iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!

Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

After that something changed. We ate our sandwiches in the mouth of the cave, staring out at a basin that is now dust and sagebrush. But those caves were carved by waves. A lake filled that basin once, with fish and birds and the people who relied on them. I could see both at once.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Mazama ash. It fell 7,600 years ago, when the mountain blew its top and left behind the crater that filled to become Crater Lake. Everything below that line — every bone, every hearth, every spear point — came from a world in which Mt. Mazama was still standing tall.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Pick out every mouse bone, every charcoal fragment, every flake of stone. Then one afternoon my trowel punched through a hard, compacted layer into something soft and powdery.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

The summer I nearly quit archaeology, I spent six weeks digging at Paisley Caves in eastern Oregon. I was between degrees and worn thin. The work was slow the way archaeology always is. Scrape back a few centimeters. Sift a bucket through fine mesh.

Paisley Cave archaeological site in eastern Oregon.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Everything below that line — every bone, every hearth, every spear point — came from a world in which Mt. Mazama was still standing tall.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Then one afternoon my trowel punched through a hard, compacted layer into something soft and powdery. Mazama ash. It fell 7,600 years ago, when the mountain blew its top and left behind the crater that filled to become Crater Lake.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

I was between degrees and worn thin. The work was slow the way archaeology always is. Scrape back a few centimeters. Sift a bucket through fine mesh. Pick out every mouse bone, every charcoal fragment, every flake of stone.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Learn more with Mammoths and Empires, out January 5: www.amazon.com/dp/B0H58VLS3...

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Nearly everywhere else on the Pacific Coast, the beaches those first travelers walked are now hundreds of feet underwater. Daryl Fedje, Duncan McLaren, Quentin Mackie, and their First Nations collaborators found the first print in 2014, after more than a decade of working out where to look.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

They survive because of a geological fluke. As the ice sheets melted, the land around Calvert Island rebounded upward at almost exactly the rate the sea was rising. This shoreline has barely moved in 13,000 years.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Twenty-nine footprints in the clay of a British Columbia beach. Two adults and a child, stepping out of a canoe, 13,200 years ago. That's the whole site. The moment a family got out of a boat and walked up the shore.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"... They travel along the kelp. Kelp means safety, kelp means life, and their boats travel within its embrace. They go forward until forward becomes familiar, and then they go forward again." Out January 5: www.amazon.com/dp/B0H58VLS3...

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

An excerpt from Mammoths and Empires: "With every paddle stroke they enter a new world, but it all seems so familiar. Kelp reaches up from below the surface in long amber ropes..."

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A toast was made to "the passing of a paradigm." Mammoths and Empires, out January 5: www.amazon.com/dp/B0H58VLS3...

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Eventually twelve specialists visited the site, including his harshest critics, then they argued for two hours around a table in a beachside bar. Finally, they voted. Unanimous.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The dates came back at 14,500 years — roughly a thousand years too early. He was told the dates were contaminated. Floods had washed the artifacts in from somewhere else. Burrowing animals mixed the layers.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What he found was a sixty-foot tent frame anchored with sharpened stakes, hearths lined with clay, cordage twisted from local reeds, medicinal plants still used by the Mapuche today, and hunks of mastodon meat left beside a hearth.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

For twenty years, Dr. Tom Dillehay invited his critics to come see for themselves. Monte Verde is centered along an unremarkable creek bank in southern Chile. A mastodon tooth brought Dillehay there in 1977.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The timing was earlier. The route was different. And the scientists who figured that out spent decades being told they were wrong. 🏺🧪💙📚 Available January 5, 2027: www.amazon.com/dp/B0H58VLS3...

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

From Mammoths and Empires: "It was a beautifully simplistic and easy-to-digest story about the First Americans that nicely explained most of the archaeological facts of the time. New facts have emerged. We now know that the story is wrong."

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Does this sound familiar? The first Americans walked across the Bering Land Bridge, down an ice-free corridor, chasing mammoths into an empty continent 13,500 years ago.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

What he noticed in that arroyo would overturn everything American scientists believed about how long people had been on this continent. 🏺🧪💙📚 His story opens chapter two of Mammoths and Empires. Out January 5: www.amazon.com/dp/B0H58VLS3...

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

McJunkin was born enslaved in Texas in 1851. Without any formal education, he taught himself to read and write, learned Spanish, played fiddle and guitar, and developed a love of science and archaeology.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

In 1908, a flash flood tore through northeastern New Mexico and killed seventeen people. The next morning, the foreman of the Crowfoot Ranch rode out to check the fence line and discovered large bones jutting out of an arroyo. Most cowboys would have ridden right past. George McJunkin didn't.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Archaeologists have spent a century trying to reconstruct what happened. Mammoths and Empires is the story of that reconstruction. 🏺🧪💙📚

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

What they left were the faint impressions of their fires in rock-lined hearths, animals butchered with stone tools, footprints preserved in ancient muds — and stories, passed down across hundreds of generations, still told today.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

"When the first people arrived in the Americas, they entered a world unimaginably different from the one we know today, no maps, no roads, no villages, no friendly faces."

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

"On October 12, 1492, a stranger landed on the sandy shores of an island in the Bahamas. And the world changed." That's the first line of my new book. But it isn't about that day. It's about what came before. Out January 5th. Preorder here: www.amazon.com/dp/B0H58VLS3...

amazon.com

Mammoths and Empires: A History of Indigenous Discovery, Civilization, and Adaptation in the Americas: Braje, Todd J.: 9798897102556: Amazon.com: Books

Mammoths and Empires: A History of Indigenous Discovery, Civilization, and Adaptation in the Americas [Braje, Todd J.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Mammoths and Empires: A Hist...

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

My new book is available for preorder! Mammoths and Empires—rethinking 15,000 years of Indigenous history in the Americas. 🏺 Preorder it from Bookshop here: bookshop.org/p/books/mamm...

bookshop.org

Mammoths and Empires: A History of Indigenous Discovery, Civilization, and Adaptation in the Americas

A History of Indigenous Discovery, Civilization, and Adaptation in the Americas

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Reposted by Todd Braje

Museum of Natural and Cultural History @uomnch.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

We've received 20 gifts & unlocked our first challenge gift! Next up: 40 individual gifts for $1000.00.

A person wearing a background University of Oregon cap taking a photo of an archaeological trench. Text overlay is "New Challenge Unlocked A Decade of Ducks Give 5.15.25."

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Reposted by Todd Braje

Museum of Natural and Cultural History @uomnch.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

"The field of archaeology is changing, and if your desire is to attend a field school that will prepare you for real world archaeology, while simultaneously making connections and friendships that will last a lifetime, look no further." #DucksGIve tinyurl.com/yc73v9z2

A picture of two students relaxing in camp chairs. A blazing campfire lights their faces with an orange-red glow. Overlay text reads "Ducks Give Send students to field school. 2025 challenge gifts 20 gifts=$500 unlocked. 40 gifts = $1000 unlocked. 60 gifts = $10000 unlocked."

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Reposted by Todd Braje

Museum of Natural and Cultural History @uomnch.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

This Thursday: #DucksGive. This 24-hr campaign uses challenge gifts to drive @uoregon.bsky.social student success. Our focus: scholarships to archaeological field school. Many of you field school is not only critical for your career, it's EXPENSIVE. Let's make it more accessible; stay tuned. 🏺

In a trench filled with sandbags, two young University of Oregon students use shovels, brushes, and dustpans to do archaeology things. A white overlay reads "A decade of Ducks Give 5.15.25."

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

For our museum, the communities that have the most to lose with these cuts are the rural communities throughout OR. IMLS funding helps us bring our education team and outreach to places far afield from Eugene. We all lose with these cuts, but some more than others... www.npr.org/2025/03/31/n...

npr.org

Entire staff at federal agency that funds libraries and museums put on leave

The staff of the Institute of Museum and Library Services was placed on administrative leave Monday morning, following a meeting between IMLS leadership and DOGE staff.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

There is still time to join us for our Annual Dinner on April 24: mnch.uoregon.edu/learn/annual...

mnch.uoregon.edu

Annual Dinner and Talk

The museum's annual dinner and talk. Tickets on sale now!

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Reposted by Todd Braje

Rebekah Jones @georebekah.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

ABC, NBC & CBS dedicated about 16 minutes of airtime last night to the California wildfires without once mentioning climate change. Since the news failed do it's job, here's a short summary of the role of climate change and wildfire risk: www.noaa.gov/noaa-wildfir...

noaa.gov

Wildfire climate connection

Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States during the last ...

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Support us at the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History: blogs.uoregon.edu/mnchfieldnot...

blogs.uoregon.edu

From the Director: Announcing the Thomas J Connolly Fund | MNCH Fieldnotes

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Reposted by Todd Braje

Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Something lovely for the weekend! Marvellous clay pots with octopus decoration made by artisans from Bronze Age Crete about 3,500 years ago! 🐙❤️ Heraklion Archaeological Museum. 📷 by me #Archaeology

Clay vessels, creamy yellow in colour, with black hand painted decoration.

Top left - Minoan Marine Style pithoid jar with many handles decorated in the Minoan Marine Style, with octopuses, tritons, rocks, and coral. Height 55 cm. From Zakros. 1500-1450 BC.

Top right - flask decorated in Minoan ‘Marine Style’’ with an octopus with tentacles writhing around the body of the vase. Additional motifs indicate the seabed. Height 27cm. From Palaikastro, 1500-1450 BC

Bottom left - jar decorated in marine style with an octopus among rocks. From Knossos Little Palace, 1450-1370 BC

Bottom right - krater decorated with a stylized octopus, 1370-1300 BC.

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Reposted by Todd Braje

Museum of Natural and Cultural History @uomnch.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

This is a mola, bought in the San Blas Islands in Panama in 1973 in the tourist trade. Molas are made through reverse appliqué and appliqué! Layers of cloth are sewn loosely together and the the design is cut through the top layer(s).

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Reposted by Todd Braje

Museum of Natural and Cultural History @uomnch.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Another cat gem from the Jensen Artic Collection: this yo-yo (Inpuiaq: igruuraak) made for the tourist trade by an Inuit artist. #indigenousart

Two sitting cat silhouettes covered in white and brown fur. The eyes are red beads and the nose is a small black bead. They are tied together with a blue string coiled behind them.

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Reposted by Todd Braje

Museum of Natural and Cultural History @uomnch.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

American Archaeology published a wonderful look into our field schools and how they contribute to Great Basin archaeology and changing the scientific understanding of people in North America. The article includes THREE GENERATIONS of University of Oregon students! 🏺🧪https://shorturl.at/O4Zj5

A group of students and faculty holding up flags from the Unversity of Oregon and University of Nevada. They are in front of huge rock faces.

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Reposted by Todd Braje

Museum of Natural and Cultural History @uomnch.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

This #FossilFriday is the oldest fossil on display in the museum. It's a mosasaur jaw originally collected in Niobrara, Kansas and is about 100 million years old. Those impressive teeth were used to hunt sharks, shellfish, and mollusks. #paleosky #paleontology 🧪

A six inch long chuck of sandy beige rock. A darker brown bone is visible running a long the bottom of it, with 8 1/2 beautifully preserved dark brown teeth protruding up like the teeth of a hair comb.

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Reposted by Todd Braje

Museum of Natural and Cultural History @uomnch.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

😻This mola is a child's blouse, bought in Panama. "Mola" is a Kuna word with several meanings, but often referring to a brightly colored upper garment. This style of garment developed from an earlier tradition of body painting.😻

A blouse made up of dark blue fabric. The sleeves have pink ribbon cuffs and the majority of the torso of the blouse is covered in bright red, orange, and green striped fabric that makes up the shape of two adorable cats.

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Todd Braje @tbraje.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

The 'Alalā, which went extinct in the wild decades ago, has been re-introduced on Maui: www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2... Interested in the extinction of Hawaiian birds and why the past matters for addressing our global biodiversity crisis? Read more here: www.amazon.com/Understandin...

amazon.com

Understanding Imperiled Earth: How Archaeology and Human History Can Inform Our Planet's Future

Buy Understanding Imperiled Earth: How Archaeology and Human History Can Inform Our Planet's Future on Amazon.com ✓ FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders

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