iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 14h

🧪🏺 #Archaeology is about the past, but it's also about now and what's to come cc @hannahfluck.bsky.social

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

🗃️ I have never seen these highlighted before

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

🏺🧪 🦣 Will absolutely be tuning in fo some of these excellent #HumanOrigins talks, hosted by one of my academic depts - online, open to all

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Top fake #AI-written bookclub invite so far is for #Matriarcha, a book that "Rachel" cannot possibly recommend to her readers for their '2026 Reading Challenge' because I haven't finished writing it yet 🙄 #BookSky 📚

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

📚 Q for my #Kindred readers (print editions) - what was your favourite chapter-opening artwork*, and why? *drawn by the talented @alisonatkin.bsky.social, patiently interpreting my crazy visions and bad sketches... #BookSky #BookIllustration #Ilustration

Drawing in mono, cut-through style, of a small skeleton lying in layers beneath a staircase, upon which a woman in a skirt is ascending. by Alison Atkin

Drawing in mono of an imaginary lithics factory where conveyor-belts are moving discoid flakes around. By Alison Atkin.

Drawing in mono of an archaeologist excavating a hearth, around which are gathered shadowy presences of Neanderthals. Site is based on Abric Romani. By Alison Atkin.

Drawing in dark mono of the chamber inside Bruniquel, where a bear stands beside a circular arrangement of snapped stalagmites. It's dark. By Alison Atkin.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Everything from "Fat & Irregular" to "Galloping Among The Stars" 🐴 🐎 #AncientAnimalNames

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Transphobic policy does not represent what 'most British women' want, and it's time Labour recognised you can't support exclusionary legal frameworks based on prejudice.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

🏺 🗃️ Archaeologists/Historians - please shoot me your favourite examples & sources on ancient named animals, the older the better! Prefer farm animals but others also welcome 🐏 🐂 🐖 🫏... 🐕 #histsky (I already have Bramati 2025, & Alivernini & Bramanti 2023)

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John Fox @foxius.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Not ancient, but I did find them while doing archaeological fieldwork. Classy Debutante and Sweet Potato Pie.

Closeup of a brown cow with an ear-tag reading, in part, "CLASSY DEBUTANTE"

Photo of a pasture with several longhorn cattle. Brown cow "Classy Debutante" is in the foreground. The lighter brown cow above her is named Sweet Potato Pie.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

🏺 The #SecretsOfTheIce project is of course only possible thanks to the #ClimateCrisis, but it has revealed extraordinary diversity of ancient projectile tech: arrows made from ground slate, mussel shell, and bindings not just of sinew but also birch bark secretsoftheice.com/news/2026/09...

Photo of a hand holding a finely ground, long slate arrow head still hafted on its shaft tip. Background is a mountain ice and rock patch.

Photo of an arrow shaft tip, showing sinew and dark bark wrapped around it. Caption:
"Rear section of an arrow shaft. It has been reinforced with animal sinew and birch bark around the nock. Approximately 3,600 years old. Photo. Frys film, Innlandet County Municipality, Secrets of The Ice."

Photo of a partly fragmented arrow tip, against gritty muddy ground.. Caption:
"Arrowhead made from freshwater mussel shell. The arrowhead is fragile and has begun to split. Approximately 3,600 years old. Photo. Frys film, Innlandet County Municipality, Secrets of The Ice."

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Useful update on current state of things, and striking that the near-future risks are essentially "Evil #AI Sci-Fi" narratives we've imagined for decades. Despite such clear, known risks, and many red flags already, dangerous development practice is continuing. yoshuabengio.org/en/blog/why-...

yoshuabengio.org

Yoshua Bengio | Why are AI agents lying, cheating and coordinating?

A lot has been written about the incidents of the last few months in which AI agents misbehaved in serious ways. They took actions that would be considered as crimes if a human took them, escaped thei...

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Dreaming of a day an artist might create something like this for the waters beneath the ice of Enceladus and Europa; or even the surface of an oceanic exoplanet 🌊 (though in the latter case we'd be seeing wave expressions already thousands of years old)

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The problem isn't rogue #AI models, it's *negligent companies*. If a biomedical firm put their product in public water supply because they wanted to test it 'in the real world', they'd be treated as criminal at corporate & individual level. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

OpenAI halts training of latest models as reports mount of AI agents going rogue

Decision follows disclosures that OpenAI agents searching government websites had acted in unexpected ways

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

🧪A v interesting-sounding study but I don't think it is showing elephant self-medication as is being reported; it is showing that eight people, knowledgeable about local medicinal plants and about elephants, *think* that is what the elephants are doing... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Screengrab, text:
"As interpreting medication behaviors in wild animals is inherently challenging, participants in this study relied both on direct observation and on their familiarity with medicinal plant use within local cultural and medical knowledge systems. Many interviewees were familiar with the medicinal uses of plants consumed by local elephants in human traditional medicine. At times, they also referred to modern biomedical concepts, such as immunity and digestion. This knowledge may have helped informants recognize unusual feeding events and interpret selective feeding behavior. Consequently, some therapeutic explanations may result from an interpretive process in which observed elephant behaviors are contextualized through existing medical knowledge. While this dynamic can help identify potential self-medication behaviors, it may also influence how informants perceive and explain the function of those behaviors."

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I don't have a problem with this idea – they could even add stuff like professional cookery – but would prefer to see added to compulsory subjects through KS4 a new single subject of Critical Thinking (to cover essential philosophy & politics, anthropology, media & misinformation...)

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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 Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

🏺🧪 Sometimes #archaeology brings us wonder, other times, horror. Anatomy, isolated face-down burial & historical info suggest a mutilation punishment. Wish we knew more about her life (other than that she had poor dental heath); also not sure what I think about the paper's reconstruction art...

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

🏺 🦣 Nice paper on later E. European Upper Palaeolithic mammoth ivory figurine production & aesthetics. The Mezin-type geometric designs are so beautiful, and their placement on the (apparently) female figurines might indicate tattooing or scarification traditions. www.nature.com/articles/s40...

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Rudolf Hima @himarudolf.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Temnodontosaurus

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

🏺 🧪 🦣 Programme for #ESHE26 is looking fantastic, inc. some very tasty #Neanderthal papers...

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

📚 Delighted to be sent this fantastic-looking tome by historian Peter Sahlins: a detailed account not of #Neanderthals in prehistory, but of their afterlives as we discovered and then endlessly obsessed over them. #BookSky Out October 1st, pre-orders: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/nean...

uk.bookshop.org

Neanderthals Among Us: The Making of a Prehistoric Human

Why are we so obsessed with a group of archaic humans who disappeared 40,000 years ago? 'A rich and thorough study of Neanderthals as they existed not in prehistory but in our modern imagination.' Ang...

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I adore all Holbein's work, but we are SO lucky to have the studies. In my opinion they're even more bewitching than the paintings: delicate yet somehow also a bit rougher and more intimate; vividly human ✏️

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Riding With Robots @ridingrobots.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Nice photo but pretty easy to scroll past until you realize it was taken on Mars.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Spent the weekend in the 1160s with Cwmwd Iâl re-enactment & living history group (9th-12th C Welsh) Pretty proud of my spinning which I only learned how to do this summer, and two very respectable stews were also made

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

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Michael Haslam @twigtechnology.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

What would a stone tool look like after it was used to scrape/shape a lot of bamboo? A lot like this one in the new Bianfu Cave Denisovan report. Basing this on my work replicating the uses of Homo floresiensis (hobbit) tools from Liang Bua, after I found bamboo fibres on them in a residue study 🏺🧪

Photo of a greyish stone tool, less than 5cm long according to the scale beside it. It is shown from three angles that reveal a steep edged concavity along one side. The image is from a paper in Nature titled ‘Denisovans from southwestern China and their subsistence strategies’.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

His final photo '10:28:24 AM' seconds before the 2nd tower came down is just astonishing #September11

Colour photo of theSept 11 site showing remnants of Tower 1 and damaged and complete adjacent buildings, layered by smoke, dust and light. Photo by Bill Biggart.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

🏺 Looking at this and (thanks to @emmasouthon.bsky.social ) wondering how many enslaved people's hands opened the pouch and got out this expensive imported comb and de-loused the hair of powerful owners who controlled every aspect of their lives, again and again and again

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

As a patron of @humanists.uk I 💯 support this: religious objectors in the Lords have no more right to control others' deaths than they do their lives. This bill is the least we can do for 1000s who face passing away "through a torture chamber" every year. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

My plea to MPs: this is the final chance to save the assisted dying bill. Make your mark on history | Polly Toynbee

Any MP not voting for it on Friday will condemn thousands of us to die in agony. The public is hugely in favour too, so do the right thing, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

🏺 🧪 🦣 Very cool, at this stage in our knowledge every new site is genuinely impactful. I'm not sure we can make predictions about precision of technological capabilities from a piece of forearm, but these (v. nice) lithics are what I'd expect from the wide range we see in #Neanderthals

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Some recent dawns of note during early morning alfresco #Matriarcha wrangling ✒️ 🌄

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

So have I got it right that hyper-capitalist #AI companies have built stuff that they don't understand and can't control and are frightened of and it's now the job of governments and by extension public money to step in and clear up their mess?

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

🏺 Just have to share the incredible beauty not only of ancient archives, but of scholarly work in translating & recording them, including olds-kool hand-drawn illustrations. Here's a tablet from Tell al-Rimah, ancient Qattara, around 1800 BCE, recording agricultural produce. From Dalley 1976

Screenshot of digitized double page spread from Dalley 1976 publication on Tell al-Rimah tablets. It shows both sides of a fragmented but large clay tablet, upon which many columns of cuneiform writing are seen. The drawing of the tablet itself is in black and white with shading, and is exquisite.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

🧪 You have a day left to sign up to this event which will be really interesting... (& which I v. much would've liked to take part in but can't due to BOOOOKKKK)

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

New Origin Story on Section 28: the law which halted progress on gay rights and drove it into reverse. Nearly every moment in this story - the moral panic, the press hysteria, the bad actors, the political cowardice - resembles what is happening now to trans people.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Not seen nearly enough of this in all the Tim Curry appreciation 🔥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbQg...

youtube.com

Darkness Laugh

YouTube video by kornfreak78

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

#AI has now reached the disaster movie trope of lab-with-preposterously-bad-biosecurity-building-monsters, where you're like "THAT would never be allowed to happen" except it has, and is www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

OpenAI staff observed warning signs before AI agent hacking crusade caused global alarm

Firm says ‘early signals … could have triggered an earlier response’ as it releases report into Hugging Face hack

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Rhys Kaminski-Jones @rhyskamjones.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Tired: Yr Wyddfa / Snowdon Wired: Moel yr Wyddfa / Snawdune Glad we've solved it, your thanks appreciated.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The " #AI trolleys" are just mobile tills, offering 'you might like' suggestions. Neither of are different to what a website or app could do. Is this the great AI revolution we're busy trashing our carbon emissions for?! www.theguardian.com/business/202...

theguardian.com

‘They make life much easier’: AI-powered shopping trolleys go on trial in Lancashire

Customers give their verdicts as a Morrisons store becomes first in UK to test trolleys that scan, weigh and tally costs

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Aside from everything, feels like these could also be the embodiments of #genAI : ugly simulacra of a profoundly human practice that took millions of years to evolve, with no real passion or sense of purpose, merely instructions to scuttle on and on and on.

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

🏺 Here's another couple of #DreamPrehistoricWrecks - a ship from Thera fleeing the eruption - whatever the heck they used to transport dolphins and seals overland from the Mediterranean to Bronze Age Near Eastern palaces (see Foster, K. P. 1998. Gardens of Eden)

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