, senior fellowship at @durham.ac.uk during Epiphany Term 2027.

✉ Read more and apply here: www.durham.ac.uk/research/ins...

My department has an opening for a Professor of Cultural and Natural Heritage as part of Durham University’s strategic Heritage 360 initiative durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

Lessons learned: Recommendations for reproducible paleogenomic data analyses Souilmi et al. propose essential guidelines to improve the reproducibility of paleogenomic data analysis. As ancient DNA research often relies on the destructive sampling of finite resources, these re...

www.cell.com/ajhg/abstrac...

Confounding fuels misinterpretation in human genetics | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences The scientific literature has seen a resurgence of interest in genetic influences on human behaviour and socioeconomic outcomes. Such studies face the central difficulty of distinguishing possible cau...

Full OA paper here: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

A composite image of vegetation change at the Sevilleta LTER site in New Mexico USA, illustrating how grass landscapes on the left of the image are progressively invaded by shrubs, leading to a shrub-dominated landscape on the right. Image by John Wainwright

Anyone interested in a PhD project modelling resilience of dryland ecosystems in a changing climate, led by @ecogeo.bsky.social and with @blindmath.bsky.social, Denis Patterson and Roy Sanderson, please apply to our
@iapetusdtp.bsky.social PhD position iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

Computational innovation for the energy transition: Bayesian stratigraphic correlation of subsurface data

Funded PhD opportunity at Durham University. Bayesian approaches to stratigraphic correlation. With me, @palaeosmith.bsky.social & Kilian Eichenseer. See the Iapetus site for details of eligibility and widening participation scheme. iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

Now out on Early View: "U/Th Dating of Secondary Carbonate Deposits in Underground Galleries of Fourvière Hill (Lyon, France) Reveals a Water Supply System in Operation From the Roman Period to the Middle Ages" buff.ly/76PpH8q

Was descent in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe patrilineal or bilateral? | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Many studies have attempted to gain insights into the kinship systems of past human populations using ancient DNA data. Several studies focusing on Neolithic and Bronze Age European sites reported a h...

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Probably posted a preprint version of this before but good to see some formal testing of different hypotheses of descent/residence in prehistoric cemeteries of Europe, rather than just eyeballing the trends.

I'm hiring!⭐ As part of the DFF Sapere Aude-funded project MiddleEarth, I am looking for 1 postdoctoral researcher and 1 research assistant.

StratoBayes: a Bayesian method for automated stratigraphic correlation and age modelling Abstract. Stratigraphic correlation and age modelling are fundamental to reconstructing Earth's history, biological evolution, and palaeoclimate, and underpin the exploration for subsurface resources....

Our new paper is out: StratoBayes: a Bayesian method for automated stratigraphic correlation and age modelling doi.org/10.5194/gchr... with @palaeosmith.bsky.social Kilian Eichenseer & Matthias Sinnesael

detailed poll results for selecting Radiocarbon 26 Conference host. 58% Tokyo, 28% Cologne, 16% Ottawa, 1% other

The poll for selecting the host city of the Radiocarbon 26 in 2028 is closed.

The winner is Tokyo, receiving 58% of all votes!

Congratulations to Tokyo team!

Thanks to the Cologne and Ottawa teams for their excellent proposals.

Thanks to Kim from @14cjournal.bsky.social for running the poll.

👋 Hello, Bluesky! We’re Radiocarbon, an international peer-reviewed journal (since 1959) dedicated to advancing radiocarbon research, from calibration and chronology to applications across archaeology, geology, environmental science, and more. We’re glad to be here. #Radiocarbon #Geochronology