Tom Booth

🏺🧪 More Question of Science podcast Tom-Boothelry on ancient DNA with @profbriancox.bsky.social and @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social youtu.be/RmvmLH44NCQ?...

TONIGHT Chris Stringer on Still 'In Search of the Neanderthals' 👇

Dear friends and colleagues - with apologies for publishing much later than usual, our 2026/7 seminar programme. As always, all meetings start at 18:15 @uclarchaeology.bsky.social (unless otherwise stated) and all are welcome, no booking required. We look forward to seeing you there!

Alfred the Great died #OnThisDay 899. The story of how he became king of Wessex is quite complicated, so I made a short explanatory video.

‘A tangle of bones and nightmare creatures entangled atop an SUV’ Surely your average cemetery excavation after a particularly late night?

A new #UrbanPrehistory blog post on #Glasgow deep time - the discovery of a probable fragment of Neolithic polished stone axe at the #Camphill excavations this summer was a rare & significant discovery in a city of few axes… theurbanprehistorian.wordpress.com/2026/10/26/g...

Enjoying this article title. 'A Goth at Gloucester? In THIS economy!?'

Applications are now open to join our 2027 Master's programme in human evolution. Covering the Palaeolithic, Palaeoanthropology & other key disciplines, the PaPa MSc degree is designed to equip you for a career in the deep human past. More info here: tinyurl.com/5duy6twh DMs Open #PaPa 🦣🏺🧪💀🧬

Your astonishing artifact this week is a Bronze Age “cape” found in a woman’s burial at Goblins’ Hill in Wales. 🏺🧪

The ERC Starting Grant numbers are out. With a staggering 60% increase in applications and a 15% reduction in funding volume, the success rate drops to an all time low of 5%. That number should be a warning to both future applicants and the @erc.europa.eu. 1/9 erc.europa.eu/news-events/...

TOMORROW EVENING Don't miss Chris Stringer on Still 'In Search of the Neanderthals' 👇

I absolutely love the photos in this. www.londoncentric.media/p/oxford-str...

As Halloween approaches, and the spirits come closer, will anyone make contact with the "original architect of Stonehenge", last heard chatting to a Leicestershire tailor (as reported this weekend in 1924)? This is "not the present Stonehenge, you are to understand, but the one before—in 10400 BC"…

Scarification on the face of Long Meg, Cumbria. Neolithic/Bronze Age rock art, including spirals, concentric circles, cup and ring marks and geometric shapes on the side that faces her circle of Daughters 📸 Sept 25 #StandingStoneSunday

And yet it couldn’t bring back Doggerland…😔

Out in MEC! Salis et al. studied DNA preservation in museum specimens by comparing frozen tissue, dried skins, skeletons, and fluid preserved across a variety of taxa. How does each work for genetic research? @wileyecology.bsky.social 🔗: buff.ly/zR7vva0 📷️: Christopher J Raxworthy

ROCKS GO BACK TONIGHT! As is traditional, we are again paying homage to all those hard working custodians of stone time keeping and rock clockery (©️ @drnickarchaeo.bsky.social) who will be working their weekend to make sure annual moving of the rocks goes to plan tonight. #Archaeology 🏺 1/4

Prints available in my shop of this one from last year. The perfect Christmas gift for the philosophically-inclined office wall . Limited edition, numbered and signed giclee art print - link to shop in bio. #philosophy

#ClocksGoBack this weekend in UK/Europe, giving many of us a bonus hour of lovely sleep. Good time for a reminder that the tendency to be a “morning lark” or “night owl” is influenced by your DNA. But, like other aspects of behaviour, lots of different genes are involved, each with small effect.🌞🌚🧬🧪

"When my Chinese colleagues sent me a full-size 3D print of this skull, I couldn’t believe it. I’ve seen hundreds of fossil human skulls, and this was the biggest I had ever set eyes on." 🧪🏺

Once again I am INFURIATED by that bit in Animal Collective's My Girls where he sings 'I don't mean to seem like I care about material things, Like my social status,' when social status is clearly NOT a material thing. Then he goes on about wanting adobe slabs, which ARE a material thing.

🏺🧪Now with the link!

🏺🧪 The genetic history of humans in pre-LGM Upper Palaeolithic Europe gets even more complex with more ancient genomes and some ingenious use of sedimentary DNA. Also casually identify that two burials from Ostuni Cave represent a mother and her son.

I was reminded of a very fun pop gen result this week. The probability that the MRCA of a small sample (of size n) at a locus is also the MRCA of the whole population is: (n-1)/(n+1) So even very small samples likely encompass most variation. Result from: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Marmots!!!

📰 Chemical compounds preserved in bones shed light on the lives of a Muslim minority in medieval Spain 🏺 #AntiquityResearch #ArchaeologyNews via @english.elpais.com.web.brid.gy english.elpais.com/culture/2026...

🚨 Upcoming Archaeology Day! 📍 St Fagans National Museum of History 🗓️ Saturday 14 November ⏰ 10:00-16:00 🎟️ Link below - see you there! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/archaeolog... @henebtwa.bsky.social

For S2E2 It’s friend of the show @jenniferbones.bsky.social to tell us about… Vikings on Orkney making fishy cheese??? Find out more The Archaeology of… podcast 🐟 🧀https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXSJRrw1enbQYishJwl6MSbkdjqToG_JK&si=kVo9S4moLk2IZZvr #archaeology #podcast #zooarchaeology #history

A bit late posting this, but it was great to work on this perspective piece with @kstsosie.bsky.social and Mehmet Somel, in which we explore what’s at stake when we talk about “kinship” in ancient DNA studies and who gets to define human connections across time. 🧵 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

*New book!* coming April 2027: 'Second World War Archaeology at the Edge of Living Memory', coedited by me and Jennifer McKinnon. Open Access from @uclpress.bsky.social based on a @wennergrenorg.bsky.social workshop uclpress.co.uk/book/second-...

<Doctor Manhattan gif> War dogs. What I wrote last time. arutherford.substack.com/p/dire-wolve...

Heck!

Very exciting paper just out!

Reform UK Oxford will host a talk in November criticising "DEI" by the Nathan Cofnas, who describes his belief in + commitment to biological racism as "race realism", writing "in a meritocracy, blacks would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”.

Really lovely article on archaeology through the eyes of archaeologists' 'spouses, parents, children, and close friends' - just published in Public Archaeology: 'Archaeological Osmosis or How Is Archaeology Seen by Those Who Share Our Lives?' www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Never mind the disease and hard labour, this is why I would never use a Time Machine to go back to ancient Egypt 🤮

If only it had been Edward the Confessor, that would have been particularly useful to me for reasons I can’t specify right now.

We broke everyone involved in this episode 😅🐷🥛(and I include our amazing producer Mariusz)

The new East of Eden is terrific but while it’s a good effort…New Zealand does not look like Connecticut or California, Little House on the Misty Mountains.

Next Tuesday we have an exciting session with Chris Stringer. Join us LIVE or ZOOM! 🌕 Tues Oct 27 🌖 18:30 (UTC) Chris Stringer Still 'In Search of the Neanderthals' NB Venue is G6 Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY ZOOM ID 948 6108 7055 passcode Wawilak

The Leiden Statement on the 2027 EAA Annual Meeting The Faculty Board of the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University has shared a statement on its role as host of the 2027 EAA Annual Meeting. Please find the statement and the EAA Executive Board response here: www.e-a-a.org/EAA2027/Leid...