Julien Riel-Salvatore
@julienrs.bsky.social
Archaeologist, full professor & chair / Archéologue, professeur titulaire & directeur / Université de Montréal. Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, human-environment interactions, disinformation in archaeology. ⚜️ 🇨🇦 🇮🇹
New opportunity: fully funded PhD position within the Cluster of Excellence HUMAN ORIGINS Investigate experimentally the evolutionary significance of transformative Stone Age techniques in this project on cognitive demands, and explore the probability of their success. Deadline: 15 September 2026.
Great thread: This use of optimal foraging theory should speak to a lot of anthropologists/archaeologists. Widespread AI use in academia is unlikely to result in the hoped-for and oft promised economies of time, attention and labor.
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.
Local plumbers two steps ahead of every university administrator in america 👏
Metin Seven (Moon Child's dad 🌝)@seven.eurosky.social · 3w ago
The asshole administration is planning to remove the mining buffer around Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. This is being done without tribal or expert input and the public comment time is incredibly, and cowardly short. Please comment to help try and save Chaco. www.koat.com/article/chac...
Chaco Canyon public comment period opens, as BLM proposes reopening 336,000 acres to mineral leasing
A new federal assessment could reshape the future of development near Chaco Canyon. Here’s what’s in the plan and how long the public has to weigh in.
koat.com
“Correcting a false belief is not like correcting a math error. It requires something closer to what clinicians call grief work. The person must let go of a version of reality that has been sustaining them…” That’s one doozy of an asymmetry! “Make stuff up” vs basically “extended complex therapy”?
Dr Emma L Briant 🇬🇧 in 🇺🇸 w/ 🐕@emma-briant.co.uk · 3w agoThe Economics of Truth: Why Lies Are Free, Truth Is Expensive, and How to Change That pavisandhu.substack.com/p/the-econom...
Years ago, I got a tip: look into the human remains collection at the AMNH. The museum held the remains of more than 12,000 individuals from around the world, but wouldn't identify them. I identified many of the remains and published this piece: hyperallergic.com/a-new-york-m...
A New York Museum's House of Bones
The American Museum of Natural History holds 12,000 bodies — but they don’t want you to know whose.
hyperallergic.com
As someone who has studied history, I am often comforted by knowing there have been far worse times than these. As someone who has focused on the lives of ordinary people when studying history, however, I am painfully aware that it doesn't have to be worse than this to really suck for most people.
One reason i think everyone should take an archaeology class is to internalise with tangible examples that there is no pure, natural past utopia and that antibiotics and vaccines are what stand between us and a 50% child mortality rate and scores of women dying needlessly during pregn and birth
Shaun Lintern@shaunlintern.bsky.social · 2mo agoLeeds is now the subject of a major inquiry into maternity. I previously reported on its decade long pursuit of 'normal birth' ideology that saw it have the lowest number of caesareans while stillbirths and baby deaths soared to the worst nationally www.thetimes.com/article/f3af...
Fun fact about Colossal: they did *not* resurrect the dire wolf!
Rolling Stone@rollingstone.com · 3mo agoThe science start-up Colossal is making sci-fi real! After resurrecting the dire wolf in 2025 using 72k-year-old DNA, they're eyeing the woolly mammoth for 2028. The goal: "rewilding" to restore and stabilize modern ecosystems. Read: bit.ly/4tIXAqo
The Canadian Archaeological Association Meeting in Canmore was a blast, and my session on 'Combating Anti-intellectualism and Pseudoarchaeology through Public Engagement' went very well. Though it was only 4 papers, each presentation was standing room only, with lots of follow-up discussions. 🏺
I'm at a loss for words. Both for the statement and for the underlying idea that citations are basically window dressing meant to give random statements an air of academic credibility. Pathetic.
Dr. Holly Walters@manigarm.bsky.social · 3mo agoI'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?
The kids are alright. I'm so glad we're seeing multiple graduating classes reacting this way to AI shills who present it as a fait accompli with zero introspection. Why you would even bring up AI in a commencement speech to begin with is beyond me.
404 Media@404media.co · 3mo agoFormer Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed throughout this commencement speech at the University of Arizona for his praise of AI. This comes just a week after another commencement speaker who mentioned AI was booed at a school in Florida. Read more: www.404media.co/ucf-ai-comme...
this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive. when you're inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn't.
in case it is helpful, i have put together this list of resources for people who want to resist uncritical ai adoption in work or other aspects of life: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Questioning AI Resource List
Excellent summary of major problems with companies’ focus on AI written by expert in machine learning: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/ Another g...
docs.google.com
Sheffield’s archaeology department was second to none, world leading and internationally significant. All the things that universities purport to value. It was also full of good colleagues (which universities seem to value less, but is no less significant.) I’m sorry it is no more.
Orion🌈&sm9eb@sm9eb.bsky.social · 3mo agoVery sorry to see that the last undergrad archaeology class at Uni #Sheffield was taught yesterday. The wanton destruction happening now in academia on both sides of the Atlantic will be widely seen as the violence it is one day. #SaveSheffield #SaveSheffieldArchaeology
Very sorry to see that the last undergrad archaeology class at Uni #Sheffield was taught yesterday. The wanton destruction happening now in academia on both sides of the Atlantic will be widely seen as the violence it is one day. #SaveSheffield #SaveSheffieldArchaeology
A great PhD with a great team, highly recommend!
Jeremy Koster@jeremykoster.bsky.social · 4mo agoThere is a fully-funded PhD position at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to pursue dissertation research among the Mayangna of Nicaragua, expanding a longitudinal study of subsistence strategies and behavioral ecology. Please share the posting! www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...
Happy April 30 to all who celebrate, better known in QC academia as FRQ announcement day.
Oldest burial in Patagonia reveals early human settlement along South America's Atlantic coast. #Archaeology phys.org/news/2026-04...
Oldest burial in Patagonia reveals early human settlement along South America's Atlantic coast
The peopling of South America has long been debated, with various routes proposed for how they spread across the subcontinent. However, routes along the Atlantic coast were typically much younger than...
phys.org
More details on the firing of the National Science Board. The NSF now has no director, deputy director, or board. They have issued almost no new awards in 2026. The plan appears to be to completely destroyed the agency. The details are horrifying and have Russ Vought written all over them.
Board Ouster Raises Further Concerns About NSF’s Future
The White House axed all members of the board overseeing the National Science Foundation Friday, leaving the agency with no board, director or deputy director. It finally provided a reason Monday afte...
insidehighered.com
"The number of faculty over 60 skyrocketed to be a fourth or even third of the overall teaching staff at many leading institutions." It's much higher than that in many units, including mine. Lots of food for thought in this piece, though little in the way of actual solutions.
Opinion | Professors Are Too Old
The academy’s gerontocracy problem is worse than anyone admits.
chronicle.com
There are few sweeter words in academia than "Our decision is to: Accept Submission".
The United States now has the most government restrictions on academic freedom of any high-income country. www.chemistryworld.com/news/academi... Raw data from @vdeminstitute.bsky.social —> academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...
TFW when a student in your social complexity seminar tells you the class radicalized them! #archaeology #anthropology 🏺
Social Change and [Under] Development, Dept of Anthropology, U. of Auckland, 1997. Thats what did for me.
When power is built on disinformation, data become a threat.
The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 3mo agoBreaking news: Multiple scientists who serve on an independent board established to guide the nation’s nearly $9 billion basic science funding agency were terminated from their positions Friday by President Trump.
TFW when a student in your social complexity seminar tells you the class radicalized them! #archaeology #anthropology 🏺
