This time he offered to show us a site that he’d found and gave me a giant jar of the most delicious homemade peach jam I’ve ever had.

“Preservation” #archink2025 #inktober

An outline drawing of a camel skull mounted on a gate post.

We did a lot of archaeological survey in northern Qatar. When we found dead camels we’d sometimes take their skulls and mount them on our gate. Until one day some pesky zooarch stole them. 👿

“Gatekeeping”

#archink #inktober #archink2025

A torn poster with black and white figures of a rock band pasted on a wall covered in overlapping graffiti tags. The poster reads “Rock n’ Roll always about spirit and fun,” with faded text and marks from later tags and paint layers.

A city wall layered with street art, stickers, and posters. Blue-painted faces appear above, with bold text reading “STOP WAR” and various smaller artworks below. Older posters peek through torn edges and paint drips.

prompt 10 of #archInk2025: palimpsest

walls can keep stories in the form of graffiti by unknown graffitists.

layers of paint, posters, and tags overlap, shaping the memory of a place and adding to the stratigraphy of a city.

a living and active palimpsest

An outline drawing of an ivory comb with a broken tine and circle decorations.

Asian Elephant ivory comb excavated at Ras al Jinz, a Bronze Age site in Oman. #archink2025 #archink #inktober

An outline drawing of a bearded vulture’s holding a shoe in its beak above a nest.

“Transformation” #archink2025 #inktober

Recently there was an amazing story of researchers discovering a 750 year old sandal in a bearded vulture’s nest. It is an example of what we call a “N-transform” - natural impacts on site formation processes.

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Cartooony drawing in pencil crayon of Stonehenge with a light greenish glow and an alien and a UFO

#ArchInk Day 13 Pseudoscience

I found this a strange prompt so I just decided to draw this incredibly archaeologically accurate building of Stonehenge

#ArchInk2025 #Archaeology #Stonehenge

A hand holding a drawing of schematic strategraphic layers. The order of the layers is two tweets down.

I have strong feelings about stratigraphy. I have stronger feelings about the schematic examples that we use to teach stratigraphy. Artefacts shouldn't float in the middle of the layer, for example. No colour-coding, obscure symbols to indicate difference, etc.

#archink #archink2025 #inktober

+

day 6 of #archInk2025: horn

I did a kind of archaeology journaling page, where I focused on exploring the texture of the horn, noting down functions and anatomy.

#archInk

An ink drawing on a piece of paper of a horn core with a scale.

A horn core is:

A) a ska band
B) the bony part under the keratin sheath on bovids
C) a source of terrible puns and innuendos on an archaeological site

“Horn” #archink #inktober #archink2025

Digital collage showing hands reaching upward among flintknapping tools such as antler tines, hammers, and scrapers. Flint flakes are scattered across circular green and ochre shapes. The word “FLINT” appears in cut-out letters near the bottom right

For day three of #archInk prompt: flint
I created a digital collage of tools used during flint knapping and the by products spreading around the production zone: flakes and blades.

#archaeology #archInk2025

A digital illustration showing two hands reaching toward a circle of bronze artefacts, including swords, spearheads, and axes. Each object has a different shade of bronze — from golden yellow to deep reddish-brown — representing the varied colours of Bronze Age metalwork

day 4 of #archInk2025: bronze. tin meets copper, and new colours are created based on the mixture, from gold, green, brown, red.

i drew them circling between two hands, an acknowledgement of how innovative humans are and bronze meant exchange and shared skill

#archInk #archaeology

A three-panel digital illustration showing the archaeological process of residue analysis. In the first panel, a clay pot sits over a small fire surrounded by stones. In the second, a broken pot is uncovered in the ground with a trowel nearby. In the third, gloved hands hold a sherd and take a sample with a small tool. Two circles highlight what residue analysis can reveal: plant grains and a goat

day 3 of #archink2025: residue. what's left inside a pot can say a lot. grains, fats, traces of meals long gone.
drew that chain in a kind of comic style: pot in use, pot buried/excavated, pot in the lab.

Small remains lead to past recipes.

#archInk #archaeology

day two of archInk 2025: shell. the central piece today is a scallop shell painted in watercolour. around it i sketched different shell artefacts — scrapers, spoons, containers, ornaments. it shows how versatile shells are as archaeological finds, and how many uses they once had. this page is also a small experiment in drawing itself. mixing digital work with watercolour and pen sketches makes it feel layered, like different notes on the same theme.

day 2 of #archInk: #shell.
a watercolour scallop in the centre, with digital pen sketches of shell artefacts and tools around it. shells are versatile in archaeology, and this page is also a mix of drawing techniques, from watercolour to digital.

#archaeology #archInk2025

Turns out the Palaeolithic had a splash of blue already too.
Guess pigment isn’t only red and yellow after all.
And I just love how the timing of this news actually matches with the first #archInk2025 prompt "pigment"

#archInk2025 Day 2: Shell
During prep, the Conch of Teleportation reminded me of oracle bones, divinatory records from the Shang. They feature some of the earliest writing in China. I thought dragon turtles, taken from Chinese mythological creatures, would help expand a focus on Chinese archaeology.

One year I will be brave and make time to take part myself, but not this year.
Still, I really love following the #ArchInk posts, so thank you for running it again! ✏️💖

#ArchInk2025 #Inktober
#Inktober2025

A watercolour illustration of a cave art bison inspired by the cave of altamira,

Day 1 #ArchInk2025 - Pigment. Bison cave art from the Cave of Altamira.

Trying to use this challenge to improve my illustration skills on Photoshop. I double brushed areas to show cracks in the cave walls and added an aged paper texture background.

#ArchInk @jonaschlegel.com #Archaeology

An illustration of a box of pigments and a bottle of binder. It reads from top to bottom: ArchInk Day 1. Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments. Includes: Fire beetle, Sussur Bark, Merrow Coral, Residuum, Glowcap Phospher, Infernal Iron Soot.

#archInk2025 Day 1: Pigment
Back at it with a D&D bend. Today’s piece is Nolzur’s Marvelous Pigments. The item text says you can dip a brush right in, but pigments are technically the colorant. You can use them dry, but painting needs a binder. So I imagined some natural sources and the medium.

Hand-drawn archInk 2025 prompt list on lined paper with archaeological tools scattered around the margins including pottery sherds, flint tools, brushes, and an ink bottle. The title 'archInk 2025' is written in orange and green lettering. Below are 31 numbered prompts organized in three columns: 1 Pigment, 2 Shell, 3 Residue, 4 Bronze, 5 Flint, 6 Horn, 7 Textile, 8 Stratigraphy, 9 Ivory, 10 Palimpsest; 11 Transformation, 12 Echo, 13 Pseudoscience, 14 Network, 15 Bioarchaeology, 16 Gatekeeping, 17 Ownership, 18 Exclusion, 19 Preservation, 20 Visibility; 21 Embodiment, 22 Provenance, 23 Absence, 24 Toolmark, 25 Reclamation, 26 Ephemeral, 27 Justice, 28 Looted, 29 Temporality, 30 Becoming, 31 Afterlife signed by @archaeoInk

Here's the official #archInk2025 prompt list - 31 days of archaeological (illustration) prompts for October.

From pigment and bronze to provenance and afterlife, each prompt open to be explored through drawing or other techniques and mediums.

Ready to join in?
#archInk

Archaeological wall illustration showing building remains with labeled features: clay bricks forming a walled-up window frame on the left, mortar residues, boulder stone construction in the upper and general areas areas, and overall forming a remaining wall section. The drawing uses different textures and shading to distinguish between construction materials and phases. Signed as archInk 2021 with the prompt "archaeological illustration", created by Jona Schlegel

In await of #archInk2025, sharing past work
I created this during #archInk 2021 to explore what archaeological illustration can be outside of technical artifact drawing. Showing constructions - bolder stones, mortar residue and with a walled window using bricks - all forming a remaining wall