Silbury area is very dry, though even now the spring that feeds the ditch close to the mound is keeping grass green. The Winterbourne stream is just gravel
Mike Pitts
@pittsmike.bsky.social
Award-winning writer/broadcaster Editor British Archaeology magazine 2003–23 Editor Society of Antiquaries of London e-newsletter 2015–20 President Sussex Archaeological Society https://mikepitts.wordpress.com/
More parchmarks. By the car park at Silbury Hill you can see some of the wall foundations of the house & tea rooms that were beside a petrol station that closed in the mid 1970s. Black & white Wiltshire Museum photos, some interesting memories of the site here www.facebook.com/groups/deviz...
There's a playful show about ancient DNA at the Francis Crick Institute to July '27: buttons, bright colours, audio, video & flashing lights. Behind the British Library & St Pancras station, London. Recommended for inspiring the future scientist in curious 10-year-olds (my launch photos)
Wes Anderson's mother studied Anthropology & Archaeology at Rice University. In The Royal Tenenbaums, Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Huston) is an archaeologist. This is a Tenenbaums excavation drawing in the show (hard to photograph). Also don't those French Dispatches below look like Tintin covers?
Mike Pitts@pittsmike.bsky.social · last wk.I can’t think of an exhibition I’ve seen that has given me such sheer joy and out loud laughs. The obsessive, meticulous, funny & deeply human art of Wes Anderson, at the Design Museum. Until August 16 designmuseum.org/exhibitions/...
I can’t think of an exhibition I’ve seen that has given me such sheer joy and out loud laughs. The obsessive, meticulous, funny & deeply human art of Wes Anderson, at the Design Museum. Until August 16 designmuseum.org/exhibitions/...
RIP Christopher Ondaatje: Ondaatje "wings" at National Portrait Gallery/V&A/Royal Geog Soc etc. "I became disgusted at Tory grandees who thought they had the so-called right to rule. It’s a different world now. Labour have the trust & understanding of the people" www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2...
telegraph.co.uk
Important new paper from DiNapoli & Lipo argues error ranges of obsidian dates from Rapa Nui exceed settlement time, so useless for history building. I dismissed all such dates in my book. Also: sample contexts are so poor you don’t know what’s being dated 1/2 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Fundamental uncertainties invalidate the precision of obsidian hydration dating: A Rapa Nui case study
Obsidian hydration dating (OHD) measures water absorption into volcanic glass to estimate artifact age. Recent studies using infrared photoacoustic sp…
sciencedirect.com
At Stonehenge yesterday. As you'd imagine, very dry, dead grass showing disturbances underground. Straight-angled rectangles are 1950s/60s re-erection pits & concrete. Circular patches are older, unexcavated prehistoric pits: bronze age Y/Z Holes, & (larger feature) a pit for mising stone in circle
Very sad to hear of Roger Bolton's passing. Fairlight supremo & wonder musician, he wrote much TV music (Attenborough films including Lost Gods of Easter Island, endless themes, 999, Money Programme, Late Show, Question Time, Sister Beckett etc etc), a lovely crazy man & one-time drinking friend
After I wrote a passage just now, I thought I'd see how AI would've approached the issue. Its response included the phrase "cafés, coaches and queues". I'd written of "carparks, crowds and confusion". My writing is in danger of being dismissed by incorrect AI accusations. This thing is insidious
This is exactly what Polynesian people were doing in the Pacific before Europeans arrived, notably on Rapa Nui where volcanic “rock mulching” was a key part of a remarkable strategy of soil management and improvement (including fallowing & crop rotation) entirely overlooked by early archaeologists
Channel 4 News@channel4news.bsky.social · 3w agoThe ‘magic dust’ saving trees and reducing carbon emission www.channel4.com/news/the-mag...
I think I’m going to enjoy this www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...
Pompeii: Out of Time With Tom Hiddleston – the tale of ordinary Romans’ hopeless heroism is tearjerking television
The Avengers star teams up with real-life scholars for a look at the eruption of Vesuvius. At points it’s elegiac and moving, at others it’s majestic and brutal
theguardian.com
And at the V&A from July 20: British-Indian Bharti Kher's figure sculptures, including new Gaia (4m bronze depicting "a female warrior who carries a house on her head", no photo). Below: Warrior with Cloak & Shield (2008), more Mesolithic (+ banana leaf) than Neolithic! www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/...
Mike Pitts@pittsmike.bsky.social · 3w agoNew show at Tate Modern, Cuban-American Ana Mendieta. She saw her works as "in the tradition of a Neolithic art", non-portable landscape impressions. This Imágen de Yágul, photographed surreptitiously at the Mexican site, reminds me of the Shanidar Neanderthal burial www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tat...
Want to hear surprising stories about about Rapa Nui? See photos of its breathtaking statues and archaeology? Come to my talk at the Marlborough LitFest in September! www.marlboroughlitfest.org
Visiting Stonehenge Expectation: great whale in its prime breaching & diving in the ocean, seen at close but safe distance from a small boat Reality: elderly dolphin in fish tank, gazing out forlornly at crowd of unruly gawpers Part of my job as an archaeologist is trying to make expectation real
New show at Tate Modern, Cuban-American Ana Mendieta. She saw her works as "in the tradition of a Neolithic art", non-portable landscape impressions. This Imágen de Yágul, photographed surreptitiously at the Mexican site, reminds me of the Shanidar Neanderthal burial www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tat...
This is nice, thanks Sue! Susan Greaney recommends the best books on Stonehenge fivebooks.com/best-books/s...
Stonehenge
Stonehenge does not stand alone: it is surrounded by earlier monuments, it was built alongside a settlement and other sites, and it presides over graves and shrines from people who lived centuries and...
fivebooks.com
If @adamrutherford.bsky.social says the BBC’s Evolution is a must see, it’s a must see. I was a bit older, aged 10, when I discovered evolution & DNA, in a child’s book given me by an uncle. It gave me a profound excitement about the idea of evolution I’ve never lost. I still have the book
bsky.app
Thiago Carvalho@cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 4w ago'For this career evolutionary biologist, bewitched at the age of four by Life on Earth (...) I was grinning like a child, not just at the standard-issue BBC-quality spectacle of its natural history programming, but also at the unapologetic embrace of contemporary evolutionary theory.'
White House report on Smithsonian National Museum of American History No exhibits about "our Founding Fathers, the Second Continental Congress, the Mayflower, the Pilgrims, the Puritans or Washington crossing the Delaware” Many of the displays do exactly that www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/07/08/w...
White, patriarchal and Christian: White House’s vision for the National Museum of American History
A surprise 162-page report released on 4 July reveals the Trump administration’s efforts to shape US history and culture through the Smithsonian
theartnewspaper.com
Meanwhile Telegraph headline "Waitrose drops ‘feminine’ label from tampons after trans complaint... that ‘not all people who have periods are women'" Waitrose “We’re changing the name simply because... the product range... now includes incontinence pads for men” www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07...
telegraph.co.uk
Is Alfred under a car park? Almost certainly no. Anything's possible, but if he is we'd likely never know. "The academics did the same with the Richard III bones. They don't like anyone other than themselves proving these theories correct" Well... 🧵 www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/king-al...
Researchers 'snubbed' in quest to find King Alfred's bones in Hampshire city
Researchers on a quest to uncover the bones of King Alfred the Great in Hampshire have run up agains
portsmouth.co.uk
Morten Morland’s Times cartoon: Thursday July 9, 2026 www.thetimes.com/article/8414...
Morten Morland’s Times cartoon: Thursday July 9, 2026
Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.com or call 0800 912 7136
thetimes.com
RIP Beth McKillop, director of collections/deputy director V&A Worked on Aurel Stein Dunhuang ms collection at British Library Brokered Sir Percival David Foundation Chinese ceramics collection into British Museum custodianship www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
Beth McKillop obituary
Museum curator and scholar with a special focus on Korean art
theguardian.com
Unusually good piece on AI & LLMs. Creatives say AI will never match the human. This misses the point: it surely will. But what matters is the wider effect. If we can’t tell what’s what, everything is devalued. Art loses meaning. Here lies hope: we want meaning www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...
How AI is changing language
As allegations of LLM use rock the literary and media worlds, linguists explain what really distinguishes human and machine language, while novelists including Jennifer Egan and Jeanette Winterson ref...
theguardian.com
Did you hear talk of Reading Museum‘s Bayeux Tapestry on Front Row? There are at least 3 copies in England. The V&A has 2 photographic copies made in 1873. One consists of full-size prints hand-coloured by art students and joined together in a 65 metre roll 🧵 collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O118318...
