iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

In my course on Human Evolution, the first assignment is to identify a misunderstanding or misuse of human evolution in popular culture. A fun way to gauge pre-existing knowledge among students. I also try to take part in the assignment myself and so allow myself an annual (pedantic) comment.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden hosts the annual meeting of the Oriental Numismatic Society and they are holding a coin auction 😱 I think any trade in Antiquities ultimately promotes looting. As archaeologists we should be more outspoken against attaching commercial value to heritage.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I applaud Google´s priorities! Rooting for the Dutch team this weekend against Bangladesh!

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

We show how this production represents a flexible approach to knapping where no single chaine operatoire was followed, but the a repertoire of different moves was recombined as circumstances dictate.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

First visit to @naturalis.bsky.social since return of Homo erectus type specimen.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Gave a talk also on behalf of colleague Fulco Scherjon on Agent Based Modelling of Bandkeramik farmer expansion ~7000 years ago Transformations conference organised by @hanshuisman.bsky.social (Thanks!) www.weleer.nl/transformati... 📷 @welmoedo.bsky.social who gives a keynote tomorrow!

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

The Leiden botanical gardens have updated their #Dutch #Peat #Bog display to be scarily reminiscent of the state of Dutch nature. Lekker gewerkt! @boerburgerbeweging.bsky.social @vvdonline.bsky.social

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

The past years I attended and presented at a series of excellent conferences organised by @unileiden.bsky.social African Studies Research Master students. This will be the final time as budget cuts mean the end of this globally recognised excellent programme. ascleiden.nl/news/mining-...

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Airport bookshop at Johannesburg: perceptive categorisation

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

If you are in KZN, you can attend the talk here:

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Between 50,000 and 20,000 years ago, South African societies radically reorganised their stone tool technology. Does this reflect cognitive evolution, or something else? Our analysis at Umhlatuzana suggests the latter. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

The post-40 ka stone tools really look much more as what you would expect for sapiens. (📷Burhan et al.2025). Looks alone are not sufficient to attribute stone tools to species. So the pre-40 ka could be made by sapiens. But we know for sure that similar tools were made by other species.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Buiten Julianus de afvallige heb ik het niet zo op dat rijk. Maar nu moest ik er door je post toch weer aan denken. En dan specifiek aan bijgevoegd voorwerp in het museum in Xanten. Het was vlak voor sluitingstijd dus ik was zo stom om de reconstructie niet te fotograferen.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Cool exhibition of archaeological discoveries🏺 from 2024 in Nordrhein Westfalen at Xanten museum. Metal detecting appears better organised in Germany compared to NL.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

After the British navy combatting scurvy with lime juice, it seems in WWII the British army went one better!

Rusty tin with text "vitaminised eating chocolate"

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Sleeping on his side may be the least of this guy's problems. Also: AI pictures are just so ugly. Do people actually click on these things?

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Why would you name "rock dwellings" (actually 3D-printed concrete blocks) Navajoo and Hoodoo? One a Native American Nation that do not build rock dwellings; the other a set of African American spiritual practices. Why build "rock dwellings" in the flattest country on earth in the first place?

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

I do wonder which is more effective: Our policy of appeasement? (which does not (or not fully) combat illegal detecting anyway (attached photo of recent example I came across) Vs. a policy that would require perhaps more enforcement, but also makes the enforcint easier, like the Swiss one.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

45k people calling on our politicians to pay attention to the biggest issue of our times: Climate change, which gets zero attention in the current Dutch elections. Also my kids' first demonstration.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Metal-detecting deteriorates into grave-robbing. Visited exhibition on identification of victims from the Battle of Arnhem to encounter this case-study. Illegal metal-detectorist robbing a grave caught red-handed. If not caught the grave would have disappeared unseen.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

This is a Dutch one of my mom. But unsure if this would be likely to have made it to Polynesia.

Dutch porcelain plate with elephant decoration

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

We replicated backed segments of the South African Howiesons Poort phase (65.000 - 60.000 years old) and hafted them transversally and diagonally onto identical arrow shafts. Shooting them at the same speed, at the same distance, at the same targets shows transversal arrows penetrate much deeper.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Another weird stone with grid pattern in a Pavement in Mont st Michel.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Very interesting stones in house in Dol-de-Bretagne. Never seen this before and no clue what it is/means. Anyone?

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Also, there seems to be a correlation between churches and ostriches here.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

I am really enjoying SAFA conference @icarehb.bsky.social in Faro. Here with Dr Reynard presenting work at Strathalan Cave. Now looking forward to my own talk on the Middle to Later Stone Age transition at Umhlatuzana tomorrow morning.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Spoiler alert! Neanderthal tar production made it to the New York Times puzzle app. Impactful research is about reaching society. We can change how people understand the human condition, from puzzle to (hopefully) common knowledge. Today's message: Neanderthals are cool!

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Truly nice afternoon in the sun: World Cup qualification Netherlands - Italy. Vd Merwe taking a wicket.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

3. Seeing passenger pigeons was strangely emotional. 4. The botanic gardens have a Bezos-plant

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

I really enjoyed the Palaeoanthropology association conference andere the subsequent SAA conference in Denver. Takeaway 1: I have kever before been so friendlily treated by US customs. 2: The US, or at least Denver have a serious mental health/homelessness/opium crisis

Fence under a bridge with "fix me" in tied plastic bags.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Current political realities (not naming names....) may really make 3 degrees warming the best-case scenario at the moment. So maybe we should move our collections higher still.... To Berlin? Or even to Mars?

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

With 2 degrees warming virtually inevitable. It seems we may have to more the Antiquities Museum to higher ground. Perhaps to the province of Drenthe?

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

How can Dutch archaeology cope with climate change? An important topic for a country with 33% of its area already below sea level. Now there is a handy practical summary for archaeologists with clear actions and points of no return. Free to download here! drive.google.com/file/d/1auVx...

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Why do diamonds and handaxes often occur together? Was Homo erectus after diamonds? I trace how early diamond exploitation provided a wealth of information on the South African Earlier Stone Age. Exhibits like these were possible only because of diamond diggings. Paper: osf.io/f6ncu/files/...

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Leuphana University itself, organised highly interdisciplinarily is highly inspirational. With cool central building on a campus formed by an old Gestapo barracks.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

You cannot consider the future without the past. Inspirational quote by Jefferson at Leuphana university library is contested because of the past: why a slave holder's quote in the University library? The future is shaped and constrained by history. I think we should pay it more attention.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

In addition to being horrifically ugly (this seems compulsory with AI visual outputs it just is problematic on many levels. (Check out the bird anatomy)

AI generated image of geese, with weirdly many toes.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Dutch Archaeological "living museum" Archeon now uses AI visuals. In the Mesolithic we meet a bunch of corpulent half-naked Obelix-characters. White. No women. We can debate Mesolithic people's skin colour (likely dark); they did not live life half-naked and there definitely were women.

AI generated image of mesolithic group shown in living museum. Corpulent half-naked white dudes. No women.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 26/12/2024

Cool exhibition of taphonomy as art @friesmuseum.bsky.social by Semâ Bekirovic.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

These Tollense clubs and croquet hammers are the oldest of these things I know of. So, beware of bling-pursuing farmers rather than inventive Ice Age hunter-gatherers? (Photo by S. Suhr from Jantzen et al. www.researchgate.net/publication/...)

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Glyn Daniel used Acheulian in the 1940s. He gets it from Garrod I think, so perhaps a Cambridge invention to not look too French in their spelling?

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

Archaeology is taphonomy or it is nothing. Doing contemporary archaeology today. Two months of exposure to the elements has faded the text of a climate protest poster to near-invisibility. The conspiracy crap written over it with a permanent marker is as bright today as in September.

Poster for climate protest, with conspiracy-text writtin over it by permanent marker. (3 sept 2025).

The same poster on 11 Nov 2025. The poster text has faded to near-invisibility, the grafiti is as bright as in Sept.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 02/04/2024

How do you lessen support for mitigation of Climage Change? Pretend there is no problem! (Right-wing) Newspaper Telegraaf just published a map where the most densely populated province below sea-level (Zuid Holland, with Rotterdam and The Hague) is re-classified as high and dry. No problems here!

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 07/02/2024

Interesting paper biodiversity changes in Mexican nature reserves. Depressing that all vertebrates seem to be declining, as does climax vegetation. On the increase: "disease-vectoring invertebrates" and "human diseases" 😱. Does the same pattern occur elsewhere? www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Series of graphs documenting changes in abundance of mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles, insects, plants and "general groups" over time. Increases in "disease-vectoring invertebrates" leaf-cutter ants, climbing plants, pioneer plants, exotic animals, exotic plants and human diseases. Declines in all other categories.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 16/01/2024

Had a lovely walk through Deventer after my annual guest lecture #Archaeology at Saxion Hogeschool yesterday. I even managed to sneak up the tower with the guy playing the carillon.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

En toch, als je er naïef, doelloos rondzwerft kom je soms ineens een beeld van Picasso tegen. En de liftdeuren! (een persoonlijke obsessie) Vergeleken daarbij zijn onze liften een misdaad tegen de menselijkheid. Gratis musea! neem het museum for the American Indian. Ik werd er wel vrolijk.

Beatiful (art nouveau?) elevator door, NY.

Picasso: concrete statue. (Bust of Sylvette).

Elegantly worked elongated Maya flint "eccentric" in zig-zag form and Maya ceramic vessel.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 11/01/2024

Interesting choice of illustration. Genetically elevated risk for #MS or other diseases seems the least of this guy's problems. The arrowhead stuck in his face however.... www.science.org/content/arti...

Skull of Danish Neolithic person with bone arrowhead lodged in the nose.

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 10/01/2024

Maar nu raast door mijn hoofd de vraag: zijn de bekende Ammonieten, genoemd naar deze voor mij wat obscuurdere Ammonieten? natuurwijzer.naturalis.nl/files/2017-0...

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Gerrit Dusseldorp 🟥 @dussel.bsky.social · 28/12/2023

The holiday spirit! Cricket and some Levallois products! #Archaeology #SouthAfrica

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