'The Relics of Our Ancestors' from the Festival of Britain, part of an exhibit on 'The People of Britain' convened by Jacquetta Hawkes. It aimed to show how "different breeds of ancestors have contributed to the shaping of such a rare miscellany of faces as confronts the visitor in any London bus" 🧵

Municipal Dreams@municipaldreams.bsky.social · 3mo ago

1/ 🧵 The Festival of Britain opened this day in 1951 - according to its official guide a 'united act of national reassessment, and [a] corporate reaffirmation of faith in the nation’s future’.

Good thread in response to Lewis Goodall here:

Dr Zubaida Haque@zubhaque.bsky.social · 4d ago

As someone who sat on the Education Policy Institute’s working group on disadvantage gaps during covid, I’m under no illusions about the enormous educational and psychological harms of school closures – especially for working‑class and BME children. Those impacts are real and must not be downplayed.

When the ‘time off’ is simply recovering the house from the ravages of term, it’s not entirely time off

⚠️ Want to see more Durotriges Big Dig Iron Age #archaeology? ⚠️ Of course you do !! Catch *Sandi Toksvig's Hidden Wonders* with @rakshadigs.bsky.social and us on Channel 4 this Saturday 8 August 7pm 👍 Salamanda Media Bournemouth University 👇👇👇👇

The Data Centre Land Grab: How Britain Is Being Carved Up for Big Tech — Without Your Consent Across Wales, Scotland, and England, the largest peacetime infrastructure seizure of community land and energy in modern British history is accelerating. open.substack.com/pub/european...

The Data Centre Land Grab: How Britain Is Being Carved Up for Big Tech — Without Your Consent

Across Wales, Scotland, and England, the largest peacetime infrastructure seizure of community land and energy in modern British history is accelerating.

open.substack.com

Decades ago, Kris Hansen showed 3M that its PFAS chemicals were in people's bodies. Her bosses halted her work. Now she wrestles with the secrets that 3M kept from her and the world. (Published May 2024)

Toxic Gaslighting: How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe

Decades ago, Kris Hansen showed 3M that its PFAS chemicals were in people’s bodies. Her bosses halted her work. As the EPA now forces the removal of the chemicals from drinking water, she wrestles wit...

propublica.org

Seriously though what is wrong with Lewis Goodall. #LongCovid disputed? That’s fighting talk.

flyingrodent@flyingrodent.bsky.social · 4d ago

Maybes aye and maybes naw, but I got it fairly early and it 100% killed my sense of taste and smell for a year and even now, five years later, I may have about 25-30% of my old ability to smell anything. Mrs R needs to tell me when the cat’s litter tray needs changed, because I wouldn’t know.

All I have to do is squeeze out another 200 words and an image (💪🏼) then I can turn to Mexican night prep and being excited to see the teen. If you like, pls reply with mercy free encouragement

Now a retrospective on what we learned on the importance of ‘place’ with the Old Oswestry Hillfort community. Emotional stuff.

Well let’s see, that might be the piece that gets me death threats 🤷‍♀️

no, I said I wanted a tradewife. like a union electrician

As a curator of digital and physical data, as well as a creator of data this is so important and a much overlooked and utterly poorly funded. Making HERs statutory as intended by the inacted statutes of LURA would be a good and easy starting point

Cambridge University Press - Archaeology@cambup-archaeology.cambridge.org · last wk.

🆕 New #openaccess research in the #SAA journal @saa-aap.bsky.social highlights a growing digital curation crisis in #archaeology. Read the blog and associated article! 🔗 https://cup.org/4uRYbGY #digitalhumanities #datapreservation

Didn’t finish Maud this week as hoped - she was too much of a machine. Anyway, tasks this weekend for Nature, Live Science, American Academy in Rome. Then tomorrow I’m writing on archaeology and community with John Swogger. Excited for that. Then five whole lovely days off 😎 First, coffee.

Met Office: July 2026 driest in UK for 190 years www.channel4.com/news/met-off...

Met Office: July 2026 driest in UK for 190 years

As wildfires and drought make the headlines, today the Met Office released provisional UK weather statistics for July.

channel4.com

Oh god it’s nice to hear Britain being spoken about as a whole island rather than just the bloody SE.

To be honest I think Oidheadh Con Culainn would be way better for a film adaptation than the Táin. The coalition of enemies – the sense of gathering doom – the set piece battles – the emotional death scene – Conall Cearnach going scorched earth in vengeance – ends with digging Cú Chulainn's grave...

Finn Longman is only here occasionally@finnlongman.com · last wk.

How about Laoidh na gCeann? Conall Cearnach wreaking bloody vengeance and killing hundreds to avenge the death of Cú Chulainn – that's a poem, even if there's a prose tale as well. And frankly Conall is pretty scary in that, so you could do something very bloody and violent with it...

The tweet saying "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of those 57 who have died trying to reach Ceuta" was part of this thread but got lost?

Ursula von der Leyen@vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu · 5d ago

The images coming from Ceuta are unacceptable. We cannot allow anyone to come to our Union without abiding by our rules. Dangerous crossings must stop immediately. Smuggling networks must be dismantled. And returns must be swift, as our rules allow.

Just like the 9th century BC.

Guardian Environment@environment.theguardian.com · 5d ago

‘It’s too fast, too big’: speed of climate crisis is devastating crops, say farmers

The Odyssey merch is getting out of hand

Unofficial BBCNews (UK) Bot@bbcnews-uk-rss.bsky.social · 6d ago

Sainsbury's to sell Argos for £120m

A stone slab carved with daggers and triangular axe-heads Found in a burial mound somewhere near Badbury Rings hillfort #Dorset in 1845 The only similar Early Bronze Age carvings in Britain come from the sarsens of Stonehenge © The Trustees of the British Museum Acc No 1892,0901.293 #Findsfriday

This is what climate change looks like www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

Deaths reported as an estimated 49,000 people cross into Spain’s African enclave of Ceuta – Europe live

PM Pedro Sánchez expected to visit territory today as Italy demands Spain be suspended from the Schengen area amid concerns over fresh migration crisis

theguardian.com

Emily Wilson can be as cross as she damn well likes. She’s the expert.

Worked or working on a project combing archaeology & nature? Get a proposal in by close of tomorrow - this is building up to be a superb conference line up! Details below, please repost or send to relevant peers ⤵️

Landscape Survey Group@landscapesurvey.bsky.social · 2mo ago

💠Call for Papers!💠 LSG Conference, 6-7 Nov 2026, N.Yorkshire, UK. Resilient Landscapes - applying archaeological survey & understanding to holistic Nature Recovery Abstracts due by 31 July. Expand attached poster for full details ⤵️ #LandscapeArchaeology #NatureRecovery #Archaeology 🏺 #LSG2026

An excavation at the site of a Pictish fortress in Moray is set to reveal new details about life in Scotland 1,200 years ago 🌊 Drop in to Burghead from 11 August to watch the digging or attend an open day on 22 August to enjoy site tours and a finds showcase: www.digitscotland.com/events/burgh...

Slow recognition that the body wanting to stop after 7 hours of writing is actually normal working and not a sign of ill health 🤪

A huge loss. Roy Hodson was our first gender archaeologist in British Iron Age studies, using complex seriation at Hallstatt to determine that status (grave wealth) was not gendered. His work in 1964, on British insularity (against invasionist thinking) another classic. A great mind, methodologist.

Welwyn Archaeological Society@welwynarchsoc.bsky.social · 7d ago

Sad to hear of the passing of Roy Hodson, pioneering user of #statistical methods in #archaeology. Although we only met in passing quite some time ago, his work forms the foundations of much quantitative archaeology and an important part of the @uclarchaeology.bsky.social 's history. RIP.

This year's theme for TAG was surely set before the host department realized the redundancies it would be facing. Archaeology has a lot of capacity to understand persistence, loss & change that can sort communities facing those things. But the theme may loom larger than other years.

Tânia Casimiro@tmcasimiro.bsky.social · 4w ago

Join us in December at Exter for tag @jrosantos.bsky.social @joaols.bsky.social

Fourth heatwave of the year (before August). We really must end Michael Gove’s ‘no need for experts’ era. Gove was not a sensible man.

Reminder - the record heatwaves, record fires, record floods are all happening in the 'safe' degrees of climate change. We are on track to double where we are now. There is no time to waste. #ActOnClimate #climate #energy #renewables

Writing up the (excellent) Edwardian hillfort excavations of Maud Cunnington is taking time, but it’s certainly expanding our disciplinary history so it’s worth it.