Dr Tess Machling
@tessmachling
Archaeologist, gold & torc researcher, chocolate artefact maker & mum. Often post about cats who aren't mine... Views all my own 😊 Green party 💚 She/her 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ Work on torcs & gold: Buy me a coffee:
Well yes... and there's of course this too... from near Catton... which of course is such an Iron Age thing to do... Not...
The Upton Lovell findings also give me the perfect excuse to share one of my favourite images of prehistory - a female metalworker (by the stunning portrait artist of prehistory people, Tom Björklund) #Archaeology 🏺
Continuing @danherb10.bsky.social's 'crappy AI archaeology interpretations' images, look what I found on a post on Facebook... Guess the torc, folks! #Archaeology 🏺
I kinda think he should have been stopped, and I'm no fan of Rachel Reeves... but, yeah, folks are enjoying this wayyyyyyyy too much, aren't they?? 🤣
There's nothing that says 'the weekend is over, Monday is here' more than the man I just walked past at the British Library... ...who was emptying beach sand from his shoes!
It's not really an Iron Age thing (they tend to use a sharp chisel) but you do see similar from then, like in this wire from Snettisham:
I keep meaning to show @trixranderson.bsky.social this... a deliberately cut wire on the otherwise un-historically (someone put a spade through it in 1943...) damaged Glascote torc... from Staffordshire... near the Rivers Tame & Anker... just downriver from Catton... ahem...
Been going through my mum's things. She was very active in environmental #Green issues and this is something she wrote in 1977, nearly 50 years ago!!! We can't say we weren't warned by folks like her - and so many others - who were dismissed as cranks at the time... #JoinTheGreenParty
Michael Lloyd's - one of the Torc Collective - superb work on the telly box today (the mace, at the opening of the Scottish parliament). #Archaeology 🏺
Indeed! For me it was seeing most of the Plougrescant-Ommerschans dirks all together in one place!!
Not that exciting, but you'll have to wait and see. As to Hummingbird Hawkmoths - they're so lovely aren't they? I had one in my gatden during that really hot spell in 2022... amazing creatures!!
Oh that's brilliant! That rick rack is all over torcs - in torcs it seems to mark a join or seam in the metal. Originally a genuine crimping technique but memorialised in deco!
Found this photo again - I look at it & can see the maker at work...I can hear tap, tap, tap of hammer on punch, way the piece was moved as they decorated it, the overlap of punch marks - there's so much movement. ❤️ I wonder who they were... if only I had a time machine, eh? #Archaeology #Torcs 🏺
Last night I went to Goldsmiths Hall to see Michael Lloyd talk about his work. Lovely thoughts from Michael about pattern, talking to metals, nature, craft etc etc all in the most magnificent setting, where my ancestors once trod. Magical evening! ❤️
Next time you're in #London, and you're walking across the Millennium Bridge, look down... ... there's teeny tiny, chewing gum, pavement art to be seen! ❤️
Yes! Seen this before. Peter Shorer made a lot of the old casts (the Great torc copy is cast, which the original wasn't!). I've seen the replica of the GT (me holding it below). It's a true version and another of Peter's GT replicas is on display at Norwich Castle Museum...
🎉 I SAW A WATERVOLE.🎉 I haven't stopped grinning since. This place is a voley des-res, the reedy Montecarlo of vole real estate. Happy vole Valley. Vole nirvana... Little reddish fella just plopped off the bank in front of me and swam away. 😍 *beaming* 😍
My mum was cremated this morning and we marked the moment with bubbles. Mum would've approved, especially to see daft cat running around popping them. ❤️
Looking forward to escaping to the river today for a few hours, looking for poo and unfinished vole dinners... ❤️
Look who I found!!! Yes, it's the Artist Formerly Known as a Palace!! ❤️