Yeah exactly!

The paring knife acts as the flake removal, the idea is to simulate more complex core preparation without going through hundreds of dollars of flint 😂

This is weirdly difficult for students at first and speaks to the challenge of spatial reasoning inherent in flint knapping! Even a handaxe was hard on the first try, let alone a levallois

Native Americans invented dice and games of chance more than 12,000 years ago, archaeological study reveals A new study shows that dice and games of chance date back thousands of years earlier than experts previously thought.

An archaeologist searching archives found evidence of binary lots going back nearly 13,000 years, suggesting Native Americans were using probability at the end of the last Ice Age - possibly as a way to make strangers into trading partners.🏺🧪

ACTION ALERT⚠️ Dept. of Interior is trying to rush through a revocation of Biden’s public law protecting lands around Chaco Canyon from new oil/gas leases. They’ve given only 7 day for public comment, during Easter/Passover. Thread 🧵 below on why you should care, but here’s a link to comment! 🏺

OMG, this awful regime wants to drill in CHACO CANYON.

Bonus points if I don't have to pay an annual subscription per unit for forever 🙄

Field folks, any advice on the tradeoffs between EOS Arrow vs Bad Elf Flex and similar #GNSS units? I'd love a version I can just clip to my backpack and ignore while using Field Maps or OnPoz on a tablet or phone. Advice for 1-3m and sub-meter RTK versions would be appreciated #GIS 🏺🧪

Figure 1 from Paabo et al 2026 paper, titled "A high-coverage Neandertal genome from the Altai Mountains reveals population structure among Neandertals". Image shows a map, photo of fossil fragment, and data on DNA. Caption text: "Neandertal D17 and its relationship with other Neandertals. (A) Locations of high-coverage Neandertal genomes used in the study. (B) Picture of the undiagnosed bone fragment from Neandertal D17. (C–F) Relative derived allele sharing between Neandertal genomes, computed using D-statistics of the form D-(ind1, ind2; ind3, Mbuti), where ind3 is either (C) Neandertal D17, (D) Neandertal D5, (E) Neandertal Chag8 or (F) Neandertal Vi33.19. In each panel, ind1 and ind2 are indicated at the Left and Right of the graph. Positive values indicate greater allele sharing between ind3 and ind1; negative values indicate greater allele sharing between ind3 and ind2. |Z-score| ≥ 3 are in red. (G) Schematic phylogenetic relationships among Neandertal D17, other archaic genomes, including the Denisovan D3, and modern humans inferred from autosomal DNA analyses using branch shortening and demographic modeling with cecast and F(A|B) statistics (SI Appendix, SI Appendix 6, 10, and 12). (H) Schematic mitochondrial (mt) DNA inferred from a Bayesian tree estimated using BEAST2 from previously published study on D17 mtDNA (11). (I) Y chromosome phylogeny as inferred from a Bayesian tree estimated using BEAST2 including previously published Y chromosomes of the Denisovan Denisova 8 (D8) and Neandertals Mezmaiskaya 2 (Mez2) (12) and Chagyrskaya 2 (Chag2) (7) (SI Appendix, SI Appendix 18).".

🧪🦣 🧬 New #Neanderthal genome just dropped!

Denisova cave male, c. 120 Ka, some Denisovan ancestry, and living in very small effective breeding population <50.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

They have a list of "approved" modems, you can just price them each out online. Router is separate and you'll need one too but it's more flexible which one. Choose based on matching speed and you'll probably be fine. www.xfinity.com/support/inte...

In 1953 archaeologist Robert Braidwood initiated a debate: what began the domestication of cereals in the Ancient Near East? Was it for bread or beer? Malt & malting was discussed briefly by some of the Braidwood Symposium participants but the "Bread or Beer" debate continues unresolved today. 🏺

MSc in Palaeoanthropology & Palaeolithic Archaeology Teaching Team Prof. Aida Gomez-Robles Prof. Christophe Soligo Simon Parfitt Prof. Rhiannon Stevens Prof. Chris Stringer Dr Silvia Bello Prof. Nick Ashton Prof. Mark Thomas Dr. Claire Lucas Dr Phil Hopley Caitlin Withnell Dr Beccy Scott Prof. Aida Andres Letty Ingrey Prof. Garrett Hellenthal Dr Matt Pope

This is our brilliant (and growing) MSc Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology teaching team. Come to @ucl.ac.uk and study with these experts in human evolution, Palaeolithic archaeology and Quaternary science. 🏺🦣🧪🧬🦴
tinyurl.com/yc22vea3

Skeletal inventory and thermal alteration color changes. Preserved skeletal elements and changes in bone coloration in relation to temperature and fire exposure. Additional fragments not shown in the figure: an unsided patella, the lower right articular facet of a lumbar vertebra, and unidentified long bone fragments. Modified with permission by J.I.C.-R. from (65).

Earliest evidence for intentional cremation of human remains in Africa 🏺🧪
Jessica Cerezo-Román, Justin Pargeter @justinpargeter.bsky.social et al
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A large cremation feature at Hora 1 in Malawi dates to ~9500 years ago and contains the remains of a small, gracile adult

Ancient DNA and spatial modeling reveal a pre-Inca trans-Andean parrot trade - Nature Communications Here, the authors combine ancient DNA, stable isotopes, and computational modeling to study colorful feathers from a pre-Incan tomb in Peru. They identify four species of parrots, which were likely ca...

🦜🏔️ How did vibrant Amazonian parrot feathers end up in a desert tomb on the Pacific coast of Peru 1,000 years ago? Our new paper on @natcomms.nature.com reveals they didn't just trade feathers, pre-Inca societies transported live macaws and parrots across the Andes!👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Is that your painting Jens?

Front cover of Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 2025, Vol 91 from Cambridge University Press. The front cover photo is a series of stone circular walls from an Iron Age Spanish site, Castro de Elviña.

Chuffed to finally see an IRL copy of Vol 91 of PPS, the first produced by the new editorial team of Prof Daniela Hofmann, Dr Courtney Nimura and me! New front cover, new size, new article template.

Oh that's actually super helpful!

Interested to know how widespread eating limpets was- on our cold fringe of the north Atlantic they're regarded as a famine food more commonly used for baiting longlines, but I've tried a few & they're not that bad. Maybe they're just harder to harvest than the usual mussels and whelks?

A well-preserved Roman leather shoe with elaborate cutout patterns. The design features a high ankle and open section

An adorable #Roman shoe, made for a #baby too young to walk. The shoe imitates the footwear of Roman soldiers (caligae). The cut-out design would have shown off the kid’s socks!

From Bordeaux, dating 1st/2nd AD.

📷 Bordeaux, Musée d’Aquitaine

🏺 #archaeology

Unravelling the Palaeolithic 2026!

Join us for two days of all things Palaeolithic, Pleistocene and Early Human Origins at UCL Institute of Archaeology 19-20th June.

Call for papers is now open and tickets are on sale! Check out our website for more information.

sites.google.com/view/unravel...

Mobile artifacts with geometric signs of the Swabian Aurignacian. (A) Plaquette with hybrid creature (so-called “Adorant”), ivory, Geissenklösterle (gkl0025), © Landesmuseum Württemberg, Hendrik Zweitasch. (B) Mammoth figurine, ivory, Vogelherd (vhc0145), © University of Tübingen, Juraj Lipták. (C) Rod/bâton, ivory, Vogelherd (vhc0001), © University of Tübingen, Ewa Dutkiewicz. (D) Personal ornament, ivory, Geissenklösterle (gkl0006), © University of Tübingen, Ewa Dutkiewicz. (E) Spatula/lissoir, bone, Vogelherd (vhc0017), © University of Tübingen, Ewa Dutkiewicz. (F) Spatula/lissoir, bone, Vogelherd (vhc0162), © University of Tübingen, Juraj Lipták. (G) Undetermined, bone, Hohle Fels (hfc0006), © University of Tübingen, Ewa Dutkiewicz. Drawings by Ewa Dutkiewicz. Copyright: CC-BY-SA 4.0. For further details on sign coding and preprocessing see Materials and Methods.

Humans 40,000 y ago developed a system of conventional signs 🏺🧪
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Suggests the first hunter-gatherers arriving in Europe already developed a system of intentional and conventional signs on mobile artifacts.

Diver examining the remains of a shipwreck on the seafloor, with the text 'underwater archaeology' overlaid.

Fancy a swim? 🏊️ Check out our collection of maritime and underwater #archaeology, with exciting research on everything from Mediterranean shipwrecks to Maya salt production! 🏺

🔗 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Central Fire of the Iroquois A comprehensive history of the Native American community at the heart of the HaudenosauneeThe people of the Onondaga Nation have lived in central New York St...

Our release date is still seven months away, but my book is now up on the Yale website. Grateful to so many people who helped make this possible.

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

So yeah, I went back. To that #TasTepeler exhibition here in Berlin - and down memory lane.

🏺👉 www.smb.museum/ausstellunge...

The Bronze Age vs The AI Age
1/ Can archaeology predict the future of Big Tech?

Economists usually look back 50-150 years; archaeologists look back further.
When you look at the Bronze Age Collapse (c. 1200 BCE), are there any parallels to our current AI trajectory?
#AI #TechHistory #Archaeology

"On behalf of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), I am very pleased to inform you that you have been selected as the 2026 recipient of the SAA's Book Award—Popular category for “Native America: The Story of the First Peoples” published by Princeton University Press."

Wow! No words.

A short, round, furrowed horn core inserting into the skull diagonally from Northern Kenya 750,000 years ago: a Kob
#FossilFriday

By the marvellous Dr Katie Meheux, who has been researching, writing and presenting on Gordon Childe's political history for years!

... now with pictures instead of random black squares!

It has arrived, the day of the superb owl! Here's a 10,000 year-old eagle-owl talon worn as an ornament. My team recovered it from the burial of a newborn girl nicknamed Neve at Arma Veirana, a cave in the Italian Maritime Alps. 🏺🧪 #superbowl

Demographic shifts, inter-group contact and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification.
#linguistics