iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Clovis-first is dead in the water. Try as they might, they can’t put the Pre-Clovis genie back in the proverbial bottle 🫡

041

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

April saw an attack paper in Science arguing that Chile’s 14,000 yr old Monte Verde site is less than 8000 yrs old. Surovell’s small team spent 4 days in the area, compared to Dillehay’s decade or more. Be skeptical: multiple rebuttal e-letters are going to Science, which no longer prints comments.

021

Reposted by Jon Erlandson

Kristina M. Gill @kmgill.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

That is what Jon and I were talking about last night. Like…It has to be, right? But so far no DNA has been recovered from H. erectus, while Denisovans (until now) were only known through DNA. I guess we’ll see 😆 It’s so cool what we’re learning with these new technologies! @viking1000.bsky.social

031

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

I’ve been quiet on BlueSky for a couple months while Scott Fitzpatrick and I finished editing “The Oxford Handbook of Island & Coastal Archaeology.” 48 chapters in all—by a global group of top scholars—many of them already available online. Hope to see the complete volume by the end of 2025!

0192

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Meta, AI, and stolen knowledge. Out fricken RAGEous!

061

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

In Science (p. 462) this week, my colleagues--Scott Fitzpatrick, Kristina Gill, Patrick Kirch, John Ruiz, Victor Thompson, Jason Younker--and I warn of the dire threat rising seas (0.81 cm in 2024!) and marine erosion pose for coastal archaeological sites worldwide. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Rising seas endanger maritime heritage

1138

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

The last gasp of the “turn to the sea recently” hypothesis came in 1987 when one of top coastal archaeologists of the time declared it a “historical fact” that humans only systematically harvested marine resources during the past 15,000 years or less. Not a theory or hypothesis, a FACT. Wrong!

A 1987 quote stating that “ It is a historical fact that maritime resources were not exploited until relatively late in prehistory “, superimposed on photos of coral reef fishes hundreds of seals on a beach.

040

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

The 2024 Volume 19 of the Journal of Island & Coastal Archaeology arrived in December, 878 pages of great articles from around the world! Unfortunately I spilled an elaborately crafted smoothie on it! Still readable, but pretty sticky . . . so it goes.

061

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Humans only turned to the sea, they said—harvesting “marginal” aquatic foods—fish, shellfish, sea mammals, seaweeds, etc—after large land mammals were decimated. A deer equaled 177,000 oysters, they said, why bother? Forget what the Tlingit in Alaska say: When the tide is out, the table is set!

Photo of elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) hauled out on a pocket beach on California's Tuqan (San Miguel) Island (by J. Erlandson).

0182

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

I created an island and coastal archaeology starter pack! Let me know if you’d like to join. go.bsky.app/CRAuPY6

6279

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

I grew up swimming & surfing in the Pacific. In grad school, I found it odd that top anthropologists said our ancestors ignored marine ecosystems for >99% of our (Homo sp.) deep history. 🌍 Yet coastlines-where land & sea meet-are hotspots of biodiversity, rich in resources. Something didn't add up.

The author (age 10) in Hawai'i, surfing Kailua shore break in 1965 on a 9'4" Yater Spoon (photo by Niki Erlandson).

030

Reposted by Jon Erlandson

Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

I was born in a port city and have always thought the discipline underestimated the relationship of the people with the past and the sea. People have their biases. They don't know the sea so it is a threat. They don't know the forest so it is impenetrable. They don't know the desert so...

121

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

An oddity of 20th century archaeology was the widely held theory that “coastal adaptations” only appeared worldwide in the last 10,000-15,000 years. South Africa’s Middle Stone Age shell middens, dated between 164,000 & 55,000 years ago, effectively demolished this theory for this part of the world.

Color plate of coastal caves from Singer & Wymer’s classic 1982 book, “The Middle Stone Age at Klasies River Mouth in South Africa.”

2254

Jon Erlandson @viking1000.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

In 2005, Scott Fitzpatrick and I started as founding coeditors of the Journal of Island & Coastal Archaeology. In 2025, under Scott’s continued leadership, JICA will publish its 20th volume! Still going strong, with more than 8,000 pages on our deep entanglement with island & coastal ecosystems.

Original cover of JICA, showing an island arc from space, embedded in a deep blue sea.

0287