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merryn

@merryn02.bsky.social
3.7K followers 220 following 2.9K posts

Interests: archaeology of ale, beer and brewing, history & prehistory of malt and malting technologies. I like campervans, spinning, walking, gardening, swimming in the sea. Academic stuff is here: www.researchgate.net/profile/Merryn…

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Reposted by merryn
Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Oh my: LibreOffice just made "no AI" one of their official features: blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/09...
blog.documentfoundation.org
Yes, no AI is now a feature - TDF Community Blog
One of the comments on the announcement of LibreOffice 26.8 was a simple question: “So, no AI is now a feature?” LibreOffice does not reject artificial intelligence out of hand, but an office suite us...
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Porridge! Made from oats, as seems to be traditional. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Porridge gurus from opposite sides of globe triumph in world championship
Dutch champion Gina Saarberg took the coveted Golden Spurtle, while Australian champion maestro Rob Reid won the Speciality Porridge category at the finals in the Scottish Highlands.
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Dr Wendy Morrison @hillfortian.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Excellent short piece here with wise words from @markknight63.bsky.social Back in February 2016, I was lucky enough to visit the site of excavations there. The quality of the archaeology (and of the archaeological investigation) has stayed with me.
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Must Farm quarry. Its a huge site with loads of archaeology. Some of the best Bronze Age organics yet discovered in Britain. Flax, wood and those amazing pots of grain. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
All British pre-history can be seen at Cambridgeshire dig, says expert
Finds from a site best known for "Britain's Pompeii" reveal prehistoric people adapting to change.
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Antiquity Journal @antiquity.ac.uk · 03/10/2026
NEW Remains of a huge pottery kiln from the Chalcolithic (5th-4th millennia BC) settlement of Ursoaia, Romania. The largest known kiln of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, it points to an early shift towards craft specialisation in south-eastern Europe. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology
Rectangular pit containing the remains of three earthen channels, partially obscured by rubble.
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I've been asked: what the earliest agreed archaeological evidence for making beer from cereals? Gobekli Tepe is a good place to start. If you are looking for agreement among archaeologists. Cereals. Feasting. Hot stone technology. Beerstone or calcium oxalate. gobekli-tepe.com/blog/beer-br...
gobekli-tepe.com
Was Beer Brewed at Göbekli Tepe? The Evidence | Göbekli Tepe
Stone troughs with calcium oxalate residues suggest fermentation. Six vessels held 160+ liters—evidence of brewing thousands of years before written history.
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
What a beautiful beer drinking bowl. Similar traditions on Orkney?Maybe. At weddings they pass round a wooden bowl to share strong drink, these days it's a mix of alcoholic beverages. Its called a cog.
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Stayed overnight at Butser Farm once in one of the Iron Age huts. The Roman building was just starting. We were there to demonstrate a mash for a tv programme 'Secrets of the Stone Age' 20 years ago. Nobody understood the mash. The cauldron was tiny and it all ended up on the cutting room floor!
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Dr Matt Pope @mattpope.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The activities we are offering our @uclarchaeology.bsky.social students over the next four days #Archaeotech26
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Oscar Lozada @oz-of-the-ancients.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Have we found beds that our ancestors slept on 200,000 years ago? 😮 🛌 The incredible preservation at Border Cave in South Africa has given us a unique insight into early human lives! #FindsFriday What would YOUR bed say about you? 👀 🏺 #archaeology #scicomm #ancientbluesky
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James Wright @jpwarchaeology.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The ACTUAL Oldest Pub in England. A film that I wrote and presented in collaboration with @HistoricEngland and A Few Good Productions. Click the link for some gratuitous shots of me talking timbers and building up a powerful thirst... youtu.be/RlyvHJtptbc?...
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Pam Lock @pamplemoussepam.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This looks brilliant and I know @jlares.bsky.social will be a brilliant host too. I wish I could sneak away from teaching to attend but you should all go @drinkingstudies.bsky.social people: events.tuni.fi/premoderndri...
events.tuni.fi
Programme | Drinking in the ancient, medieval, and early modern world | Tampere Universities
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Alan McLeod / A Good Beer Blog @agoodbeerblog.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This week’s beery news update was brought to you by many good folks including @retiredmartinpubs.bsky.social @jasontremblay.bsky.social @morrighani.bsky.social @ncprnews.bsky.social @boakandbailey.bsky.social @thedrewstarr.bsky.social @pelliclemag.com and “Every Dive Bar in New Brunswick”!
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NTS-Archaeology @nts-archaeology.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Good to see our discovery of part of a copper illicit whisky still made it into the most recent edition of the NTS members magazine.
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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 🏺🛖
Reconstructed early medieval housesreconstructed Roman VillaReconstructed Iron Age Round HouseReconstructed Neolithic House
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Helen Gittos @helengittos.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Wow! Major new site discovered on Lismore, in the inner Hebrides. “The most exciting moment for me was when they were doing the post-excavation analysis and they found that they had been melting gold, copper, silver, and they were making jewellery on our little island in the seventh century.”
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Helen Gittos @helengittos.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Article in @antiquity.ac.uk available here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
A major monastic centre? Rethinking Lismore’s place in the ecclesiastical landscapes of early medieval Britain | Antiquity | Cambridge Core
A major monastic centre? Rethinking Lismore’s place in the ecclesiastical landscapes of early medieval Britain - Volume 100 Issue 413
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Lars Marius Garshol @larsga.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
My new book is finally out! A short, readable overall history of beer tracing the long lines in the development of beer. Seeing history like that inevitably brings out an overlooked side of the history of beer: beer as a source of massive power. Please repost! www.garshol.priv.no/download/pow...
garshol.priv.no
The Power of Beer
Personal site of Lars Marius Garshol.
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Dr Toby Driver @drtobydriver.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
For #HillfortsWednesday the enormous, but heavily eroded, coastal promontory fort at Porth y rhaw, Pembrokeshire, in the care of @nattrustarch.bsky.social 🤩 The 5 metre+ high ramparts are among the most massive anywhere in west Wales. Excavations have revealed a long occupation 📷 My own, Saturday
A view along a cliff lined coast with the sea on the right & blue sky beyond
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Durotriges Dig @durotrigesdig.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If you like hillforts AND Brochs, here's a fantastic combo for #HillfortsWednesday Edin's Hall: a Late Iron Age broch inside a rectangular enclosure inside an earlier Iron Age bivallate 0.9ha hillfort Scottish Borders / Crìochan na h-Alba Kite photo © Hamish Fenton 2011 🤩 #HillfortsWednesday
Aerial photo looking down at the grass covered ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort with circular stone broch on the left and trees beyond
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Defend Our Juries @defendourjuries.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
94-year-old Jewish human rights barrister, Margaret Owen OBE, arrested under the Terrorism Act outside @labouruk.bsky.social conference. Her crime? Holding a piece of cardboard with the words “I oppose genocide - I support Palestine Action” on it. She was among hundreds doing the same.
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Shropshire and Beyond @shropshirebeyond.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Above the clouds - a bird’s eye view at the dawn of a new day in south Shropshire. On the horizon to the left is Caradoc and Hope Bowdler, with the Wrekin in the middle and Wenlock Edge stretching across the landscape in front of them. I had to look on a map to identify the dark shape #Shropshire
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Quite a lot of detail in this brief report of excavations of an Anglo Saxon settlement or village near Gloucester ... there's metalworking, animal bones (cattle, pig, sheep, goat), charred plant remains and a sunken feature building (SFB). Great stuff. cotswoldarchaeology.co.uk/anglo-saxon-...
cotswoldarchaeology.co.uk
Excavations south of Gloucester uncover the most westerly Anglo-Saxon hall yet excavated in Britain
Find out about the most westerly excavated Anglo-Saxon hall, part of a small settlement excavated south of Gloucester.
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Pellicle @pelliclemag.com · 29/09/2026
It's finally here! Pre-order Pellicle — Issue 1: Joy now. www.pelliclemag.com/shop/pellicl...
pelliclemag.com
Pellicle — Issue 1: Joy — Pellicle
Pellicle is proud to present our very first print magazine. The inaugural, full-length issue features interviews, essays, long reads, short humour pieces, and much more, all centred on the topic of jo...
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Dr Ella Hawkins @ellamchawk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Elizabethan playhouses were supplied by a network of tailors, merchants & craftswomen. Their names survive in records, but little is known about their lives. I’m working on new research that brings the stories of these makers & traders centre stage. Here is the project in biscuit (cookie) form. 🍪
A photograph of eight rectangular biscuits (cookies) arranged in two rows on a square white plate. The plate is framed on all sides by a trailing vine pattern in green with pops of red. The biscuits are mostly in shades of ivory, cream, yellow, and grey, with a burst of vivid red and blue in one corner of the arrangement. Moving across the top row of biscuits from left to right, the designs include: neat lines of handwritten names in an early modern parish register; a section of a hand-drawn map from 1561 featuring St Paul’s Cathedral, with street names like ‘Carter Lane’ visible in a tiny spiky font; an extract of text from a funerary monument printed in an early modern book, ending ‘So transitory is our glory’; a section of embroidery from a funeral pall featuring metallic silver armour, crossed gold keys, and two hands holding up a crown. The biscuit designs on the bottom row include: horses prancing past shopfronts on Cheapside in the mid-sixteenth century; a receipt written in early modern secretary hand, which is difficult to read; a portrait of a stern-looking women dressed in a ruff, pearls, and sober dark clothing; swirling calligraphy and dense secretary hand featuring on a will dating from 1638.
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Indeed. "The ease with which barley malt and mash can be made convinces me that the manufacture of these products was a main interest and concern in the collection and cultivation of grains by Epi-Palaeolithic and Natufian cultures." Conclusion of my thesis Barley Malt & Ale in the Neolithic (1999).
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
It's a complicated story, thats for sure! 🫠 Epi palaeolithic hunter gatherers made delicious malt sugars from wild barley and wheat. I don't know when alcoholic fermentation of malt sugars into ale/beer was discovered but it seems they had it sorted at Gobekli Tepe. Rice? That's a different story.
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Alice Roberts @profaliceroberts.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It’s a wrap! Goodbye Sri Lanka - what a wonderful country - with so many rich layers of history. Watch out for Ancient Sri Lanka by Train on @channel4.bsky.social in the New Year!
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Raqefet Cave in Israel was a sacred burial site for the hunter-gatherer culture known as the 'Natufians' around 13,000 years ago. More recently, we've also discovered here the earliest evidence of BEER BREWING from grains. Even more remarkable because these people HADN'T INVENTED AGRICULTURE YET.
smithsonianmag.com
Traces of 13,000-Year-Old Beer Found in Israel
According to the authors of a new study, the discovery marks the earliest-known evidence of beer production among ancient peoples
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I have been crocheting a rainbow inspired blanket. It had to be big enough for a small child to hide under. I reckon that it is.
Large crochet blanket in bold rainbow colours. Purple row is now being done.The start of a crochet rainbow inspired blanket, red, orange and yellow rows done, green, blue and purple to go.
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Some very nice discussion about the epipalaeolithic Near East, Natufians, grain processing and beer brewing here. But what about the malt? Thats a big part of the story too!
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Waiting for this book to arrive. And I must say, this is a great title. Beer (and therefore brewing) definitely had a huge part to play in prehistoric and historic communities. In many ways. I'm especially looking forward to reading about "wild Stone Age brews" since prehistory is my main interest.
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Sun-Headed Deity of Tamgaly @oscarfranklin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
@merryn02.bsky.social Have you seen this?
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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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Wear The Peace @wearthepeace.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Actress Susan Sarandon being arrested earlier today for protesting Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations. One is speaking out against genocide, one is committing it. One was arrested, one was not.
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Patrick Brannigan @patrickjmb.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Fond memories of Dr Rena Maguire - @justrena.bsky.social Her kindness and insightful wit. She helped me identify these wonderful Konik ponies along the Quoile Waterway (here in Lecale County Down) commenting on their origins and lovely markings. May She rest in Peace.
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Shropshire and Beyond @shropshirebeyond.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It’s here - a new edition of A #Shropshire Lad featuring my photographs has gone on sale from today. It updates a previous version of A. E. Housman’s much-loved book - also illustrated by me - which sold out. The book is on sale in bookshops across the county, as well as...
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Moon Gazer @moongazerale.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Its #freshhop brewday, lovely whole fresh picked hops for that extra crispness. Cheers again to the guys on #Sheringham for keeping our bines going! Coming soon to a pub near you. #norfolkbrewery #craftbeer #realale
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Well done to all of them! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Slieve Guillion: Repairing a 5,000-year-old tomb
A team has been trekking to the top of County Armagh's highest mountain to repair its 5,000 year old passage tomb.
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
We did an interview with the @prehistoryguy.bsky.social on our work on the process and the archaeology of making malt and ale. They called it "Beer"! They were maybe disappointed that we talked about malt and malting. It keeps moving about online and is currently here: goodpods.com/podcasts/the...
goodpods.com
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Lars Marius Garshol @larsga.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The books have finally arrived! They've been available from online stores for a while, but now I *finally* have my own copies. After years of being in progress, it finally feels like this book is published. Next up: start signing and mailing copies.
Photo of a stack of books titled "The Power of Beer", next to an opened cardboard box with DHL tape on it. The stack and box are on a table, and next to them are a pair of scissors.
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Plants are great. A nice bit of botanising here. With a great view.
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I liked this article.Storytelling definitely has a part to play in archaeological interpretation but so does science. Scientific facts are maybe not so easy to explain. They are nevertheless important to the story that is told.
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Some unusual aspects of Orkneynature and landscape. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
In pictures: Winners of Orkney nature photo contest unveiled
It is the first year the competition has run, and it is hoped it will return in future years.
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Jens Notroff @jensnotroff.com · 29/12/2024
Sure you've seen the famous #BayeuxTapestry, but have you seen it in all its sensational high-res thread-glory? Breathtaking online resource, a joint effort of the City of Bayeux, DRAC Normandie, Fabrique de patrimoines en Normandie, University of Caen, & CNRS: www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeu...
bayeuxmuseum.com
Explore the Bayeux Tapestry online - Bayeux Museum
For the first time, you will be able to freely explore the entire Bayeux Tapestry scene by scene with a never seen quality of images !
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
One of the interesting Ness of Brodgar buildings (for me) was Structure 14. It was dismantled as it was being scanned in. I thought the corner upright slabs might indicate a mouse proof grain store. Grain was found, as they say here, also drains. Intriguing. www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/about/the-st...
nessofbrodgar.co.uk
Structure Fourteen - The Ness of Brodgar Project
The smallest example of piered architecture found on site, Structure Fourteen was also the only Ness of Brodgar building to have been completely excavated. Although not as well preserved as...
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Beer Today @beertoday.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Beer lovers are being invited to explore some of the South West’s most-loved pubs as a new ale trail launches across more than 150 venues to mark Cask Ale Week beertoday.co.uk/2026/09/21/t... #beer #beernews #pubs #aletrail
beertoday.co.uk
Tribute Ale Trail launches across the South West - Beer Today
Beer lovers are being invited to explore some of the South West's most-loved pubs as a new ale trail launches across more than 150 venues to mark Cask Ale Week
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
My main project at the moment is to crochet a blanket for a young child. It is in rainbow colours. All good so far, we have agreed on shades of red, orange, yellow, green and blue but having a bit of an issue with indigo. So I started looking around and, wow, indigo! www.yatzer.com/indigo-the-c...
yatzer.com
Indigo: The Colour That Changed the World
Indigo is an incredible colour for so many reasons. Mesmerizing, striking and much loved, the colour itself is a heady mix between Violet and Blue and
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merryn @merryn02.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This classic study of malt & malting tells the culturally significant story of the development of floor malting technology over hundreds of years. Since publication (1885) malting technology has developed with Saladin boxes, drums and now Germinating Kilning Vessels to steep, germinate and dry malt.
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Helena 🏝️ HELULV Ullmark @helenaullmark.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Because SVAMP 😍
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