Nathaniel Erb-Satullo

I know I keep pointing this out but: if you want immigrants to contribute to British society, integrate across community lines, become engaged civic actors, you actually *want* them to get citizenship, and as soon as possible in fact!

Drops on snowdrops

Congrats to @gabemoshenska.bsky.social on his comprehensive history and analysis of the Ea Nasir copper merchant meme.

@uclarchaeology.bsky.social once again showcasing its excellence in all things archaeometallurgical. 😉

journal.equinoxpub.com/JCA/article/...

Also…

Hmm... Seems I cant find any evidence linking Dyson Perrins to chemical weapons work from a quick google. I definitely remember it being in departmental lore though...

Spent a year as a student and three as lecturer there and never noticed it... Is that really the inscription on the building where they developed mustard grass in WW1? Bit ironic if it's the same one.

Well look at that! Our Caucasus mega fortress paper made Antiquity's most read list! Feels good to be in such distinguished company. #ProjectARKK

1688 as the last successful invasion of Britain is a hill I will die on. Another one: Eastern Rome (Byzantium) was a remarkably successful and resilient state, not a pale shadow of the Principate.

They used to "laugh and call him names." Now they're all dead

Direct evidence of fire starting, especially to me as a scholar of (much later) pyrotechnology, is extremely cool, though.

Ah, I see the distinction. I have a bit of difficulty imagining a situation where controlled use occurs regularly enough that we can see it in the patchy Paleolithic record, but it's all wildfire for ~600k yrs. But perhaps I underestimate how regularly available and easy to gather wildfire was.

Haha. I googled for a quick check of the date and what should come up first but a BBC article--this one from 2012-- talking about the earliest controlled use of fire at Wonderwerk at 1 Ma. Still curious what the current thinking is.

Is Wonderwerk no longer considered convincing evidence? Isn't that older?

One thing social media platforms do is meld the British and US higher ed crises into one. I think there are similarities but, tbh, the UK feels much more like a catalogue of shambles and poor policy decisions than a real ideological attack—even if the consequences remain the same.

There's nothing quite like the feeling of opening up the results from a big batch of radiocarbon dates, and having them confirm all things you hoped and suspected but weren't quite sure about. Kudos to the amazing #ProjectARKK team for capturing all the stratigraphic and chronological subtleties

Combined with the number of cyclists pulling dangerous moves through traffic, and pedestrians blindly stepping off curbs in front of you, it makes the experience truly harrowing.

I've been cycling in the UK for 8 years now, but having started cycling in London regularly for the first time, I am stunned by the number of people cycling through heavy rush-hour traffic with headphones in (even over-ear noise-cancelling ones), sometimes while simultaneusly taking calls.

Pretty irresponsible reporting as the other article makes it sound like they did exactly the right thing. I feel like every BBC article on detector isn't finds should have boilerplate about reporting to the relevant FLO so people know.

As someone interested in archaeological metals, this is quite interesting. It seems they have carefully considered diagenesis, but I don't know enough about heavy metal uptake into enamel/dentine to independently assess.

In art history, does this have a connotation of "this is definitely a forgery" analogous to the connotation of "this was definitely looted" in the archaeology version?

👀

Was having a hard time coming up with something until the perfect one came to me:

"Said to be from"

Thousands more university jobs cut as financial crisis deepens University workers will vote on national strike action this month over a 1.4% pay offer made in the summer.

'Universities have collectively announced more than 12,000 job cuts in the last year, new analysis from the University and College Union (UCU) suggests.'

UKHE is a world class export sector, but has financial problems because the state both doesn’t want unis charging market rates to domestics and doesn’t want to subsidise them. To make up for this, unis have been forced to take on more foreign students, and the gov response is to punish them for it

Ah yes, wells. Famously flammable.

Good luck trying to smelt metal with that "furnace." 🤔

AI-generated furnace image with multiple impossible/inaccurate features, notably any natural or forced draft, and a width far wide for its height. A structure like this would not be capable of smelting metal.

Thrilled with the coverage our recent paper on copper metallurgy and iron invention is getting. Not so thrilled with this definitely-AI generated furnace image that was used to illustrate one of those pieces.

Link to our article: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A 3,000-Year-Old Furnace May Have Accidentally Started the Iron Age, Scientists Say This global shift may have come as a result of smelters looking for ways to increase copper yields.

My recent work covered in Popular Mechanics! Excellent furnace photo (not even mine).

www.popularmechanics.com/science/arch...

This ‘funny-looking rock’ holds 3,000 years of Iron Age secrets Experimenting with copper may have led to our eventual breakthroughs with making iron.

I'm all about "funny looking rocks"! Nice to see press coverage of my recent paper. www.popsci.com/science/iron...

Researchers have long suspected a link between bronze metallurgy and the invention of iron smelting, but direct evidence has been elusive. Our work help substantiate that link.