I'm very excited for the paperback publication of 'Paganism Persisting'! 🌞📚 Thank you to everyone at @uexeterpress.bsky.social for making this possible www.exeterpress.co.uk/products/pag...

Photo of yellow crepuscular rays stretching down onto a puddle of yellow light on dark blue sea in front of the outline of a small humped island silhouetted against an orange stripe of sunset sky. In the foreground, bare trees are silhouetted against those pastel blue sea nearer the shore.

Sunset over Ynys Enlli / Bardsey Island just now.

Two tall standing stones in level pasture with a blue sky behind

#StandingStoneSunday the magical Neolithic or Early Bronze Age stone pair at Penrhos feilw, nr Trearddur, Ynys Môn/Anglesey 🥰

Remarkable that they have survived so long 😮

📷 My own 2025

This whole volume looks great! Looking forward to reading.

& so Jack of the Green is made fresh from decaying woods

Path running through yellowing marram grass at the top of sand dunes. In the distance, the hills curve round a bay of blue sea on a sunny evening.

Spiky marram grass dunes with extensive views around the southern bay, past Aberystwyth and on to St David’s in the distant haze. The newly arrived 8 year old holiday-maker at the carpark didn’t wasn’t impressed - just ran at the sea shrieking with extreme happiness ‘It’s a seagull!’ - made my day.

Fossilized Crinoid stalks, like cross sectioned screws and bolts preserved in a dark shale concretion.
County Clare, Ireland.

Cormacscoast.com walking tours

For #worldcurlewday
Curlews over Pentre Ifan.
The haunting cry of this bird always feels to be a call from another land and when heard time always falls away and one is filled with melancholy and joy in equal measure.
Do support @curlewaction who work tirelessly to save this bird.

Llandanwg St Tanwg The ancient church of St Tanwg is situated in the sand dunes at Llandanwg, it is reputed to have been founded in the 5th century by St Tanwg and is one of the oldest Christian foundations in Britain.

There is a possible example of a large stone being brought to St Tanwg’s church in Wales from the Wicklow Hills in Ireland www.nationalchurchestrust.org/church/st-ta... So perhaps Irish stone was special(?)

A page from Geoffrey Of Monmouth's 'History Of The Kings Of Britain' showing Merlin (portrayed as a giant figure) placing one of the lintels onto two upright stones at Stonehenge, watched by two other men.

"Aurelius ordered Merlin to erect round the burial-place the stones which he had brought from Ireland. Merlin obeyed the King's orders and put the stones up in a circle round the sepulchre."
- Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12thC account of the erection of Stonehenge.
#BookWormSat #StandingStoneSunday

Photo of sunlight breaking through newly greened trees which border a muddy track with a sequence of three still puddles that cast back bright white light and reflections of the branching trees coming into bud.

Puddles in sunlight leading the way back from the iron bridge.

A few days later, and the tide is out, and the view from the iron bridge is completely different: in a rich, silty saltmarshy goodness sort of way.

'Enormous' cave under Pembroke Castle could rewrite history, researchers say Archaeologists have so far uncovered

Incredible Upper Palaeolithic discoveries from Wogan Cavern, Pembroke

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A photo over a white lichen-covered, grey stone wall, across a bright green field with sheep and lambs and molehills to where the distant houses hug the lower slopes of the hills, shrouded in mist and rain.

Photo of a woodland path which follows a tumbling stream, bordered with spring flowers.

Photo of bluebells bordering a stream and a path, shaded by bare-branched trees.

Photo of a grey painted wooden bench on a grey stony beach, with grey rolling waves with white horses, below a grey cloudy sky where the river meets the sea.

Evening drizzle and not a soul out in the village, or on the bluebelled path following the river down to the old grey sea.

A large waterfall over layered limestone rock in an autumnal Welsh valley with surrounding trees.

Henrhyd Falls, nr Coelbren, Powys. Also known as the film location of the Batcave in The Dark Knight Rises.

📷 09.10.23

#WaterfallWednesday
#LandscapePhotography
#PhotographersofBlueSky

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.

Here’s link to Nature article www.nature.com/articles/s41...

African architecture “may be distributed across forest, riverbank, shrine, route, & place of offering rather than concentrated in a single enclosed structure …[showing] sacred built environments can be formed through path, boundary, topography, sculpture, & ritual use as much as via walls & roofs”

Nothing Here Was Ever Still The Art of Africa and Oceania

Nothing Here Was Ever Still
The arts of Africa & Oceania are often introduced through place, region, or culture, yet their histories are more fully grasped through movement. Across the Pacific, wayfinding, migration, ceremonial exchange, and maritime travel shaped the making and meaning of objects.

The Art That Made Kings The Art of Africa and Oceania

The Art That Made Kings
African court arts make clear that power is never purely abstract. In many African kingdoms, authority had to be made visible, palpable, and persuasive through objects, bodies, architecture, and ritual action.

Scientists Find 7,000-Year-Old Sahara Skeletons With DNA That Doesn’t Belong to Any Modern Humans A Pair of 7,000-Year-Old Sahara Skeletons Revealed a Hidden Human Lineage With a Story Stranger Than Expected.

dailygalaxy.com/2026/04/gree...

Where Camels Fear To Go: 200 Skeletons Were Discovered At A Prehistoric Cemetery In The Sahara Desert Located in Niger’s Ténéré Desert, often described as a “desert within a desert”, the surrounding landscape is brutal. Nomadic legends call this region “the place where camels fear to go,” a reputation that remains well-earned. Beyond the blinding sandstorms and scorching 49°C (120°F) heat, the area is expansive, barren, and largely roadless. The threat of desert bandits and rebel insurgents also means that modern visitors must be escorted by soldiers toting machine guns on the backs of technicals. Despite the perils, scientists have been drawn to the Ténéré since the 1950s, knowing it sits atop one of the richest dinosaur beds in Africa. In 2000, a team led by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno journeyed into the dunes in search of prehistoric beasts. Sereno was already famous for discovering a string of new dinosaur species in the region throughout the 1990s. But this time, it wasn’t Cretaceous giants that stole the show. Instead, the team had stumbled across the remains of humans, as well as pottery shards, beads, arrowheads, and other stone artifacts. “It was all there just lying on the sand,” Serano told National Geographic in 2024, “everywhere you looked.” The site became known as Gobero after the...

Where Camels Fear To Go: 200 Skeletons Were Discovered At A Prehistoric Cemetery In The Sahara Desert
->IFLScience | More on "Sahara prehistoric cemetery skeleton discovery" at BigEarthData.ai

A photo of the sun rising behind a forested hillside.

From earlier today ✌️💚🍵 #nature #sunrise #photography #newyork

Tree Shadows on the Park Wall, Roundhay, Leeds, 1872, painting by John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1836-93 (Leeds Art Gallery).

Simon Palmer (British, b.1956)
"Causeway between Two Territories," 2024
Watercolor, ink, and gouache on paper
39 x 42 cm

#art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

Don’t Think, Feel! – In Search of ‘Paul’s Stones’ Beckhampton Avenue, Avebury, April 2026 A gentle morning in Avebury, overcast, but not too cold. I am in search of footprints, not Neolithic, not even 100 years old, but just as priceless to me. Fo…

‘Don’t think, Feel!’ In Search of Paul’s Stones…
A new blogpost has landed 🙂
practisesmakeplaces.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/d...

The Welsh rail system is powered by hymns. All passengers have to sing in order for the train to move, when sung in harmony the train goes faster. When it crosses the border into England they have to use diesel… #trains #Wales

A volume on medieval perceptions of the heavens.

Just a reminder that I argued that people in early medieval Ireland had a very different view of celestial objects than we do:

pre-print: www.academia.edu/38925511/The...

printed: muse.jhu.edu/article/808978

This exceptional decorated warrior stela stood next to the one I posted earlier. Similar iconography with weapons, mirror/shield and personal ornaments. Likely a visible funerary or territorial marker in the landscape. Bronze Age Iberia.
#BronzeAge #Prehistory #Archaeology

1/ Good morning, Europe! Now that you're awake, I'll make a little thread about what we are doing in this paper!

This is part of a special issue on kinship in archaeology ed by @pennyend.bsky.social, Sabina Cvecek and Manaasa Raghavan. All the articles and the three commentaries are very worthwhile

Photo of a knobbly iron balustrade overlooking an expanse of still blue water reflecting the sky and puffy white clouds. Green marsh hag islands appear to float in the mid distance river and beyond, purple craggy mountains rise up from forested slopes.

Is was a very blue high tide at the iron bridge this evening - and there were geese - and it was still light despite being nearly 6:30pm