So… exciting job news 🎉 Very happy to announce I’ll soon be joining the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research! Over the next 3 years, I’ll be exploring how artistic traditions changed over the Palaeo-Meso transition - did art play an active, adaptive role in response to climate changes?

Cambridge Archaeology@cam-archaeology.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research is pleased to announce Dr Isobel Wisher @izzywisher.bsky.social and Dr Melina Seabrook as the eighth Renfrew Fellows in Archaeology. 👉 To find out more: www.arch.cam.ac.uk/news/isobel-...

Printing our first test bone in our RICHeS funded Ark of the North lab - next stop, a whole bear skeleton! This system will allow for efficient sharing of reference collections, bolstering zooarchaeology and palaeontology in Scotland and beyond 🦴 🐻 @ukri.org

Department of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen @uoa-archaeology.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Scanning, printing, cleaning, curing, and voila - bone clone! @ukri.org

Our preprint is now out, looking at genomic history and selection in Britain, with a focus on the Roman and early medieval periods. Comments welcome! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... @boothicus.bsky.social @leospeidel.bsky.social @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social

Congratulations to Dr Sarah Barakat who passed her PhD viva today! Sarah’s doctoral research has made a major contribution to our understanding of the use of sulfur isotopes in tracking range use in Late Pleistocene fauna. Well done Sarah! (And here’s the obligatory theme cake…)

Amazing to be part of this! Never had an archaeological emergancy before - truly a once in a lifetime site! www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Dog walkers discover 2,000-year-old human footprints on beach

Archaeologists say the human and animal prints were made at the height of the Roman Empire

independent.co.uk

PALaEoScot is in Orkney this week working with Dr Ben Elliott sampling bone from early Mesolithic site, Tarradale. Project PhD student Tayla Sanders is looking at mammalian faunal biodiversity in Scotland at the end of the Ice Age and during the Mesolithic - watch this space!

This is an amazing figure, showing the power of ZooMS taxonomic corrections in isotopic study design.

Sarah Barakat@sarahbarakat.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Sulfur isotope analysis shows differences in range use between ungulates with known differences in home range sizes today. This is shown well in reindeer compared to all other fauna. We also integrate important ZooMS data to optimise palaeoecological interpretations.

So excited to announce the publication of this paper which is the first to come from my PhD! Combing data from the PleistoHERD and DeerPal project we analyse carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur in ungulate bones from the Aquitaine Basin dating between the Ante-Quina and Quina periods.

Kate Britton@whatkatiedigs.bsky.social · 8mo ago

New paper alert! Sulfur isotopes evidence Late Pleistocene faunal spatial ecology - 100s of data points, years of combined research effort, and an isotope-zooarch-zooms collab. Congrats to @sarahbarakat.bsky.social who led this to fruition! @ukri.org @leverhulme.ac.uk doi.org/10.1016/j.qu...

Sulfur isotope analysis shows differences in range use between ungulates with known differences in home range sizes today. This is shown well in reindeer compared to all other fauna. We also integrate important ZooMS data to optimise palaeoecological interpretations.

New paper alert! Sulfur isotopes evidence Late Pleistocene faunal spatial ecology - 100s of data points, years of combined research effort, and an isotope-zooarch-zooms collab. Congrats to @sarahbarakat.bsky.social who led this to fruition! @ukri.org @leverhulme.ac.uk doi.org/10.1016/j.qu...

In Edinburgh this week for PALaEoScot, meeting specialists at NMS with our Edinburgh-based project zooarchaeology post-doc Alicia Sanz-Royo. We’re spending the week exploring the wonderful animal remains of the Assynt bone caves - kicking the day off with breakfast at an aptly-named cafe!

Hippos?! In Devon?! Check out this fully-funded PhD opportunity @uoa-archaeology.bsky.social focused on the isotope ecology of the non-analogue faunal communities of MIS5e Britain @ukri.org NERC/BBSRC funded via QUARTILES - open to U.K. & international applicants! 🦛 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

QUARTILES DLA CASE: Hippo and hyena haven: Exploring the isotope palaeoecology of a non-analogue ecosystem in MIS5e Britain at University of Aberdeen on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - QUARTILES DLA CASE: Hippo and hyena haven: Exploring the isotope palaeoecology of a non-analogue ecosystem in MIS5e Britain at University of Aberdeen , listed on FindAPhD.com

findaphd.com

NEW Bone fragment with butchery marks from Middle Palaeolithic (260–45 ka cal BP) Ormagi Ekhi, Georgia. The cave was a hibernation site for cave bears, but the butchery indicates humans are responsible for the accumulation of most faunal remains. Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺#Archaeology

PALaEoScot is at the British Cave Research Association Science Symposium in Bristol today, spreading the word about the amazing MIS3/MIS2 faunas of Reindeer Cave, Assynt - great line up too! #archaeology #caving #pleistocene

At a recent outreach event we tried a bit of living prehistory to bring the final Palaeolithic and Mesolithic in Scotland to life - we opted for some body paints, sticking to white, black and red. Turns out we could have added blue! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The earliest evidence of blue pigment use in Europe | Antiquity | Cambridge Core

The earliest evidence of blue pigment use in Europe

cambridge.org

Châtelperronian cultural diversity at its western limits: Shell beads and pigments from La Roche-à-Pierrot, Saint-Césaire | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Test audience for these wonderful colouring sheets our new PhD student Tayla has prepared for our event on Sunday 14th at UoA. Tayla is joining PALaEoScot to work on fragmentary bones from late glacial-early Holocene sites in Scotland using molecular approaches - she’s quite the artist too!

Ever wondered what life was like at the end of the Ice Age? What did people eat? How did they make tools? Come and meet the PALaEoScot team at Explorathon on Sept 14th 11am-4pm at UoA’s King’s College in Old Aberdeen and meet our living prehistorians at their camp! Link below ⬇️

PalaeoScot is down in Pembroke for the week - it’s a PalaeoScot-PalaeoWales collab! We’ve done some isotope work at Wogan Cavern over the last few years and it’s great to finally see the site & to check out a potential new cave with some of the Wogan team too 👀 🦣 🦌 @ukri.org

www.birdguides.com/news/natural...

Natural England chair backs lynx reintroduction

Tony Juniper, chair of Natural England, says he is keen to see lynx reintroduced to Britain, backing a proposed trial in Northumberland. However, government legal blocks and strong opposition from she...

birdguides.com

(Very) Late to the party but enjoying it immensely - wonderful words @lemoustier.bsky.social would recommend KINDRED to anyone interested in learning more about Neanderthals, visiting the other-worlds of the past, or learning more about the process of field and research archaeology

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Archaeology funding to protect Ice Age hunt site Fetcham Springs

Fetcham Springs in Surrey is "nationally significant", says the Surrey County Archaeological Unit.

bbc.com

A memorable, creative and restorative week at Moniack Mhor for a writing retreat. Met some wonderful people, was fed like a Queen and broke out of the academic writing bubble just a little bit - like a spa for the brain!

So proud of you @lucyjkoster.bsky.social !!

Linus Girdland Flink@flinklinus.bsky.social · last yr.

Graduation time, congrats again @lucyjkoster.bsky.social! With @whatkatiedigs.bsky.social

This week #PALaEoScot has been part of a team testing this wee rock shelter, hopeful for signs of Late Glacial/early Holocene archaeology (or palaeontology!). So far just some cracking lithology (literally) and a very friendly dog - but watch this space! 🦴 🦌 🦣 🪨 @ukri.org @willmills.bsky.social

Spotting her first MALDI plate! Thanks to @archaeoprotein.bsky.social for offering this wonderful training opportunity to @sarahbarakat.bsky.social and helping us further develop our ZooMS capacity in Aberdeen @uoa-archaeology.bsky.social - and for running our first PALaEoScot samples with us!

Lovely to see some experimental archaeology for our PalaeoScot project!

Will Mills@willmills.bsky.social · last yr.

Friday fun! A friend offered me a Scottish red deer antler—perfect timing, as I needed an antler hammer for Late Glacial blade work. Used the burn-and-groove method (makes collagen brittle). Huge thanks to Kiki for the help! It’s already made a lovely blade 🤩🥳

This week we also had a full-day PALaEoScot team meeting and welcomed our new PhD student, Tayla! It was wonderful to hear updates on the incredible lithics, palaeontological and palaeoenvironmental work the team is doing, and to discuss what’s next & to have bit of social time together too! 🦣

This week I’ve scoured letters at NMS for glimpses of Pleistocene animals; celebrated Medieval life at an exhibition opening; & been immersed in prehistoric landscapes at the Europa in Reading. Archaeology is so rich and varied. Thank you to everyone who shared their knowledge & passion this week!🏺🦣

And now to the main event - the Europa lecture from Martin Bell - route-ways and paths as ‘entanglement made manifest’ for human and non-human entities. Movement is the ‘connective tissue between sites’ - inspirational! @prehistoricsociety.bsky.social