Dr Sam Leggett

Black and white photo of Barbara Laidler washing a stone on West Kennet Avenue. Photo ©Alexander Keiller Museum.

Black and white photo of Margaret Stewart at the Carse Farm excavation in 1964. Photo from: https://breadalbane-heritage.org.uk/about/history/margaret-e-c-stewart-in-breadalbane-heritage-society/

Fun fact about us for #InternationalWomensDay - our 1st graduating students were women - Margaret Crichton Mitchell (later Stewart), 1st ever class🥇in #Archaeology MA 1930, PhD 1934 (Childe's only PhD student) & Barbara Laidler our 1st ever BSc Archaeology (c. 1930s)! @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social 🏺

Honoured to be in such amazing company for #InternationalWomensDay👩🏻‍🔬 check out everyone’s research highlights 👇 mine features some exciting findings from #ArchaeoFINS including early nuns on Iona!

Dr Sam Leggett @samleggs22.bsky.social featured here as one of the many inspirational women in research funded by @leverhulme.ac.uk #InternationalWomensDay @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social

This explains why UK news outlets pretty much ignored our recent work showing that there's continuous movement from all over the place into/around Britain during the period because it's counter to these anti-immigrant arguments.

You asked for more mixed-up Goths, you got 'em!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Molecular memories – tracing early medieval migrations and diet Using multi-isotope analysis, Sam Leggett’s fellowship focused on the role of food and diet and its link to mobility in early medieval Britain and Ireland

Using multi-isotope analysis @samleggs22.bsky.social’s Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social focused on the role of food and diet and its link to mobility in early medieval Britain and Ireland.
media.leverhulme.ac.uk/feature/sleg...
#InternationalWomensDay

Screenshot of Dr Gardner's magazine article. Full alt-text not provided by author.

Dr Gardner’s research is featured in Archaeology Scotland Magazine (Winter 25/26)! It discusses how archaeology can be used to understand our historic & continued reliance on fossil fuels using the example of the oil industry in West Lothian 1851-1962. Check it out! https://tinyurl.com/mrvp3dcd 🛢️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Top Left: Photograph of V.G. Childe c. 1930s, Australia, Public Domain. Top Right: Photograph of Stuart Piggott, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2741252. Bottom: “Stained glass of Dr Robert Munro FRSE in Scottish National Portrait Gallery” By Stephencdickson - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114215413.

TOMORROW's ArchSoc/Archaeology Research Seminar 🕰️ 16:15📍Meadows LT "Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh University until about 1990" by Prof Ian Ralston @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social ahead of our 💯 🎂 year as a department! #EdinArch #archaeology #Edinburgh #prehistory

I wrote a thing with Mark Hall on the wonderful late medieval chandelier in St John’s, Perth.

Many simply do not know that Scotland has such ecclesiastical treasures and it’s more important than ever that we celebrate them at this time of mass church closures.

Meme. Medieval painting of a nun, her head bowed and her hands clasped in front of her. There is something of a halo around her head. She is cutting her eyes towards you, and her eyebrows seem sculpted to perfection. Her lips are pursed, and her nose is so straight that you could use it for a ruler. Presumably you have interrupted her in the middle of prayer. Your first impression is that she is meant to look holy. But, on further examination, this feels...off. Her expression is not terribly reverent. This nun (we'll call her Sister Immolate) looks coy, and cunning. Her hands, which you first took to be clasped in prayer, appear to be arched in a Mr. Burns "excellent" pose, and the lift of her eyebrows suggests that she knows things that you don't. And not just things. A specific THING. And you'll not be in the dark for long. You've walked right into Sister Immolate's trap, like a hiker to a mountain lion's lair. Good luck. Meme text reads: "We thought you said You wanted none eels"

Did people always pay their eel-rents? Hell no!

In 1250 the abbot of Tupeholm sued the nuns Stykeswald. The nuns owed the abbot a yearly rent of 6 sticks of eels, but hadn't paid for 3 years!

That's 450 eels, folks. Scandalous!

The nuns agreed to pay a fine, and life went on.
🗃️🧪

Fascinating “whole town” approach to medieval Cambridge with amazing isotopes by @alicekensa.bsky.social! Charting diet & social status from the 10th-16th century! 🧪⚛️🏰 #MedievalSky

Cheers Steve! And congrats again on a great paper!

It’s been very long awaited hasn’t it? Glad it’s actually out now and not a hallucination 😂

The RIA's Archaeology Research Grants and Radiocarbon dates schemes are open to applications from now until 25 March.

Archaeologists and archaeology students (undergrad, postgrad, PhD) who wants to carry out research based in Ireland (including NI) can apply: www.ria.ie/2026/02/12/w...

Congratulations @grungeviking.bsky.social & team! People are LOVING this article!🏺🥘🐟🧪 may pick your brains about the contemporary residues we’re getting in Scotland!

For anyone who's interested @waterstones.bsky.social is running a special pre-order offer (no pun intended) on my new book about King Offa of Mercia, valid from Friday 20 Feb. eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

New study maps where wheat, barley and rye grew before the first farmers found them Using advanced machine learning and climate models, researchers have shown that the ancestors of crops like wheat, barley, and rye probably were much less widespread in the Middle East 12,000 years ag...

New study maps where wheat, barley and rye grew before the first farmers found them. #Archaeology
phys.org/news/2026-02...

Medievalist friends! Applications are open until end of Feb for a fully-funded PhD in Arthurian Literature with the brilliant Louise D'Arcens @medievalafterlives.bsky.social and myself, based between Sydney (Australia) and Groningen (The Netherlands).

Please share widely!

tinyurl.com/f7su6urv

Cuisine and culture-contact: lipid residue analysis reveals lack of aquatic products in pottery from Viking Age England | Antiquity | Cambridge Core Cuisine and culture-contact: lipid residue analysis reveals lack of aquatic products in pottery from Viking Age England

Great new study on early medieval foodways, specifically a lack of fish in cooking pots! Glad it's not just our #ArchaeoFINS pots that lack 🐟! Implication with the human isotopes is that the Vikings adapted to local cuisine & left their fishy ways behind! doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

The picture shows a necklace made of glass beads. The beads are of different size, shape and colour. Some are patterned, others monochrome.

In the early medieval period, colorful glass beads were a mark of prestige and fashion. This striking necklace, comprising over 60 beads in vibrant reds, blues, yellows, and intricate patterns, was discovered in the burial of a woman at Bissingen, southwest Germany, dating 7th century. 🧵1/2

🏺

Congratulations to our former MSc student Luisa and my amazing colleagues Sophie and @drbutty.bsky.social on a very cool CT method paper with some interesting implications about osteoporosis in medieval Scotland #MedievalSky #edinarch

Aus arch! there are two continuing, full time archaeology-adjacent professional staff jobs open at ANU! These are a collections coordinator for CASS and a lab coordinator primarily for my school
jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/collect...

jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/laborat...

Photograph of a Soay Sheep lamb with tags in its ears facing the camera, standing on grass. Source - A New Twist on an Animal Model Reveals Environmental Constraints on Selection. Gross L, PLoS Biology, Vol. 4/7/2006, e236. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040236, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1479004

‼️Published @royalsociety.org Open Science‼️ "From rugged isles to managed pastures: morphological changes in Soay sheep (Ovis aries) metacarpal bones following anthropogenic translocation" @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social 🐑🐏 doi.org/10.1098/rsos... @soaysheep.bsky.social

Awesome work from one of our PhD students Vera! Check out this mega isotope dataset! 🧪 ⚛️ 🦷🦴

🇫🇷 Thursday’s Research Seminar 12/2/26 @16:15 in the Meadows LT will be given by Dr Florian Cousseau (Durham) “Central #Brittany in the Middle #Neolithic: A Landscape Far from Empty” 🔗https://hca.ed.ac.uk/news-events/events/research-seminars/archaeology-seminars @hcaatedinburgh #edinarch #archaeology

☠️ The next Munro Lecture 12/03/26 is by Professor Sabrina C. Agarwal @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social 'Necropolitics in the collection: From colonial legacy to antiracist futures' FREE but booking is essential 🔗 http://hca.ed.ac.uk/updates-events/events/munro-lecture-necropolitics-in-the-collection

🦴 This week's ArchSoc/One Health Archaeology Research Group seminar will be by Simon Mays (Historic England) 'Osteoporosis past and present: Age-related deterioration in the nano-platelets of bone hydroxyapatite'. 🕰️📍 Thurs 5th February, Meadows LT, 16:15pm - all welcome! @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social

Between 2018-21 we awarded Duncan Wright of @newcastleuni.bsky.social 3 grants totalling less than 5k, to explore Laughton en le Morthen castle. This led to an AHRC grant to investigate the transition of power btwn Saxons & Normans. This is what they found: castlestudiestrust.org/blog/2026/02...

Congratulations 🎉 hope the viva goes well!