iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Martyn Barber @martynjb.bsky.social · 21h

A while ago I said I might post about modern Stonehenge myths, some of which pop up frequently in all manner of places, including stuff written by actual archaeologists. So – to begin with, the old chestnut about (allegedly) being able to hire a hammer when visiting Stonehenge. #StandingStoneSunday

A colour photo showing two of the trilithons at Stonehenge, with a few other stones visible. In the foreground is a sign saying "No Admittance", while in between the two upright sarsens of one trilithon is an orange and white traffic cone.

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Dr Toby Driver @drtobydriver.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Thank you / diolch to all my followers - there seems to be 10k of you 🥰🥳 For #StandingStoneSunday here's a special Toby the Trowel cartoon I drew at the age of 23 🧐 I'd phrase a lot of it differently nowadays but it's an historical item - pre internet fact-checking days 😮 ❤️ Enjoy folks 🍻

A cartoon strip about standing stones narrated by a talking Trowel

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

The parch marks at Stonehenge are really good for seeing all the mucking about that’s gone on and why it might be considered as several superimposed monuments rather than a singular one.

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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Thank goodness Harari is coming to save history. I would never have known that history was ‘an open-ended process’ otherwise. Did you know history has LAWS? (But is fluid and not causal. Take that, logic.)

I’m sorry - I can’t type out all Harari’s bullshit from a friend’s photo via WhatsApp, but basically this is a screenshot of a page of waffle (from The Bookseller) where he says history has LAWS but is FLUID. It is unbearable, pretentious bollocks.

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stephen cogbill @coggers.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

@prehistoricsociety.bsky.social @joanavaldez.bsky.social Some of the brilliant World Heritage Site prehistoric rock-art in Alta from last month's Arctic Norway trip. Images of reindeer, hunting, boats, bears, bear-dens, fish, all in great profusion. The earliest panels are from around 5000 BCE.

wide shot showing a rock panel with inscribed prehistoric images painted red, overlooking Alta Fjord

Hunting scene with reindeer, armed stick-like people, and bears mixed in towards the middle.

Hunting scene with people on boats using bow and arrow, plus someone holding up what look a bit like snow-shoes, but may be large skin or cloth shapes to distract the animals.

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

No well you are right that there have been suggestions of climatic change around this time which might have made Britain particularly more amenable for farming, but unsure whether it would haave affected wave-height and yes, they were clearly still crossing the Irish Sea and the Pentland Firth.

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

In fairness, the genetic analysis is so intensive and methodology heavy that in some ways it can’t help but be an endeavour in of itself, and the analysis done for this paper is an impressive feat. But yes there might be diminishing returns on how far it helps us understand the past without more…

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

…technology and there’s plenty of evidence for movement and connection across the Irish Sea. So why not The Channel? Or the North Sea?

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

The paradox I struggle with, especially if a lot of this is about maritime travel is why Britain and Ireland then seem to become so genetically/culturally isolated from continental Europe after this point. Clearly these societies were motivated to move and meet and trade. They had the requisite…

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

...then largely eyeball the cultural correlates afterwards. It feels like the dynamics aren't going to be solved entirely satisfactorily without the genetic and various strands of the archaeological evidence being synthesised on equal terms and potentially in much more regionally explicit ways.

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

There's discussion of the complex continental trade networks across these societies that facilitated this. In some ways I think this is reaching the limit of what can be achieved with the standard format of aDNA papers where you (to put it simplistically) work out the ancestry change through time...

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

for instance, movements of people from northern France into Britain, Central Europe and Scandinavia, but no such signature of ancestry shift in Iberia. Interestingly there does look to be some evidence of movements into Sardinia, but questionable how far it is linked to the development of megaliths.

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

🏺🧪 Intense and exciting aDNA preprint on the variable ways in which the development of megalith-building societies across Neolithic Europe was associated with movements of people and admixture. Lots of nuance and evidence for distinct regional trajectories, some of which was known or suspected...

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Dr Susan Greaney @suegreaney.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Brutal. Solidarity with striking staff at Nottingham.

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

'What the islanders discovered were extensive burial grounds, decorated stonework and early buildings – all the features belonging to a major sixth-century monastery, comparable to the much better known site of Iona a little to the south-west.'

theguardian.com

‘Hugely exciting’ finds on tiny Scottish island shed light on spread of Christianity

Community-funded archaeological excavations of ‘really important’ sixth-century monastery also rewrite story of Lismore

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Such brazen betrayal of the Doggerlandians.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I’ve been reliably informed they’ve gone for the full Schneider cut with my episode.

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Brenna Hassett @brennawalks.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

.. and it is wilder and weirder than I ever hoped 🥰 episodes with @donomeara.bsky.social @boothicus.bsky.social out soon!!

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Dr Matt Pope @mattpope.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Home for the next few days. Huge thanks to @butserancientfarm.co.uk for welcoming all of us from @uclarchaeology.bsky.social and @archsoutheast.bsky.social back for another year. Today our new first years start their journey with us on the Experimental Archaeology Course. #ArchaeoTech26 🏺🛖

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Dr Alex Fitzpatrick @animalarchaeology.com · 29/09/2026

average day doing prehistoric funerary archaeology tbh

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Coming to a cinema near you!

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Tim Daw @timdaw.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I've put a new tool online: a 3D flyover of the Stonehenge landscape, not just Stonehenge but also Woodhenge and the new Bulford post alignment. It runs in your web browser, no app to download. Details: www.sarsen.org/flyover

sarsen.org

Stonehenge Landscape Flyover

Fly over the Stonehenge landscape, and watch the sun rise in 2500 BC I've put a new tool online: a 3D flyover of the Stonehenge landscape...

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

‘Digital’ does not mean ‘immortal’.

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Dr Susan Greaney @suegreaney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Solid critical review 10/10

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Hugh Willmott @hugh-willmott.co.uk · 25/09/2026

A little late for #FindsFriday but I’ve finally started working through this year’s artefacts from #CerneAbbey At 22mm it's tiny but this fragment of Anglo-Saxon window glass is not only unusual but also really important for our interpretation of the site Just goes to show, size isn’t important

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Dr Tess Machling @tessmachling.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This is why you don't just dig things up. Look at the amazing info we've got now: We know how it was all placed in ground & we have all of it, none damaged & conservation possible both as excavated & after. We can also look at the soil, for organics, pollen etc. #Archaeology #Detecting #Treasure 🏺

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Tim Daw @timdaw.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The claimed solstitial alignment of Woodhenge is not supported by the layout of its posts. Details: www.sarsen.org/2026/09/wood...

Plan of Woodhenge with solstitial alignments marked

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

And Shrubsole! Talk about nominative determinism…

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Cambridge Archaeological Unit @cambridgearch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The 2020-21 Over Needingworth excavations revealed an area of preserved wooden stakes/posts and stake/postholes, with 58 being fully excavated and recorded. Dating to the Roman period the stakes and posts reflected use of the land when the area had transformed from a prehistoric dry land to fen.

A wooden stake in situ that is in the process of being excavated with a black and white scale bar.

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Terry O'Connor @osteoconnor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I nearly didn't post this one from Private Eye. Then thought 'Go on. @justrena.bsky.social would have loved it'. I hope so.

Man and woman in front of a wall of skulls. Woman says 'Investing in crypto is something else, dear. What you've done is buy an ossuary'.

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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Outstanding new review of ALL of the currently available DNA evidence for the peopling of the Americas, led by Bethany Potter (and the amazing @jenniferraff.bsky.social!): www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

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Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Remarkable collection of papers out today from PsychAD, a consortium studying biological mechanisms in dementias & serious mental illnesses. They created a single-cell brain atlas of 6.3 million nuclei from ~1,500 donors. Datasets, analysis tools & resources freely available to research community.🧪👇

nature.com

PsychAD Consortium

The PsychAD Consortium investigates the biological mechanisms behind neuropsychiatric symptoms in Alzheimer’s disease, related dementias, and serious mental ...

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Scott D. Haddow @sdhaddow.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

New paper on the first two intact human burials found at Göbekli Tepe. These burials have been known about for some time; information on them has been presented at conferences and lectures over the last several years, but it's nice to finally see them in print 🏺 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

journals.plos.org

First burials give insights into mortuary rites at Göbeklitepe, Early Neolithic Türkiye

Since the beginning of excavations at Göbeklitepe, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) site in southeastern Türkiye, fragmented human bones have been recovered from the fill of the special (monumental) buil...

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Dr Francis Young @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

From 18 October there will be a new exhibition at the Museum of Cambridge devoted to folklore (and supported, among others, by the @folkloresociety.bsky.social)

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Society of Antiquaries of Scotland @socantscot.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

OCTOBER LECTURE: History in Our Bones: Uncovering Stories of Disability Through Time Through Pictish case studies, discover a project which is restoring disabled people as participants in the social worlds of the past at this free hybrid event on 15 October: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/history-in...

Facial reconstruction of a man with a beard and a large bump on his face; overlaid text reads: October lecture

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Surely there must be a trailer sting where one of the Sheriff’s guards spots Robin’s smirking posse in the woods and quips “well, aren’t you a fine group of merry men!” And they all share secret smiles.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

‘Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Riding through the glen.’

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Cambridge Archaeological Unit @cambridgearch.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The first phase of Over Needingworth’s Barrow 20 involved an in-situ cremation event followed by the construction of a turf mound. The cremation took place directly on the buried soil surface and left traces of the pyre remains.

An overhead drone shot showing a round barrow in the process of being excavated. Four slots one in each quadrant are present and the dark ring of the ditch is visible at the edge of the barrow.

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Dr Susan Greaney @suegreaney.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Registration for TAG is now open!

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Adam Rutherford @adamrutherford.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I’m back on Start the Week on BBC Radio 4 at 9: Carlo Rovelli on philosophy and physics, Lavinia Greenlaw on difficulty in poetry, and James Graham’s new play about John Maynard Keynes. Stick that heady mix in yer podcast pipe. How lucky we are to have the BBC.

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

How did we ever figure out who was English before DNA sequencing technology?

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Tom Booth @boothicus.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Yemeni Anthropomorphic Stele ain’t saying nothing to no copper, see?

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