iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Yet another unanticipated POBI correlation. Sheepie people and not quite as sheepie people.

Map of the UK with different coloured present-day genetic clusters calculated by the People of The British Isles project. A red cluster dominates lowland England while all other even vaguely upland regions fall into their own differently coloured clusters. Which makes a lot of sense with the correlation with the sheep.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Was 'Return of the Jedi'/Emperor Palpatine single-handedly respondible for reviving 'fully operational' as a phrase?

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Going back in time there is also confirmation that the quadruple burial of a woman and three children at the Monkton-up-Wimbourne monument dating to about 3300 BCE were 1st degree relatives, most likely a mother and her three children. Interesting comparison to the triple child burial at Burton...

Reconstruction of the Monkton-uo-Wimbourne monument by Jane Brayne. A series of chalk-dug circular pits surround two subcircular chalk bankd with a large pit in the middle half taken up by a deep shaft. The burials had been dug into the side of the cental pit.

Black and white photograph of the Monkton-up-Wimbourne chalk-dug central pit with a huge shaft in one side. Image taken by Martin Green.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Pendle-dwellers and adjacent hill-folk! Si thee in Barrowford in a week or two for mi talk.

Poster for a talk taking place at Higherford Methodist Church in Barrowford at 2:30 on Tuesday 15th September for the Friends of Pendle Heritage. £4 members. £6 non-members. An impossibly young man stares out of the page with a twinkly smile.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I see your unexpectedly precocious/cool choice and raise you my own offering.

A CD of the Prodigy’s ‘The Fat of The Land’ featuring an orange crab on a blurry beach background.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

That might have been the previous stop... www.cambridge.org/core/service...

'...38th century cal BC based on finds and a single radiocarbon
date (Connolly 2021). We must also set aside the allegedly
early date for the Magheraboy enclosure in Co. Sligo of
around 4000 cal BC, which had exercised us so much in
Gathering Time, since recent remodelling with different
assumptions about the age of wood samples suggests revised
probabilities in line with those for other enclosures (Whittle
et al. 2024, fig. 4). In the same way, it still seems wise to set...'

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Just as an illustration of the significance, in Sheridan’s model Ferriter’s Cove inspired its own phase of attempted settlement.

Four black and white maps of Britain and Ireland with arrows demonstrating Alison Sheridan’s models for Neolithic settlement around 4000 BCE.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

“It’s a run, not a race…”, except the times when it’s not. This is unlikely to ever happen again, so for the sake of posterity, you understand…

A list of parkrun finishers. At number 1 is one Thomas Booth, finishing in a respectable time of 19:13.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Paying a visit to Auntie Beeb! About to talk to Robert Elms on BBC London about the We Go Way Back exhibition at The Crick!

A modern looking sitting room with brown cylindrical tables a red settee and a screen. A couple of glasses sit on a small precarious table.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

What!? Now there’s two of them!? This is getting out of hand. Had a blast last night at the ‘We Go Way Back’ exhibition launch on ancient DNA. Come and see it at The Francis Crick Institute. IT’S FREE!

A bespectacled man in a bright t shirt stands behind a bright orange cardboard cutout of the same man around 2/3 the size

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Alert! They found the Star Gate behind the British Library!

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Startled my boy by squealing in delight when I saw one of these beauties in the wild - Tooting Bec.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

🏺🧪Update! Open one week from Now!

Orange tiled wall of the Francis crick
institute behind a silver railing a grey tamp and an ale stone floor tiles. On the wall is a multicoloured image of superimposed side-on human faces and text reading ‘free exhibition We Go Way Back’.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

🏺🧪There are brewings afoot at the Francis Crick Institute …looking forward to the big reveal next week. www.crick.ac.uk/news/2026-05...

Front of The Francis Crick Institute. Pale stone paving leads underneath Red and white stripy warning tape in front of the Institute’s main sign. Above the sign is another sign black writing on white background reading ‘Free exhibition - discover how ancient ancestors live on in our DNA’. Behind is the orange facade and glass foyer of the Francis Crick Institute.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

40th Solstice and Wedding Anniversary celebrations:- Golden Circle wanker for Gorillaz.

A stadium stage bathed in red light from within a crowd. Dozens of people stand on the stage in front of a red mountain symbol.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Outrageous BBC DEFIES World Experts Suggesting NO STONES at STONEHENGE until 2500 BCE! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

‘The monument at Bulford dates to the same time as the earliest phase of activity at Stonehenge, when the earthworks were first built half a millennium before the stones were placed.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Cool cover though, and that’s what counts!

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Yup! The DNA was published in this study: elifesciences.org/articles/797... and the details were taken from Suplementary Data File 1. Bear in mind though this is the best available source, not the 'true' one.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

🏺Have had a pleasant few days pratting around Skipton including jogging up to what felt like the top of the world to inspect this handsome Early Bronze Age ring cairn (Ringstones or Hare Hill Cairn). A collared urn containing a cremation was recovered from the centre and is in the Craven Museum.

Prat in a blue vest and shorts stood with his arms outstretched on some rounded lumps and bumps making up a Bronze Age ring cairn in a grassy field with hills in the background.

Two prays in the middle of some lumps and bumps in a grassy field making up a Bronze Age ring cairn. A landscape of green rolling hills stretches out in the background

A prat in blue shorts and vests sits astride a dead, rotten partial tree trunk in a grassy field, an arch look on his face.

Rolling grassy hills divided by grey dry stone walling under a blue sky.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

The latest in my son’s line of bee-themed ‘Hapee Berfda’ cards.

A colourful child’s drawing of some bees around a flower with trees in the background. A blazing unforgiving sun burns in the background, igniting the sky around it.

‘Hapee berfda’ in colourful writing followed by pink love hearts and kisses.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

This is all I could find out about it at the time - bear in mind that there is a bit of uncertainty about the date, as it hasn't been directly dated and its original context is not known with confidence. Not wanting to burst your uncle's bubble, while it's fun that he shares that bit of DNA...

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

🏺New paper on web of close (although mostly more distant) genetic relationships between people buried in tombs in Orkney and northern Scotland 3700-3500 BCE, in the Early Neolithic.

Diagram of genetic relationships between

- blue outlined oblongs representing different labelled tombs with internal squares and circular representing lelle buried within goose tombs. Lines of red green blue and orange represent genetic relationships.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Cheeky wink, or my tribute to Harold Godwinson?

Two men running in a field, one in the foreground and one in the background. The main in the foreground is wearing a floral multicoloured running kit. The man in the background is wearing an orange t shirt and black shorts.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

Quick whoosh around Romney Bay. Each pair of beach houses shares a megalith.

A path next to a grey way running by a sea front. Houses telegraph poles and a brick tower in the background.

Colorful striped beach houses on a pebble beach with the sea in the background.

A row of beach houses on a pebble beach. A row of large black stones run in front of the beach houses, one for every two beach houses.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

LAST LECTURE of ARCL0078: Age of Stonehenge. Covering the development of the meaning of Stonehenge over the last c.2000 years. Voyages of Pytheas, judiciary executions, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Williams Stukeley and Blake, Battle of the Beanfield, Stonehenge tunnel. It's been an absolute pleasure!

Historic images of Queen Elizabeth II projected onto Stonehenge in celebration of her diamond jubilee. ARCL0078: Age of Stonehenge written in yellow across the sky.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

While I was out running the other day my phone decided to take a few snaps while set within my blue fabric armband. Behold the indigo haze of my phone’s vision…

Blurry blue jaunty tinted image of a road lined by houses and trees and a wooden fence

Blue tinted image of a railway bridge with a block of red brick flats behind

A blue-tinted image of a railway bridge in the foreground with flats in the background

Blue tinted image looking up at some leafless trees behind some railings and a traffic light.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Long day I'm late today! Dense stretch of material from the Middle Bronze Age to the end of the Iron Age. Proper field systems. Proper settlements. Wacky funerary rites. Must Farm. The Invisible Dead. Hillforts, DNA & intrusive thoughts of celtic languages. Did Stonehenge mean (whisper it) nothing?

John Piper's painting of Stonehenge - the ruins of the trilothon horshoe up close rendered in greys, yellows and blacks. Made of streaks and lines it almost looks abstract. the ARCL0078: Age of Stonehenge title is in the grey sky in yellow.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

The Age of Stonehenge: 8th lecture down, 2 more to go. Today we covered the Early Bronze Age, how tin and copper mining in Britain and Ireland possibly drove the development of the Bronze Age proper across Europe, and how this enmeshed Britain births the ultra-blinged 'Wessex Culture'.

16th-century watercolor illustration of Stonegenge by Lucas de Heere, made for an early guidebook for England. Watercolour painting of the Stonehenge monument with the surrounding ditch. A person id depicted lying on a green hill in the foreground. Another person stands by one of the stones and anoth (slightly our of proportion) rides a horse in the middle of the stones.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I put this figure of Needham's model of a Bell Beaker/Corded Ware fusion into PowerPoint, and I kid you not the auto-generated caption was 'Map of the Battle of Brexit'. @urbanprehistorian.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/service...

Greyscale diagram of northwestern Europe with arrows detailing movement and interaction of material cultures linked to Bell Beaker and Corded Ware around the Rhone-Rhine corridor.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

I found this half finished one. I have no memory of the context.

Archer meme half finished presumably it was supposed to say “do you want mentions full of clay pipes, because this is how you get mentioned full of clay pipes!”

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Treating you to a sneak peak - this is the kind of rich, concise content that I'm delivering.

An image of a lecture slide. The automatic transcription of the lecture reads 'And. uh. Um. Yeah. Um. You know.'

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

This Week! On Age of Stonehenge! All the different ways in which this image is wrong, the development of the Chacolithic Britain, defined not just by metalworking but migrations of Beaker-associated groups and interactions with local people who are in the middle of a massive monument binge.

A dramatic colourful image of Stoneghenge. The stones are sillouetted in black against a firey-covered sky. The grass is a luminescent green. A robed druid-like figure stands in shadow in front of the stones holding a staff. On a hill in the distance (which does not exist in reality) are a group of shadowy men on horseback, one wielding what can only be described as a long 'thing'.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Suddenly Spring in Gordon Square!

Sunny Image of Gordon Square taken from the 6th floor balcony of the Institute of Archaeology. A concrete path lines a green grass park with a yellow gravel path winds through the park. The white Senate House tower rises on the horizon against a bright blue sky.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

TODAY on the Age of Stonehenge: Guest lecture by Ulrike Sommer on the material culture of Europe in 3rd Millennium BCE and a deep dive from me on the genetics - migrations off the Pontic-Caspian steppe, Indo-European languages and the different ways in which cultural and genetic change play out.

17th Century drawing of Stonehenge from Atlas van Loon. Coloured drawing of the stones of Stonehenge surrounded by a low orange wall. Three people stand with long poles in the middle. Green rolling hills and an orange coloured castle are in the background.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

🏺 Patterns of genetic relatives amongst burials of 3000-year-old hunter-fisher-gatherer groups associated with Pitted Ware cultures in Gotland. Multiple burials tended to include close genetic relatives of various flavours and at least one child... royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Greyscale diagrams of genealogical trees representing patterns of genetic relatives found in multiple burials at a Pitted Ware site in Gotland. Each genealogy is labelled a, b and c. Grey rectangles surround those individuals who were buried togther.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Late posting this! You must be on pins. This week: 'The Neolithic Zenith of Stonehenge' covering Stage 1 (c.3000 BCE) and Stage 2 (c.2600 BCE). Were there Welsh bluestones in Stage 1? Is Stage 1 exceptional without them? How did they get to Salisbury Plain? Was Durrington Walls like Burning Man?

The cover of a box of a 'build your own Stonehenge' kit on a
background of 'ARCL0078: The Age of Stonehenge' repeated text in a slanted orientation in yellow. The box has a yellow and black picture of a Stonehenge trilithon with more stones in the background and reads 'Warning: choking hazard' at the bottom.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Not to worry I’m close enough to give em a thick ear!

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

An image of a man overcompensating after falling flat on his arse in the mud.

A man running down a muddy hill in the woods. Cheesy grin and double thumbs up combo.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

It's Age of Stonehenge title slide time again! Where did the week go? Continuing with innovation and consolidation in the Middle-Late Neolithic we talked timber and stone monuments, developed passage tombs, Oradian stone settlements, maceheads, squares in circles and the complexities of complexes.

A picture of Dr Who's tardis, a navy blue police box in front of Stonehenge, an arrangement of grey stones into 'trilothons' - two vertical stones supporting a horizontal lintel stone on top. 'ARCL0078: The Age(s) of Stonehenge is in navy blue bubble writing in the sky.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

Latest edition of the Skoglund ancient genomics laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute. ‘If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s The Fall.’

Members of the Skoglund Ancient Genomics Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute. A group of intrepid young (ish in some cases) researchers staring together on a walkway with heavily lit brown orange and white panels on the background.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Spamming you with mornings in Morden Park but why wouldn’t I?

Morden park - the sun rises over a misty grassy field, against a blue sky. The horizon is made up of the dark outline of trees and the Baitul Futuh mosque.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Week 3 Age(s) of Stonehenge: Monuments! Particularly tombs and causewayed enclosures. Discussed extensive genealogies uncovered at Hazleton North. Made it a bit into the Middle Neolithic with major changes in population and subsistence, but not as far as I'd hoped...the cursuses will have to wait...

Victorian portrait photograph of Stonehenge, the earliest photograph of Stonehenge that exists. An older woman in a shawl and a young girl in a dress and sun hat sit on one of the fallen stones with one of the massive trilothons in the background. The photograph is yellower with age. The course title 'ARCL0078: The Age(s) of Stonehenge is emblazoned in blue across the top of the photograph.

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