Jake Holland-Lulewicz
@archaeojake.bsky.social
Archaeologist. Socioecologist. How do people govern themselves? Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Transdisciplinary Research on Environment and Society. Director of the Spatial Archaeology and Historical Network Dynamics Lab @ Penn State.
🚨 New paper! 🦪 Is our archaeological data skewed by taphonomic process? 🦪 How do we move towards more nuanced approaches to morphometric studies? 🦪How can archaeologists make our studies relevant to modern socioecological research? Have a read! 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🚨 New paper! 🦪 Is our archaeological data skewed by taphonomic process? 🦪 How do we move towards more nuanced approaches to morphometric studies? 🦪How can archaeologists make our studies relevant to modern socioecological research? Have a read! 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
✅ Accepted! Coming soon to an issue of Scientific Reports, stay tuned! #archaeology #ecology 🦪 📏 w/ @isazooarch.bsky.social
How do we know which ancient societies were democracies? A new study is using architecture to find out. In our #PictureOfTheWeek, anthropologist Jacob Holland-Lulewicz photographs a 2,000-year-old trash pit on the Eastern Mongolian Steppe. Images Credit: Jacob Holland-Lulewicz
Listen to me yap about how archaeologists use architecture and urban design to think about governance, how we might interpret our own federal architecture, some findings about democracy’s origins, and a few hopeful thoughts about democracies around the world! www.sciencefriday.com/segments/wha...
What urban design tells us about democracy
Archaeologists can use the design of ancient temples, plazas, and cities to piece together the story of how a place was governed.
sciencefriday.com
🐠 🌱 🦪 ⛈️ 🌡️ The other half of our lab w/ @isazooarch.bsky.social! #archaeology #ecology #sustainability #climate
🔬🏺We have an Anthropology Day alumni event coming up, and our development team made these great templates for us to showcase our labs. Had a lot of fun distilling the key contributions of the SAHND Lab here at Penn State! #archaeology #ecology #history
New analyses revise theories about Mesolithic shell middens in northern Spain. The article usefulness of high-res sampling of growth structures in mollusc shells and measurement of oxygen isotope ratios as a sensitive measure of palaeotemperature variation www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/...
🔬🏺We have an Anthropology Day alumni event coming up, and our development team made these great templates for us to showcase our labs. Had a lot of fun distilling the key contributions of the SAHND Lab here at Penn State! #archaeology #ecology #history
🚨 Asa Cameron (post-doc) was awarded a grant from the Am. Phil. Soc. for his collaborative project: “Growth at the Margins: Feeding Empire on the Mongolian Steppe”! #archaeology
🚨 Christina (@cmcarolus.bsky.social) was awarded a grant from the Am. Phil. Soc. for her collaborative project: “Vertical Archipelagos of Prehistoric Highland Inner Asia: Exploring Integrative Agropastoral Landscapes and Long Term Socioecological Dynamics at Kyzyl Unkur-1, Kyrgyzstan”! #archaeology
Huge thanks to @amphilsociety.bsky.social and their absolutely critical support for early career researchers!
SAHND and SHEL Archaeology and Ecology Labs@sahndshel.bsky.social · 4mo ago🚨 Christina (@cmcarolus.bsky.social) was awarded a grant from the Am. Phil. Soc. for her collaborative project: “Vertical Archipelagos of Prehistoric Highland Inner Asia: Exploring Integrative Agropastoral Landscapes and Long Term Socioecological Dynamics at Kyzyl Unkur-1, Kyrgyzstan”! #archaeology
Cotton seeds from Kyrgyzstan in the lab today! #archaeology #history #ecology #plants #pbot
Christina M. Carolus, PhD@cmcarolus.bsky.social · 4mo agoToday’s @sahndshel.bsky.social Central Asia/SE North America cash crop crossover: ancient cotton seeds from Kyzyl Unkur-1, our highland Kyrgyz cave site! ☁️🌱
Today’s @sahndshel.bsky.social Central Asia/SE North America cash crop crossover: ancient cotton seeds from Kyzyl Unkur-1, our highland Kyrgyz cave site! ☁️🌱
This bluff on Ossabaw Island (Georgia) gets cut back up to 70cm a year from erosion due to more extreme tides, more frequent storms, and increased boat traffic. The erosion continually exposes archaeological features. Each year we assess and salvage what we can #archaeology #climatechange #heritage
This is a landmark paper in Science: archaeology informing current political science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The distribution of power and inclusiveness across deep time
Democratic practice in the premodern world was not the exclusive domain of Greece and Rome.
science.org
Clovis First as a model for peopling of the Americas is 1.) Outdated 2.) Inconsistent with genetic evidence 3.) Inconsistent with archaeological evidence 4.) Based on holding American sites to a different standard than anywhere else in the world, and 5.) Rooted in colonialism (1/2)
“History rhymes, it doesn’t repeat. And in those rhymes there are things that we need to pay attention to.” Our paper covered by NPR’s All Things Considered via a short interview with our lead, @gfeinman.bsky.social! Give it a listen! #archaeology #history #democracy www.npr.org/2026/03/19/n...
Researchers find evidence of ancient democracies from the Americas to Europe and Asia
NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with archaeologist Gary Feinman about new findings that show democracy existed throughout the ancient world and was not exclusive to Mediterranean Europe.
npr.org
A comparison of 40 civilisations, including in the Indus Valley and Mexico, challenges the idea that Athens was the first city to experiment with people power
Was democracy born in ancient Greece? Research suggests otherwise
thetimes.com
Press release for our new paper! “…people across the world created inclusive political systems, even under difficult conditions…An understanding of the hallmarks of autocracy and democracy can help identify threats and pump the brakes on burgeoning totalitarian regimes.” phys.org/news/2026-03...
New study shows democracy has deep global roots—not just Greece and Rome
A new study on ancient societies from around the world is rewriting what we thought we knew about democracy. A team of researchers analyzed archaeological and historical evidence from 31 ancient socie...
phys.org
Democracy isn't a modern luxury—it's a political strategy with deep roots. In our new study for Science Advances, we analyse 40 different societies and develop a framework for measuring human governance along a collective-autocratic axis. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The distribution of power and inclusiveness across deep time
Democratic practice in the premodern world was not the exclusive domain of Greece and Rome.
science.org
Power and Inclusiveness Across Deep Time. Our collaboration between archaeology and political science, out today in Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The distribution of power and inclusiveness across deep time
Democratic practice in the premodern world was not the exclusive domain of Greece and Rome.
science.org
Press release for our new paper! “…people across the world created inclusive political systems, even under difficult conditions…An understanding of the hallmarks of autocracy and democracy can help identify threats and pump the brakes on burgeoning totalitarian regimes.” phys.org/news/2026-03...
New study shows democracy has deep global roots—not just Greece and Rome
A new study on ancient societies from around the world is rewriting what we thought we knew about democracy. A team of researchers analyzed archaeological and historical evidence from 31 ancient socie...
phys.org
🚨Out today in Science Advances! It is more important than ever to understand the roots and historical breadth of the core features of democratic institutions and autocratic alternatives, what these practices are associated with, and their effects and consequences. 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
When you're excavating all these little crown conchs like the one on the top that people ate and discarded about a thousand years ago, and then can walk 20 meters to the shore and pick up a live one. From southwestern Florida a few years ago! #archaeology #ecology
9 years ago. Excavating shell midden at Pineland along the Gulf Coast of southwestern Florida #archaeology #ecology
