Rachel Pope

theconversation.comAncient DNA study shows women at the centre of societies in iron age Britain – supporting decades of archaeologyGenetics shows that women stayed put in Late Iron Age Dorset, while men moved to other groups.

10 Aug

Replying to @prehistorian.bsky.social

A good time to re-share my piece revealing how a matrifocal Iron Age was not restricted to aDNA science since 2024, but was suspected first by 19thc. ancient historians and subsequently by French and then British archaeologists since the late 20th century: theconversation.com/ancient-dna-...

now

Prehistorians, I just mapped Lily Chitty and Bill Varley’s regional traditions. Pretty modern thinking for 1940 (?)

18h

So this has eight different vegetables / pulses in it. This is what we should be turning back to to improve gut health. A tiny bit of meat, the protein as much from the bone marrow, and a whole variety of plants. Go traditional.

Rachel Pope@prehistorian.bsky.social

Another traditional NE recipe to fend off the bad weather. Northumbrian Broth.

18h

Also the absolute *joy* of white pepper when added at the end.

18h

* But don’t add cannellini beans, that was a mistake (too bland).

21h

Book is at 80% through the final edit, with 2 days before half term hits 🫣

@thekentacorn.bsky.social

Reece Shearsmith is in #LastOneLaughing 😍

Rachel Pope reposted

✙ Kullervo ✙

@kullervo.bsky.social

Rachel Pope reposted

The English Oak Project

Ancient English Woodland is not just about the trees. It’s the soil Thousands of years of an undisturbed ecosystem quietly getting on with adding layer

The other thing we should hoard, for when the institutions fall, is folk sheet music.

Be Ready. I know there’s a well on our old farm plot somewhere, it’s on the OS but I’ve never gone looking (yet). Could dig it out and see. I also reckon I’d dig one of those fantastic Iron Age long-drop latrine pits in the garden, that @durotrigesdig.bsky.social recently showed us. Great design.

Maybe a nice sharp spade is good for the list, if we’re doing this thing properly 💪🏼

Another traditional NE recipe to fend off the bad weather. Northumbrian Broth.

That’s the common theme in what I’m writing I think. White mid-upper class academic men are allowed to have flaws, allowed to do (actually terrible) things, and have them forgiven/forgotten. But for w-class men (Bill Varley), women (Maud Cunnington), MOC (Arday) one mistake or flaw is unforgivable.

Meanwhile white/male/class individuals, even when displaying extraordinary ignorance or really heinous behaviour, achieve protection in that system. Because white/male/class does no wrong.

I’m sure there’s a literature on this in sociology. Sadly white male academics just killed one of the MOC in that field, with the help of the journalist class, so I’m not sure how far on it’ll be.

Is it enough to say that there are different rules. Or is there something more at play here. That white/male/class power > mistakes. That upholding the performance of white/make/class power (by sweeping things under the rug) is how the very system runs.

That an occasional clever woman or MOC, or working class man, could be let in, so that the system benefited from their better ability. But as soon as they compromise that power system, they would be sacrificed to it. Perfection or you’re out.

Different rules of access/retention.

Be Ready. I did get trapped in an emergency situation once. I was running a dig up in Northumberland, with a team of about 15 people. We were 20 minutes off road, in the forest, high up in the hills (with the Bronze Age folk). I really thrive in those situations and went into military mode.

Oh wow, just realised I was actually pregnant in all that too!

That was also the year I had to protect students from a herd of charging cows (they’d been spooked by the dog, then antagonised by the students). I just stood in between, arms out, until the cows (and students) calmed down. To this day, I’m convinced it was my being pregnant that stopped them ❤️

Above all my job in that situation was to present calm, be mum, and project control. I enjoyed it. Unexpected, but we were ready. Archaeologists are good people to know in these situations! So yes, I’m down with Be Ready. It’s sensible in a world such as this.

My tip: focus on the ready to eat non-perishables. Oats, oat milk, muesli bars. Can’t go wrong.

The other route out to the valley was down a medieval (well prehistoric) drovers road, and a party of braveness went down to get a message to the valley pub landlord and his mum that we were up and trapped. They also got tobacco and alcohol for the spirits (which was their main objective tbf).

It did take 3 days for the army to reach us, with Cadbury’s chocolate and white bread as I remember! In those 3 days I had kept everyone sane and busy, eating the unpopular porridge and muesli bars and chopped apple, chopping wood, playing games. I even had to stitch up somebody’s knee.

We were at 370 m above sea level. To get to us was a drive through three fords. The White Burn (aptly naned as it turned out) was running high and very fast. The top road had washed down off the hillside and the bottom road was flooded. We went down to the flood and waved at folk on the other side.

@carolosullivan.bsky.social

This won’t be reported widely, but Jason Arday has been cleared of plagiarism for a second time. Still nobody has been held accountable for this man’s death.

UCU Edinburgh@ucuedinburgh.bsky.social

A reminder: Jason Arday was innocent. "A fresh investigation by scientific publisher Taylor & Francis has concluded without substantiating plagiarism allegations against Jason Arday, the former Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge."

Rachel Pope reposted

Carol O'Sullivan

Replying to @prehistorian.bsky.social

The figure mentioned here (UCU-originated) was 15,000 in a single year www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

lrb.co.ukStefan Collini · Squadrons of Pigs: Bonfire of the UniversitiesThe problems with Britain’s universities are systemic and deep-rooted, not just local or contingent. Yet political and...

I was wondering what the actual figure might be. Why isn’t the collapse of UK HE as a sector reported as the social crisis it is.

Charlotte Lydia Riley@lottelydia.bsky.social

we’ve lost perhaps 30,000 jobs in British higher education in the last 3 years

Rachel Pope reposted

Charlotte Lydia Riley

@lottelydia.bsky.social

University of Nottingham, right now, is cutting 560 jobs. Do we need to rebrand universities as very large, very clean, land-based oil rigs to get government support?

Leo Hickman@leohickman.carbonbrief.org

From the govt's press release: "The developer estimates that Jackdaw will create 27 new direct jobs and safeguard 273 existing jobs that would otherwise be lost." Odd that so much is made about this being good for jobs. Your nearest out-of-town supermarket likely generates more jobs.

No prehistorian (to my knowledge) had stripped a bigger area in a season than the Varleys at Merrick’s Hill, Eddisbury (Cheshire) in 1938, since the 1880s work of Pitt Rivers at Rotherley. In the very same year that Bersu started using the old strip system at Little Woodbury.

European Association of Archaeologists

Book. Now at 56% through the final edit and with a good head wind, could be at 65% by this time tomorrow 💪🏼

Rachel Pope reposted

@archaeologyeaa.bsky.social

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...

e-a-a.orgLeiden StatementThe Leiden University Faculty Board statement on the 2027 EAA Annual Meeting was shared with the EAA on 14 October - please read the statement and the EAA Executive Board response below.

Rachel Pope reposted

Tyron

@tyron.bsky.social

The key thing is that Enoch Powell was _wrong_ and we should never stop saying it.

This post is unavailable.

Tomorrow evening, online:

Bylines Network@bylinesnetwork.co.uk

What would you change about the way Britain's media works? Bring your questions – and your own ideas. Our live webinar on Wednesday includes audience questions, polls and open chat. Sign up here 👇 🎟️ bit.ly/bettermedia

Rachel Pope reposted

Bylines Network

@bylinesnetwork.co.uk

The treatment of Jason Arday horrified many people. Where does legitimate journalistic scrutiny end and a media pile-on begin? This Wednesday, we're bringing together journalists, academics and regulators to ask what responsible media should look like. 🎟️ bit.ly/bettermedia

Sometimes I resent having to write women back into our disciplinary history (wondering what I might have achieved for prehistory itself in the time spent). But this work is important too. It’s important to know the mechanisms used to exclude women from society. And how they gained access anyway.

Back to the book. And I’ll now be forever grateful to the wonderful @claireboardman.bsky.social and @sarahmiles.bsky.social for so professionally transcribing Maud Cunnington’s 1932 presidential address to the Wiltshire Archaeology and NH Society, from some very oddly copied microfiche files! 👏🏼👏🏼

It’s important also to compare with equivalent contemporaries, like Wheeler and Hawkes, who did get the posts, and the gongs, despite enormously flawed work. Maud too was flawed on dating Stonehenge. But that would terminate her legacy. As her peers, with far greater intellectual flaws, survived.

In the 20th century, a woman could quite literally be a genius. Devise method for an entire discipline, excavator better and harder and faster. And still, male-authored disciplinary histories would write her out.

It’s ~3000 words long and demonstrates her scope, not only as the natural inheritor of Pitt Rivers’ fieldworker title, but of her national grasp of the field. Without doubt she should have been one of our first academics in Iron Age studies (if it had been possible, and she’d have wanted to, etc.)