janfrel.bsky.social

I’m fascinated today reading a recent article about insect-eating and ancient dental calculus. In brief, Neanderthals have as much insect DNA in their dental calculus as western chimpanzees, while ancient European modern people have a lot less. www.johnhawks.net/p/traces-of-...

Eastern Neanderthals who lived ~120,000 years ago and Western Neanderthals ~60,000 years ago were as genetically differentiated as the most divergent modern human populations today. A lot from one “unremarkable” bone! Here's the full publication: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... 4/4

NEW How did prehistoric people actually design and use their tools? The WEAR Project combines experimental #archaeology with computational modelling to statistically analyse and predict how lithics were made, worn down and reshaped over time. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

My latest for @arstechnica.com explores what it means that we have 1.77 million year-old Homo erectus fossils in central China, and whether Homo erectus was really the first hominin to migrate that far. 🧪

I am really excited to share news of this new jaw...until now Paranthropus had been conspicuously absent from the Afar. Fieldwork at Mille-Logya is not easy, and this fossil is the result of years of very hard work (and a lot of days of dry screening by our team)! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A claw-shaped hand stencil discovered in a cave in Indonesia is the oldest work of art in the world www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2026/01/a...

The Norfolk Carnyx: a Playmobil story in 4 parts. 🧵 #DiggingForBritain #DrawingDiggingForBritain #PlaymobilInfestation @profaliceroberts.bsky.social @pcaarchaeology.bsky.social 1: Life

Good to wake up to a news headline that has the words #IronAge #WarTrumpet and #Boudicca in it www.theguardian.com/science/2026... PreConstruct Archaeology reveals a complete carnyx plus other martial objects from #Norfolk Wow 😲 We need a lie down @theguardian.com @theduncanmackay.bsky.social

Oddly modern Staffordshire was mined in 18th Cent Uk for clay and coal, yielding prehistoic fossils before they were understood geologically. Local potters whimsically used the fossils as motifs for teapots. - NY Met

The @cnrs.fr is quitting Web of Science (after Scopus last year) to promote Open Alex instead! Great news! www.cnrs.fr/en/update/cn...

More Sapiens revelations in new study of ancient S. African population. A lot of variance between this long-isolated group and modern humans concerns "brain growth trajectories and complex cognitive trait phenotypes." How many isolated populations were there? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just out "Social and emotional cognition in Pleistocene hominin evolution: The role of biocultural processes" with @johnhawks.net @marckissel.bsky.social Penny Spikins, Jennifer French and me. Open access in Journal of Archaeological Science... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Whoever made this stone flake at 51-42kya made 3-ply Z-twisted cords using S-twisted strands. Either a MHS population made this cord and also made Levallois flakes, or Neanderthal population did. But whoever it was, they were sapiens all the way. You can buy this type of rope at any hardware store.

And there we have a bluestone, quite clearly floating on top of it...

Very happy to share our new paper in PNAS, revealing a new late Neanderthal discovered through biomolecular techniques, revealing long-distance connections across Eurasia 🦴 @konstantinache.bsky.social @tommyhigham.bsky.social doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

⚠️Paper Alert!⚠️ Excited to share this paper with @roccoro.bsky.social where we examined whether ceramic technology in Saharan Africa was the result of a single or multiple episodes of innovation & diffusion rdcu.be/eJi3g

Deborah Barsky and I interview Eudald Carbonell about his framework, the hominization and humanization process. Utimately, we need larger concepts through which we understand the archaeo record, that also necessarily capture the humanistic motive to learn about them. Carbonell’s offering is potent.

Here I talk to JP Mallory about the quest to identify the Proto Indo European homeland. It has attracted theorists like moths to a flame for centuries now.

Million-year-old skulls in China are adding some big wrinkles to the history of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. BBC report: www.bbc.com/news/article... & @johnhawks.net take: www.johnhawks.net/p/the-proble...

First wine, then survival: Bronze Age farmers prioritized irrigating vineyards during times of climate crisis www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/09/f...

Just released: Robert Sapolsky's 2025 Human Behavioral Biology survey course. If you're interested in deep-time human and primate behavior as it is recorded in the archaeological record, this is an asset for you - much of the behavior he explains here of course developed long ago.

Ancient beehives from c. 900BC Tel Reḥov in the Jordan Valley for #WorldHoneyBeeDay 🏺 The hollow clay cylinders have a small hole at one end (for the 🐝) and a lid at the other (for the beekeeper). 🔗 from 2008 (£) doi.org/10.1017/S000...

There's still so much we don't know about who was where, doing what. @mu-peter.bsky.social @chrisbstringer.bsky.social

It was great fun working as a consultant for Apple TV+/BBC Studios' Prehistoric Planet 3: Ice Age -- reconstructing Ice Age worlds down to the tiniest detail is what really floats my boat, and I cannot wait to see how it has turned out! Streaming from 26th November: www.apple.com/tv-pr/news/2...

Wonderful day spent in the hot sun with Mehmet Özdoğan at his base camp.

Amazing primate trip coming to a close in Tanzania / Rwanda - chimps, olive baboons, vervets, blue, colobus, golden monkeys, and gorillas. And got a tour from Jane Goodall of her dream museum in Arusha (stained glass). Jane’s old pal Anthony Collins was no less brilliant and inspiring.

Wonder what archaeology makes headlines? In a new study, we investigated US media coverage for 1,115 arch papers published over 6 years. Seems Chinese archaeology was under-reported. Regional disparities in US media coverage of archaeology research | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cool! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

My review of last year's "Legion" exhibition at the BM is now published (free to access). Spoiler alert: I was not a fan! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

My colleague Irina Matuzava leads the project that just completed the second country map for The New Grand Tour: La Belle France For the full experience, when you click on the link, expand the map and then click view all. (Thread)

#NewPaperAlert: We're delighted to present The Open Aurignacian Project — an open-access 3D database of 2,000+ lithics from four key Italian Paleolithic sites. Paper 👉 doi.org/10.1038/s415... #FlintFriday #FossilFriday #3Darchaeology #OpenScience #DigitalHeritage @julienrs.bsky.social 🦣 🏺 (1/6) 🧵

POSITION: Assistant Professor in Global History of Knowledge, Lund University Lund University is looking for a promising, academically young, researcher with an international background who can build and lead a research group within the field of Global History of Knowledge.

George Walker’s "The Costume of Yorkshire" is a delightful and informative read for anyone interested in the county’s history. First published in 1814 and reprinted in a limited edition 71 years later, it offers a vivid glimpse into Yorkshire’s economic and

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