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Dr Huw Groucutt

@huwgroucutt.bsky.social
2.8K followers 1.3K following 790 posts

Archaeologist, Senior Lecturer at University of Malta, PI: TerraForm ERC project.....posting about old stones, and occasional bones. Exploring human responses to climate change, particularly in Malta and Arabia. www.huwgroucutt.com

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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Enjoyed a recent visit to 'Barbury Castle', an Iron Age hillfort near Swindon. Very impressive banks and ditches! Hillforts were some of the first archaeological sites I became interested in, and I still find them fascinating.
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Reposted by Dr Huw Groucutt
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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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I'm not the only one who likes Drimia maritima!
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The arrival of a storm
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Another lovely visitor to site today. Love her eye movements :)
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Excavating a 500,000 year old elephant in the Nefud Desert with Prof. Eleanor Scerri and pals a few years ago, happy times!
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
After over 100 days without rain, and a long hot summer that felt like one long heat wave, the clouds have gathered and the first rains come.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Nice new paper, showing human presence at the site by 55 thousand years ago, consistent with other evidence the arrival of humans in Australia. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
#FieldworkFriday. Shade solutions!
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Homo naledi even made it to Ireland! www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Cave art discovery suggests first humans in Ireland came from Wales
During the most recent Ice Age, researchers believe there was a "lost land bridge" between Wales and Ireland.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Was just reminded of this figure i'd made in a paper from 2014. I like it. Illustrations of stone tools made by Neanderthals in SW Asia, some 55 thousand years ago. The darker the colour the later the flake removal in the sequence of preparation.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Fieldwork Friday.....flashback to a few years ago, this is the remains of an ancient lake in the Nefud Desert, dating to about 100 thousand years ago. We found interesting fossils at this site.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Today the Prime Minister of Malta, the Minister of Culture, and many other dignitaries came to visit our excavations at Latnija. timesofmalta.com/article/mell...
timesofmalta.com
Mellieħa dig helping reconstruct 300,000 years of Malta’s climatic history
Ta’ Latnija cave excavations continue to reshape understanding of Malta’s earliest human history
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
We have a lot of rocks to deal with in our excavation. So I enjoy building a wall behind which we can pile smaller rocks.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
We had the best visitor to site today ❤
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
A long fieldwork season coming up, means it's time for an official team hot sauce. Introducing 'Brain Attack by Red Dragon Hot Sauce Ltd
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
#FieldworkFriday. Modern terracing in construction (but to store rubbish rather than soil for agriculture).
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Reposted by Dr Huw Groucutt
Live Science @livescience.com · 18/08/2026
Neanderthals may have trekked through the Saudi Arabian desert 55,000 years ago, farther south than experts thought possible www.livescience.com/archaeology/...
livescience.com
Neanderthals may have trekked through the Saudi Arabian desert 55,000 years ago, farther south than experts thought possible
Stone tools from a lakeside site in Saudi Arabia hint that Neanderthals were adapted to the arid Arabian interior, not just to cold places.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Nice new article on our work www.livescience.com/archaeology/...
livescience.com
Neanderthals may have trekked through the Saudi Arabian desert 55,000 years ago, farther south than experts thought possible
Stone tools from a lakeside site in Saudi Arabia hint that Neanderthals were adapted to the arid Arabian interior, not just to cold places.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
New paper just published: "Bayesian modelling of the latent human influence field in archaeological urban sediments at Koh Ker, Cambodia". Began life when Chris was a postdoc in my group, nice to see it published :) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Bayesian modelling of the latent human influence field in archaeological urban sediments at Koh Ker, Cambodia
Reconstructing the spatiotemporal trajectories of massive ancient cities remains difficult because archaeological excavation offers temporal depth but…
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
We conducted a comprehensive statistical analysis to support this argument, which both suggests that the Neanderthals were more ecologically flexible than had been understood, and that we have a poor knowledge on where admixture between sapiens & Neanderthals could have happened.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Hot sauce time! Nice little harvesting of three of my chilli plants
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Behind this innocuous little gate on a hillside in South Wales lies the 33 km long Agen Allwedd cave system. Digging efforts are currently underway deep beneath Mynydd Llangatwg to connect the cave to the neighbouring Ogof y Daren Cilau. This will make a cave system more than 60 km long.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Some pleasing capers at Għar il-Kbir.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
This looks great! Just downloaded it.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Sunset rutting
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
A short video explainer on our new paper; Neanderthals in the Desert! youtu.be/AHcaIbBG42g
youtu.be
Neanderthals in the desert!
YouTube video by Huw Groucutt
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Great to see our new paper out; evidence for Neanderthals in Arabia! Time to stop imagining our hominin cousins as only being found in cold northern forests! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Neanderthals in the desert? Population history best explains Middle Palaeolithic technological heterogeneity in Arabia
Northeast Africa and Southwest Asia present a rich record of hominin occupations between ca. 100 and 50 thousand years ago (ka) at a critical biogeogr…
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Great to see our new paper out; evidence for Neanderthals in Arabia! Time to stop imagining our hominin cousins as only being found in cold northern forests! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Neanderthals in the desert? Population history best explains Middle Palaeolithic technological heterogeneity in Arabia
Northeast Africa and Southwest Asia present a rich record of hominin occupations between ca. 100 and 50 thousand years ago (ka) at a critical biogeogr…
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Reposted by Dr Huw Groucutt
Jimbob Blinkhorn @jblinkhorn.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Looking forward to returning to Latnija,Malta, in August - and our new modelling paper suggests forager occupations from 8.5-7.5ka were only possible through sustained, long-distance seafaring in the Mesolithic Mediterranean! (Image: (C) Huw Groucutt) academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
A picture of an awesome cave beneath a dramatic sky
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Our new paper :)
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
gelu di muluni (watermelon jelly) 👌
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Another great season at Bidnija comes to an end
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
(1/6) The crisis of chronology continues...A recent paper reports a very interesting new archaeological excavation in the northern Levant. The archaeology is great....but the story focusses on how it shows Neanderthals and sapiens being behaviourally identical over time....
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
www.livescience.com/archaeology/...
livescience.com
'Speculation' and 'egregious failure': 30 researchers publish scathing critiques of study that questioned date of early human occupation of Monte Verde in Chile
Dozens of scientists have banded together to pen scathing research letters to the journal Science about the publication of a study claiming the 14,500-year-old Monte Verde archaeological site in Chile...
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Food for thought r.e. Homo naledi....the much repeated 'Floresiensis shows you don't need a big brain to do fancy stuff' continues to erode.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
#FlintFriday. Still one of my favourites. Lovely Levallois flake we found at Mundafan in southern Saudi Arabia, made around 85,000 years ago on the edge of what was then a lake.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
A new generation of archaeologists
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Starlink and a robotic total station....and paper and pencil...working side by side.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Chillis growing well
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Interesting new results from Rising Star, showing all the Homo naledi remains are female....claims for art, burial, etc still rubbish though!
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Ġgantija Neolithic 'temples', built some 5000 years ago. Shown during the dry season and the wet season. Always impressive.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
When did the hominins separate from our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees/bonobos? Many different age estimates have been suggested. Around eight million years ago seems likely according to this new paper, bringing fossil- and genetic-based estimates into line: doi.org/10.1007/s103...
doi.org
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
#FieldworkFriday. On Friday's during excavation we take care of post-excavation work and training students in basic methods (how to complete a stratigraphic unit sheet, photography, and autolevel use).
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
The quest for shade! Archaeological excavation in the hot Mediterranean summer.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Back to the excavation....this was the last day last year, on to more exciting findings!
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
It was a pleasure to host several visiting European Research Council 'National Contact Point' colleagues, from across Europe in a visit organised by Lili Kankaya from Xjenza Malta.
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Nice New Scientist piece by Michael Marshall discussing my research www.newscientist.com/article/2529...
newscientist.com
What really happened when ancient humans migrated out of Africa
The out-of-Africa migration, in which ancient humans went on to inhabit every other continent except Antarctica, may not have been one moment in time, but a long and slow process. Columnist Michael Ma...
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Three years ago today, I was excavating ancient hippo fossils!
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Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
#FieldworkWeek. It's been a great few days doing TerraForm project fieldwork in Malta. Working with my great team at the University of Malta, and with visiting collaborators from the Universities of Durham and Milano.
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