Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Enjoyed 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. 3295
Reposted by Dr Huw GroucuttCambridge Archaeological Unit @cambridgearch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026The 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. 24911
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 23/09/2026I'm not the only one who likes Drimia maritima! 051
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Another lovely visitor to site today. Love her eye movements :) 130
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Excavating a 500,000 year old elephant in the Nefud Desert with Prof. Eleanor Scerri and pals a few years ago, happy times! 0201
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 15/09/2026After 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. 040
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 14/09/2026Nice 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 0102
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 08/09/2026Homo naledi even made it to Ireland! www.bbc.com/news/article...bbc.comCave art discovery suggests first humans in Ireland came from WalesDuring the most recent Ice Age, researchers believe there was a "lost land bridge" between Wales and Ireland. 061
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Was 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. 1155
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 04/09/2026Fieldwork 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. 091
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 02/09/2026Today 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.comMellieħa dig helping reconstruct 300,000 years of Malta’s climatic historyTa’ Latnija cave excavations continue to reshape understanding of Malta’s earliest human history 1111
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 27/08/2026We have a lot of rocks to deal with in our excavation. So I enjoy building a wall behind which we can pile smaller rocks. 0120
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 21/08/2026A long fieldwork season coming up, means it's time for an official team hot sauce. Introducing 'Brain Attack by Red Dragon Hot Sauce Ltd 090
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 21/08/2026#FieldworkFriday. Modern terracing in construction (but to store rubbish rather than soil for agriculture). 020
Reposted by Dr Huw GroucuttLive Science @livescience.com · 18/08/2026Neanderthals may have trekked through the Saudi Arabian desert 55,000 years ago, farther south than experts thought possible www.livescience.com/archaeology/...livescience.comNeanderthals may have trekked through the Saudi Arabian desert 55,000 years ago, farther south than experts thought possibleStone tools from a lakeside site in Saudi Arabia hint that Neanderthals were adapted to the arid Arabian interior, not just to cold places. 1227
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 18/08/2026Nice new article on our work www.livescience.com/archaeology/...livescience.comNeanderthals may have trekked through the Saudi Arabian desert 55,000 years ago, farther south than experts thought possibleStone tools from a lakeside site in Saudi Arabia hint that Neanderthals were adapted to the arid Arabian interior, not just to cold places. 1217
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 17/08/2026New 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.comBayesian modelling of the latent human influence field in archaeological urban sediments at Koh Ker, CambodiaReconstructing the spatiotemporal trajectories of massive ancient cities remains difficult because archaeological excavation offers temporal depth but… 040
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 17/08/2026We 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. 0122
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 16/08/2026Hot sauce time! Nice little harvesting of three of my chilli plants 170
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 06/08/2026Behind 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. 1121
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 02/08/2026A short video explainer on our new paper; Neanderthals in the Desert! youtu.be/AHcaIbBG42gyoutu.beNeanderthals in the desert!YouTube video by Huw Groucutt 0222
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 02/08/2026Great 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.comNeanderthals in the desert? Population history best explains Middle Palaeolithic technological heterogeneity in ArabiaNortheast Africa and Southwest Asia present a rich record of hominin occupations between ca. 100 and 50 thousand years ago (ka) at a critical biogeogr… 0123
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 02/08/2026Great 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.comNeanderthals in the desert? Population history best explains Middle Palaeolithic technological heterogeneity in ArabiaNortheast Africa and Southwest Asia present a rich record of hominin occupations between ca. 100 and 50 thousand years ago (ka) at a critical biogeogr… 0195
Reposted by Dr Huw GroucuttJimbob Blinkhorn @jblinkhorn.bsky.social · 28/07/2026Looking 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... 1234
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 14/07/2026Another great season at Bidnija comes to an end 0100
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.... 171
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 06/07/2026www.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 ChileDozens 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... 073
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 04/07/2026Food 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. 0162
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. 28714
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 29/06/2026Starlink and a robotic total station....and paper and pencil...working side by side. 050
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 27/06/2026Interesting new results from Rising Star, showing all the Homo naledi remains are female....claims for art, burial, etc still rubbish though! 230
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 24/06/2026Ġgantija Neolithic 'temples', built some 5000 years ago. Shown during the dry season and the wet season. Always impressive. 080
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 20/06/2026When 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 0101
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). 020
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 18/06/2026The quest for shade! Archaeological excavation in the hot Mediterranean summer. 0160
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 16/06/2026Back to the excavation....this was the last day last year, on to more exciting findings! 050
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 11/06/2026It 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. 020
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 09/06/2026Nice New Scientist piece by Michael Marshall discussing my research www.newscientist.com/article/2529...newscientist.comWhat really happened when ancient humans migrated out of AfricaThe 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... 1245
Dr Huw Groucutt @huwgroucutt.bsky.social · 01/06/2026Three years ago today, I was excavating ancient hippo fossils! 190
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. 080