A stone and timber alpine cottage with a dark pitched roof stands in a valley meadow, backed by mixed forest in early spring foliage. Behind it rises a massive limestone cliff face with patches of snow, under a clear blue sky. A dry-stone wall runs in the foreground across the grass.
Looks immobile. It is not.
Two-tone landscape.
New essay on trace, memory, and archaeology.
Memory is not stored in things. It is produced through organisation, reading, and cuts into persistence.
On traces, palimpsests, violence, and why archaeology always works in the present. dimitrij.splet.arnes.si/2026/01/20/t...
"Capturing Light" by Coast Salish artist Maynard Johnny Jr. Raven is stealing the sun for humanity. See more of his work here: steinbruecknativegal...
I’ve posted Triptych I: Trace, the first essay in a small triptych.
It stays close to material marks and what they become over time.
dimitrij.splet.arnes.si/2026/01/11/t...
Full solidarity, Zena. What happened was a clear breach of the Safe Space Policy. The intimidation and blanket accusations against Concerned EAA members were used to silence. Leadership’s distance left space for this. You should never have been put in that position.
I’m on it. Think less “conference,” more temporary autonomous zone drifting through Athens and alongside the EAA, opening a quiet path for an alternative. Whoever appears, appears.
In light of the upcoming EAA special meeting, where the future of the Association is genuinely at stake, I’m sharing the letter I submitted to The European Archaeologist about the current crisis.
dimitrij.splet.arnes.si/2026/01/09/o...
🚨Urgent‼️ The EAA has doxxed members who have been working to reestablish justice, democracy and accountability in the association. This is a chilling move. We must take action. ALL EAA MEMBERS OUT FOR THE SPECIAL MEETING THIS FRIDAY JAN 9TH! #EAAforDemocracy
The year’s final sunlight.
Poster titled BOYCOTT EAA-ATHENS, with a circle/slash crossing out the EAA 2026 Athens logo. This is an urgent call for all members of the archaeological community to join this boycott. Do not submit a session to the EAA until Eszter Banffy steps down as president of the EAA after her anti-democratic actions. There has been a concerted campaign of intimidation against individual members of the board, including large numbers of threatening and defamatory emails and individual participants, groups, and student volunteers have been intimidated. Even after close documentation of her shameful autocratic actions in the press and on social media, she refuses to step down. We cannot let this happen, this is not what we stand for as a community. Many departments and institutions already decided not to participate and submit sessions after it has become clear that the EAA has not resolved its issues. Do not submit a session until Banffy steps down. If you have already submitted a session, retract it.
BOYCOTT EAA-ATHENS 2026 🏺
This is not a BTC action but we are helping to disseminate this call, as the president of the EAA has shown great willingness for reprisals.
Please distribute widely, particularly to offline colleagues.
Our prehistoric hunting megastructures from the Karst are featured among @history.com most exciting archaeological discoveries of 2025.
www.history.com/articles/arc...
New essay out: Archaeology of the Future. A small reflection on how the world continues long after us, shaped by what we leave behind. dimitrij.splet.arnes.si/2025/11/22/a...
LiDAR image of a prehistoric hunting trap on the Karst Plateau, highlighting the structure’s scale and integration into the landscape. CREDIT: Dimitrij Mlekuž Vrhovnik.
Airborne laser scanning reveals stone walls stretching several kilometers across Europe's Karst Plateau, on the border between Slovenia and Italy, likely built over 4,000 years ago to herd and corral red deer—a legacy of coordinated hunting. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/urYx50Xir5z
Read Europe’s Forgotten Megastructures: Stone Traps of Prehistoric Hunters on Kudos: www.growkudos.com/publications...
Massive stone “funnels” found in Slovenia and Italy may be Europe’s oldest hunting megastructures—proof that early societies shaped landscapes through cooperation and ingenuity. #Archaeology #Prehistory #HumanEvolution @pnas.org www.anthropology.net/p/walls-for-...
Thanks! Yes, dating is definitely the weak link for now, and we’ll do everything we can to improve it.
These kinds of structures are pretty hard to date directly, but we’ll probably try surface exposure dating next.
Four newly identified stone megastructures on the Slovenia-Italy border suggest large-scale communal hunting in prehistoric Europe, indicating complex social organization and advanced landscape management. doi.org/g96x5w
What began as an weekend walks and curiosity among friends led to one of Europe’s largest prehistoric landscape discoveries.
A reminder that archaeology still holds vast, hidden stories, waiting in the folds of the land.
#Archaeology #PNAS #Karst #LiDAR
These massive guiding walls and pits show that hunter-gatherer communities in Europe organized collective labour and reshaped landscapes on a monumental scale.
They coordinated movement, terrain, and animal behaviour, turning the landscape itself into a hunting machine.
🦌
🚨 New paper out today in PNAS!
We report the discovery of prehistoric hunting megastructures on the Karst Plateau (Slovenia/Italy) – several-kilometre-long dry-stone systems used to trap wild herds
doi.org/10.1073/pnas....
Definitely on my #readinglist
Wow!
What is it like to be a buzzard?
This essay is about looking up, and being looked at in return; about sharing a sky with another species, and wondering what it means to live in radical symmetry with it. dimitrij.splet.arnes.si/2025/06/18/w...
Rain washed, sun returned.
Roxy Music’s Avalon video, directed by Ridley Scott, is the missing bridge between xenomorphs and replicants. Media archaeology reminder: worlds bleed through shared images, not tidy continuities. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpA_...
Back in my cabin in an undisclosed location in the Julian Alps.
This is journalism as it should be, devoted, investigative, clear-headed, and professional. Work like yours plays a crucial role in disentangling this mess and in making reconciliation and resolution even possible. Thank you, also @mrsoup.bsky.social.