passim in passing

Welcome to round two of the #blogarch adventure, orchestrated by Dougsarchaeology . This month, the question posed to those of us who still do this blogging thing is more reflective: what's been good about blogging? Bad? And what's been downright ugly? Well geez. The Good Friends! Contacts, networks, people to talk to. But I think more importantly, blogging offers a longform elaboration of the casual conversations and offhand interests that the 140 character world doesn't really give you a chance to get into. For instance, I am pretty good at working up a #twitterstorm rage. I've had lots of social media chats with friends and strangers about things that seriously, epically get my metaphorical goat ( looking at you , #aquaticape! also, druid in-fighting ). But here's the thing about an insta-rage: you sound like a total jerk. Seriously. That rage needs context . And maybe pictures of the Judean People's Front (splitters!). literally, any excuse to use

...in which your correspondent participates, not for the first time (those were the good ole' days, eh Colleen ?) , in the digital round robin that is a blogging carnival, with the hopes of someday seeing it at the SAAs . Follow along with the carnival through the #blogarch tag or Doug's blog here . November's question: Why blogging? – Why did you, or if it was a group- the group, start a blog? I'm guessing that like many of my blogging compatriots, I started my personal blog for a combination of reasons, starting with interest in a new bright and shiny thing (blogging! whatever next-- hoverboards? Hey, it was a different time), and running the gamut of self-publicising social media instincts, including the desire to join a conversation of peers, the chance to talk loosely and informally about things I was interested in, and the chance to share my devastating wit with the world at large.*  The world is a lonely place at the end of a PhD or in the dreaded gap bet

Hello! This is a crosspost from our TrowelBlazers guest spot over on the British Geological Society's blog . Mary Anning, trowelblazer Thinking geology? Thinking science? Thinking crinolines, bonnets, and muddy skirts? Probably not! However, if you discount the damsels in the discipline, you actually lose quite a bit of history-and that's what our project 'TrowelBlazers' is all about. We're a small collective of researchers who got a bit bored with the hoary old pictures of the great and good in science, and started looking around for some of the unsung (or just amazing) heroines  of the digging fields - archaeology, palaeontology, and, of course, geology . We started the TrowelBlazers site and put out the call for people to nominate  trowelblazing women. After just a few months, we've had 50 posts, many of which were submitted by guest posters who have direct links to the women they are writing about. Official Wikimedian sticker and pin With the

For those of you who have somehow found this blog without either being personally shown it with my hand on the mouse, or through my highly serious and infromative twitter feed ( @brennawalks  -- or even @trowelblazers , which is my identity 1/4 of the time), welcome. I always enjoy meeting new spambots. For the rest of you, I'll assume you have an interest in either a) museums b) outreach or c) the life and times of our Human Origins research group. In which case, hurrah! Because that's what I'd like to talk about. Prof Stringer lays down some knowledge Every year, under auspices of the EU 's Framework Programme 7  , museums across europe recieve funds in order to hold a giant Open house. And it is giant, especially for us at the Natural History Museum London - we have hundreds of researchers here, normally safely hidden behind locked doors in the labryinth of cabinetry and slightly past sell-by-date skeletal models of obscure animals that is the 'working&

Well as you may have guessed from the slightly OTT twitter/facebookage, we at @TrowelBlazers Towers (shout out to Drs Wragg-Sykes , Birch , and Herridge !) are so excited to have a chapter in the excellent new book ' A Passion for Science: Stories of Discovery and Invention '. Suw Charman-Anderson ( @Suw ) is the driving force behind the truly inspirational Finding Ada project. It's all about recognizing the contributions of women scientists, and hopefully demonstrating that sisters are not only capable of doing it for themselves, but they've been doing it for a lot longer than you thought. I mean, Georgian-countess-computer-programmer longer than you thought. you can read some of Suw's thoughts on the project in today's Guardian  or you can just read the book! And if you like what Team TrowelBlazers has put together, you will love the awesome network diagram of our women in the #trowelblazing sciences (mad props to @ToriHerridge ) ! By Tori Her

It's that time again! Third year of my #dayofarch posts... repost now from Day of Archaeology ! If you're dying to see how they've changed over the years, have a look at 2011 ( augmented reality! ) and 2012 ( i reveal myself to be the tooth fairy )... Really, I work at the Natural History Museum in London (and tweet at @brennawalks ). And if you didn't already know, I'm part of the collective Tumblr of awesome that is Trowelblazers  ( @trowelblazers ). We get all excited about inspirational female pioneers in the trowel-blazing arts :) So! Archaeology, huh? Life outdoors? Fresh air? Meh. Up to your hips in muddy water in February, more like it. That's why I went and got myself a speciality.... TEETH! Yes. I am a living, breathing example of the incredibly rare animal... the Dental Anthropologist . And yes, that's a real thing. What do I do? Well... today, I'm hashing out some code that will preform a simple spatial analysis that will tell

repost of my favorite ever #trowelblazer post! Gearing up to go into the field, so it's all about Turkey at the mo... Halet Çambel, third from left, at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Image: Murat Akman Archive.  Professor Halet Çambel is one of the most fascinating #trowelblazing women you never heard of. From a family of staunch friends of Atatürk himself, she was encouraged to participate in sport and represented Turkey in fencing at the 1936 Olympics--becoming the first-ever Muslim woman to compete in the Olympic games. Her stance there was unflinching; offered an opportunity to meet the Fürher himself she steadfastly refused . She studied archaeology at the Sorbonne in Paris before returning to Turkey and building her career as an archaeologist, her poet and architect husband following her out into the field. She excavated the Hittite fortress of Karatepe , where she uncovered a sort of Hittite 'Rosetta Stone' with both Hittite and Phoenician scripts and still manage

a repost from over at Trowelblazers HQ from last month.... Snippet reproduced from Kober's 1949 letter to J. Sundwall from the Johannes Sunderwall archive of the Library Åbo Akademi , reproduced by kind permission of the University of Texas Digital Repository from the Alice E. Kober archive created by Professor T. Palaima &  D. Tosa Alice Kober (b. 1906, d. 1950) has been recommended for a #trowelblazers post since just about the inception of the site, and now that this once forgotten figure has hit the news again ( bbc ! and this wonderful new york times piece by Margalit Fox, author of a recent book on cracking Linear B) we thought we'd quickly introduce you to the lady. By all accounts a self contained woman, whose meticulous cataloguing of the signs of the Linear B script uncovered at Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans was instrumental to its decipherment just a few years after her untimely death, it is wonderful to see the archive created by the meticulous resear

Reposted! original, with photo here .  Maeve Leakey. Photo: Bob Cambell, Turkana Basin Institute, all rights reserved. Dr. Maeve Leakey (b.1942 - ) Many, many years ago -- about 150, actually-- a group of men with rather fantastic facial hair founded what would become the cornerstone of the American scientific establishment, the National Academy of Sciences.   Signed into existence by President Abraham Lincoln , the Academy served to further scientific research, addressing the pressing issues of the day, like how to make compasses work on your fancy new Ironclad steamboats. On the 150th anniversery of the foundation of the NAS, President Barack Obama arrived to  reiterate the importance  of the body, and science.  The very next day, on April 30th, 2013, the Academy announced its newly elected members, one of the highest accolades possible and limited to American citizens. However, the Academy does recognise exceptional contributions to science from those born elsewhere

Repost from http:/trowelblazers.tumblr.com Kathleen Kenyon. Image from: Reynolds, A. 2011. From the Archives.  Archaeology International  13:112-118, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ai.1321 The legend of Kathleen Kenyon looms large over archaeology; she is remembered not only as an influential woman trowel-wielder but as pioneer in her field. As a figure of legend, the cut of her vowels (glass!) and coats (mink!) build a towering image of a certain kind of mid-century woman: entitled, empowered, and as sturdy as the famous stepped towers she discovered underlying the foundations of biblical Jericho. Kathleen Kenyon is a woman who left a permanent mark on the discipline (not to mention poor old Jericho), and that cannot all be attributed to her birth in the Director's house of the British Museum. Her accomplishments are legion: first female president of the Oxford Archaeological Society, excavator of Jericho and Jerusalem, creator of the Wheeler-Kenyon archaeological method

Good morning. Possibly, good afternoon. This post is actually not so much a me-post as it is a meme-post; I'd like to introduce you to the collective amazingness that is the new  trowelblazers.tumblr.com/  . What's that? A midlands plastering company? No! It's ladies. Ladies with trowels. Or, possibly, ladies directing workmen with trowels. source: Illustration by John Kenney, from L. du Garde Peach (1961).  Stone Age Man In Britain. A Ladybird Book.  Wills & Hepworth Ltd., Loughborough. Reproduced from website. It's a celebration, brief, chipper and ever-so-slightly irreverent, of some of the pioneering women in the trowel-wielding fields: palaeontology, geology, and of course, archaeology. This is a labour of love by a dedicated team ( you'll know them as @toriherridge @lemoustier and @suzie_birch  - me you had better have figured out already) who are compiling a fantastic tumblr of some of the forgotten female heroes of our respective discipline

Heads up to @matthewpope , who wrote this post on the recent #druiddebate launched by the BBC in response to a letter from King Arthur Uther Pendragon insisting that the display of human remains at the Alexander Keiler Museum in Avebury is unethical. I personally think his point that there is some seriously slippery slope between identifying 'indigenous' heritage and nationalist narratives is pretty critical, but of course there is a whole wealth of thought on that subject (go google 'Nationalism in Archaeology' and get back to me in a few years). Anyhow, this got me thinking about the why this story has popped back up after the furore of  the reburial requests circa 2006-8, and why archaeologists seem to not have quite squeezed the last lessons out of the original English Heritage consultation on the reburial request, despite the existence of thoughtful reflections like Mike Pitt's open access  PIA article . I don't claim to know quite what those lessons

So... as much storify as I can put together of an afternoon :) [ View the story "the strange saga of #spaceape" on Storify ]

oh HAI. Did you get here from the internet? Did you perhaps see the phrase 'aquatic ape' in one of the many fine news sources that cover advances in science and other randomly cool stuff--maybe this piece in the guardian? Did you, by some strange conjunction of arcane google-fu and a lifelong interest in mermaids, learn about the aquatic ape theory through this fascinating piece in the daily mail? Really, it is fascinating; you get to look at this picture if you read it: No? I guess that means that I get to be the one to tell you about the Aquatic Ape Theory. For which I apologise in advance, but not very sincerely. Not long ago, let's say, in 1960, a very interesting man called Sir Alister Hardy addressed the conference of the British SubAqua Club at Brighton on the theme ' Aquatic Man: Past, Present and Future .'  Hardy was a marine biologist with a strong interest in the evolution of man, and seems to have been frequently preoccupied by religion; his

So, in advance of a more in-depth reflection on my participation in the 7th Quadrennial World Archaeological Congress at the Dead Sea, Jordan , I've pulled together a little storify and bits and pieces of things and projects that seemed pretty fun but were perhaps not obviously related to teeth, the neolithic, or my immediate interests... Starting, of course, with an awesome trip to Petra which is pretty much all over my instagram account  but highlights are: bored donkey tout dude checking his texts while waiting for tourists;  and this, the first view you get of the famous Treasury building coming down the Siq approach. Conference wise, my favourite quote has to be from the rather vigorous keynote given by Prince El Hassan bin Talal, in his thundering Harrow accent, where he referred to the people of the middle east as 'hell's firewood'. Harsh. And of course, no conference is complete without a ridiculous Indy reference, here's mine (spotted by @lornaricha