Ben Marwick

It was so interesting to reproduce @benmarwick.bsky.social 's paper and to try to replicate it with openalex.org data. OpenAlex is bigger & more inclusive than commercial databases—but it still lacks many cited references, just like @opencitations.bsky.social. We need to push for more #opencitations

1/3 New recommendation: @alainqueffelec.bsky.social (2026). Replication report for Marwick (2025) “Is archaeology a science?”, including new data from OpenAlex. V5 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI #Archaeology doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 🏺🧪🦣 #OpenScience #openaccess

Around 40,000 years ago, migrating Homo sapiens spread across Europe carrying handled objects intricately etched with geometric designs. Today, researchers find these signs might have represented an ancient form of proto-writing. #Archaeology #Aurignacian 🧪🏺 New in @science.org

“Changing the Landscape of Archaeological Publishing” 📚 Congratulations to Dr Jess Beck, Ad Astra Fellow, UCD School of Archaeology, and multi-national co-authors on their important new paper in Current Anthropology critically assessing archaeological publishing. doi.org/10.1086/739789

“Rather than treating [academic] job ads as prescriptions, we frame them as signals — shaped by departmental needs, institutional pressures, and broader social moments. This gives a clearer picture of the demand side of academic archaeology” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Documents that lay out a research group’s ethos and practical guidelines are becoming increasingly popular in the academic community go.nature.com/3OzPt0h

Lab morale got you down? Try a handbook

Check out our new article in Current Anthropology on the changing landscape of archaeological publishing! www.doi.org/10.1086/739789

New article! "Changing the Landscape of Archaeological Publishing" in Current Anthropology, by a giant collaborative group of coauthors fearlessly led by Jess Beck and including @bridgetalex.bsky.social @benmarwick.bsky.social @christinawarinner.bsky.social www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....

The Paper of the Month from American Antiquity is "Hire Ed: Job Market Dynamics for Tenure-Track Faculty Positions in Archaeology" by Ben Marwick et al., available #openaccess! 📚 https://cup.org/4bJJlw5 #Archaeology #PaperOfTheMonth

New version of my reproduction and replication attempt of @benmarwick.bsky.social 's paper published few months ago in JAS, but here with #OpenAlex and #OpenCitations data. You can read it in a interactive html page here: aqueff.github.io/replication_... 🧪🏺

Early humans in central China may have been making sophisticated stone tools as early as 160,000 years ago, according to research in Nature Communications. This discovery challenges the perception that stone tool technology in Asia lagged behind Europe and Africa during this period. 🏺 🧪

Super interesting article on the archaeology jobs wiki and trends in archaeology job ads

Congratulations to UCD School of Archaeology’s Dr Jess Beck and her colleagues on their paper in American Antiquity, just published December 2025 “Hire Ed: Job Market Dynamics for Tenure-Track Faculty Positions in Archaeology” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Very excited that our new guidelines for reporting the results of statistical analyses in the Journal of Archaeological Science have now been published online: www.sciencedirect.com/journal/jour... 🦴📊 @ercrema.bsky.social @benmarwick.bsky.social

#考古学のおやつ 2/2 ▶ Setareh Shafizadeh 𝑒𝑡 𝑎𝑙. (2025) Between Nomads and Settlers: A Quantitative Analysis of Lithic Assemblages from Tula’i (Tuleii), Zagros, Iran. 𝐿𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑐 𝑇𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑛𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦. doi.org/10.1080/0197...

Open access:Between Nomads and Settlers: A Quantitative Analysis of Lithic Assemblages from Tula’i (Tuleii), Zagros, Iran. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Using the lead isotope community and neighbouring fields as nucleus, this workshop initiates the development of a toolbox for the archaeological sciences written as R package. bit.ly/4nah57V @benmarwick.bsky.social

Why do societies reliably develop strikingly similar traditions like dance songs, hero stories, shamanism & justice institutions? In a new BBS target article, I propose a theory for such "super-attractors" + cultural evolution more broadly. Now open for commentary: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Co-organizing a session at #SAA San Francisco with T. Kovach: "Toward an Integration of Quantitative Approaches in #Lithic Analysis." A few spots still open! Abstracts due Sept. 4. Email me if you’d like to join the conversation: armando.falcucci@nyu.edu #Archaeology #FlintFriday #FossilFriday 🏺

Here's said mascot along with an excellent checklist by @shreyadimri.bsky.social

🎉New preprint! "TADA! Simple guidelines to improve code sharing" tinyurl.com/8rmnwjrk We present simple guidelines to help researchers of all coding levels improve the transparency and reproducibility of their analytical code, TADA! Transferable, Accessible, Documented, Annotated.

All data and code available on zenodo (doi.org/10.5281/zeno...) and on my GitHub account. #opendata Thanks @benmarwick.bsky.social ‬for the possibility to learn from reproducing your work and for providing the basis for this replication, which are unfortunately excessively rare in #Archaeology!

New #preprint online: Reproduction and replication of @benmarwick.bsky.social (2025), with data from OpenAlex. Accessible as interactive html version: aqueff.github.io/replication_... and more traditional manuscript with doi here: doi.org/10.31235/osf... Is archaeology a hard or soft science? 🏺🧪

Here is my checklist summarising a small set of some of the simplest tasks you can do that have high potential to improve the reproducibility of your analysis code. This is based on my year of reproducibility reviews for the J. of Archaeological Science: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lHjN_6yUM... 🧪🏺

I'm happy to share this review article, where I attempt to ponder about missed opportunities in archaeological statistical modelling.

Is archaeology a science? 🧪 Here's my new paper that has a go at answering this question by analysing 10,000 journal articles: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lHjN_6yUM...

🚨 Big milestone for Rdatasets 🚨 The web archive now hosts 3400+ free and documented CSV datasets. Fantastic for teaching and testing! And {Rdatasets} is a new #RStats 📦 for easy download and search Web archive: vincentarelbundock.github.io/Rdatasets R 📦: vincentarelbundock.github.io/Rdatasetspkg

It's CES election time! We have FOUR positions that have come up for renewal, so please consider nominating yourself or your colleagues. Nominations close June 20th, with voting from June 30th -July 4th.

Very excited to be working with Angie Reed + the Tribal Exchange Network (www.tribalexchangenetwork.org) on a revival of {redoc}, an #rstats pkg enabling collaboration on reproducible reports. Thanks to the R Consortium and congrats to the other grant winners! r-consortium.org/posts/r-cons...

Paper alert! Happy to have joined Huan et al. to examine miniaturised lithic diversity across the last 20,000 years in southern China and its potential relation to geographic and climatic variability. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

There are lots of benefits of releasing code alongside scientific publications - when you do, you might want to consider your code's "Reporting, Running, Reliability, Reproducibility, Robustness, Readability, and Release."

As long as social science journals don’t implement actual code review — not just mechanical reproducibility checks — there’s no good way to ward off such errors or abuse. Not every publication has a shocking result begging for a replication, like the one flagged by @johannarickne.bsky.social.

Thank you for your important work! It is crystal clear that code and data publication alongside each manuscript is the only way forward for science. Manuscripts with data analyses that do not publish code and data should not be accepted for publication anymore.

SAA journal #AmericanAntiquity is advancing #researchtransparency in #publishing. Read how, alongside an introduction to Associate Editor for #Reproducibility, Dr. Alan Farahani. Approach: ▶️ cup.org/4hFclo5 Editorial: ▶️ cup.org/41AHuDk #Archaeology #SAA2025Denver

Computer scientists and bioinformaticians address four key questions to help rookie coders to make the right choice https://go.nature.com/42UuoT3

New visualization tool alert! The vayr package version 1.0.0 is now on CRAN. It contains position adjustments for ggplot2 that help with overplotting in pleasing ways. My favorite is position_sunflower(). - install.packages("vayr") - alexandercoppock.com/vayr #rstats #ggplot2 #dataviz

Proud to announce our primer on "Ten principles for reliable, efficient, and adaptable coding in psychology and cognitive neuroscience" www.nature.com/articles/s44... This primer is for beginners to get started, advanced programmers to improve, and PIs. #psychology #psychsci #cogsci #neuroskyence

Many processes from industry are not appropriate or overkill for an academic setting, but we can and should be doing better than we currently are. Our paper tries to give practical advice on how you can improve your scientific workflow, without being a coding guru. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I am thrilled to share my paper on statistical training in archaeology. Thank you to @kjkillackey.bsky.social for the incredible illustration in the graphical abstract. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Here is an excellent checklist for reproducible research, this is from the Biometrical Journal, but is relevant for computational scientists in all fields: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal... Lots of best practices and specific tips for increasing the quality, usefulness & impact of papers 🧪

Here is our plain English summary of our new discovery of Middle Palaeolithic stone tools in East Asia: theconversation.com/stone-tool-d... published today in @us.theconversation.com 🧪

Our new paper reports a complete Quina technological system in the 60-50 ka assemblage at Longtan, Southwest China Ruan, Q. et al. (2025) Quina lithic technology indicates diverse Late Pleistocene human dynamics in East Asia doi.org/10.1073/pnas... 🆓 faculty.washington.edu/bmarwick/PDF...

Finally out!! Check our paper on Middle Paleolithic Quina technology in south China, Just published in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Our new paper on 3D GM has all the models and script available for others to apply our method. We use it to demonstrate interregional variability of Nubian Levallois cores but it has broader potential for lithic studies #openscience #archaeology #3DGM @icarehb.bsky.social @jmcascalheira.bsky.social

📢 We have a new paper out!! Led by the incredible @eshallinan.bsky.social we introduce a novel application of three-dimensional geometric morphometrics (GM) to quantify the shape variability of Nubian Levallois cores. #archaeology #openscience @icarehb.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...