Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes

@lemoustier

Archaeologist, word-witcher, scicomm, consultancy 📚 KINDRED: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death & Art 🖋️ MATRIARCHA: Prehistory Re-imagined 🏛️ Honorary Researcher U. Cambridge & U. Liverpool 1/4 @trowelblazers.bsky.social Rep: PEW Literary

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· 24d

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· 24d

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· 25d

I'm very excited to work with Oliver going forward (ideas starting to germinate), but in the meantime you can see this show in London, and in November his big Cave: Resonance exhibition including paintings, multiscreen film and major music piece will be on at Kiasma in Helsinki.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· 25d

There's so much there - a sound installation alongside the paintings, featuring singers he invited into the cave to perform the first song they remember hearing - and as you move, the experience of the art's scale and focus changes, just as happens inside real caves.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· 25d

Here's his sound map of the cave - if you know it, you'll recognise the part just along from a horse whose legs emerge from flowstone when the light moves- where the most powerful resonance was. Archaeological research exists on cave acoustics & art placement but I love Oliver's explorations.

Photo showing a drawing on blue paper of a cave plan in white, with many tiny annotations in pencil recording musical notes in particular areas of the cave.

Close-up of the map showing one area with a strong F note, marked with a circled x.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· 25d

This exhibition, actually called The Sky In The Cave, is part of Oliver's broader Resonance: Cave work. This is a film that mixes shots of Font de Gaume, in which he spent weeks singing to find resonant areas, with the painting process that uses those frequencies to vibrate pigment on canvas.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· 25d

Completely wonderful seeing Oliver Beer's show with him, and exploring together many shared ideas of #art & #archaeology, around what caves do to humans and humans do to caves... This exhibition of sound-paintings, music & film is just gorgeous, go see it at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London! 🏺

À woman and man standing osé together in front of a huge canvas painted with pigment that's moved across the canvas by sound. It is swirling and brown and red and white, looking like the exit from a cave or maybe a planetary nebula.

Woman in front of a text describing an exhibition by artist Oliver Beer.
Text:
"Oliver Beer
The Sky in the Cave

In his paintings, Oliver Beer makes sound visible. Working without a brush, he uses the resonant frequencies
of specific sites, spaces and objects to conduct fine powders of natural pigment across the canvas. The
resulting fields of pulsating colour are not representations of sound but its direct physical impression: each
work a composition of up to one hundred individual frequencies.

This exhibition grows from a discovery Beer made inside Font-de-Gaume, one of the best-preserved
Palaeolithic painted caves. His research in archaeoacoustics established that its ancient image-makers
were likely working in dialogue with the cave's sonic properties, painting at precise points of heightened
acoustic resonance. As Jean-Michel Geneste, former curator of Lascaux, has written, Beer's work showed
that the cave was not only a medium for images, but also a sounding board, an amplifier of experience.

The Resonance Paintings emerged directly from Beer's experience of the
cave,
and image-making may have been entwined since the origins of human creativity. Blacks and ochres - the same
mineral pigments used by Palaeolithic artists - give way to luminous terracottas, blues, pinks and
yellows, tracing a passage from subterranean depth towards open sky. The exhibition's title evokes this
paradoxical journey through sound, from darkness into light.

For Beer, sound functions as connective tissue: a shared, bodily experience through which to move beyond a
fixed ideas of time, culture and identity. The exhibition foregrounds listening as a perceptual act, and the urgency of, as he puts it, 'being silent long enough to hear what comes back when you put your voice out and into the world."

The vinyl in the exhibition is the soundtrack from The Cave, Beer's video opera, composed for the eight
voices recorded inside Font-de-Gaume and based
of inheritance. on
each singer's earlies…

Photo of a large white room with very large paintings hung on all the walls. They are all done using the sound wave and pigment method, but have varying shades.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· 27d

First met Oliver last year, we spent hours talking, then he showed me the jaw-dropping power of resonance by taking me into Lambeth tube and humming, at just the right note, until it felt like the walls & air itself began to vibrate, and nobody walking past had any idea where the sound came from

Photo of a man standing in a London underground corridor, a brightly lit curving space with stairs going down beyond. He is humming but you can't tell.

Photo of man and a woman inside the tube corridor, grinning widely at the camera.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· 27d

On early train to London for 2 days of art & literature - meeting with wonderful artist Oliver Beer to see his Resonance: Cave exhibition, then evening at PEN Hessell-Tiltman prize celebration, then tomorrow to studio of 'Neandertal' perfume artist Kentaro Yamada, and then to Ana Mendieta at Tate!

Photo from train window of rural landscape with pasture and hills beyond with some woods. The morning sun is low and the pale blue sky has thin cirrus cloud.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jul 12

Every few months I poke my head into my dormant twitter account on the miniscule chance of a significant notification, and YE GODS the ancient history discourse right now 😬

Screen grab of twitter where Elon Musk calls historian Tom Holland a cuck because he said The Odyssey is a good film it's worth watching before you judge it.

Screenshot of twitter post by Tom Holland reaffirming his opinion in a QT.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jul 8

Yesterday's sunset, ahead of the 3rd heatwave this year with 4 days over 30C predicted; weather that's got no business in the Welsh Marches #ClimateCrisis #NetZeroNow

Photo looking out from a hill into a valley where the sun has neatly set over a hill. The sky is orange and the hills look purple, and in the foreground is silhouetted trees and a hedge.

A super zoomed in photo just as the sun was sinking behind the hill. It looks extra dark orange-red.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jul 6

#Humanism is a philosophy of optimism: for me, recognising that there is no deity, heaven or hell doesn't mean a loss, but a gain in appreciating what people can achieve together from their own efforts, and that our afterlife lies in the things we do for others now and in generations to come.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jul 5

🏺 Made a short film of my series of Awakening The Stone events at #Chalke2026, designed to explore resonance between prehistory and modern placemaking, memory and meaning - I recommend the version on my Insta which has more details (inc collabs) & cool music! 👇 www.instagram.com/reel/DaaJIfC...

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jul 1

🏺 The fact Mel came to #Chalke2026, did 3 fantastic stage events AND then composed & performed on the spot an archaeologically-inspired, incredibly beautiful and moving poem for our Iron Age chariot burial re-enactment just underlines why she deserves this award - congrats! bsky.app/profile/lemo...

Photo of two women standing inside a burial pit in front of a disassembled wooden chariot. One is dressed as an Iron Age female leader, the other is wearing 21st century clothing. Behind them rises a grassy hill with partially visible large letters spelling CHALKE. Other people stand behind the pit, looking on.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 30

Home (via Salisbury Cathedral and West Kennet) from #Chalke2026 - and more pics are definitely coming - but as I get back to writing today, here's me in my happy place! (though in fact I love all of our endlessly fascinating, perplexing, surprising human past)

Photo of a woman standing in front of a sign with "PREHISTORY" painted on it in shades of red and brown with handprints. Behind it is a hwitw tent roof and grass, trees and a blue sky with clouds. She is wearing a hat and smiling happily.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 28

Goodbye to @chalkefestival.bsky.social for another year... but already playing with ideas for 2027 with my many brilliant archaeology, heritage and artisan collaborators there!

Photo of a festival entrance tent, striped white and blue, in a field flanked by large trees. It's low evening sun and a blue sky with pale grey clouds.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 28

Many more pics/vids of chariots in action and all kinds of other amazing things I've been involved with on my Instagram Stories right now, but here's a flavour... -détail of one of the chariots - Pario Gallico as Doneka (risen post burial!) with Prof Mel Giles - one of my Awakening The Stone events

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 28

🏺 It's been the most extraordinary week at #Chalke2026, with an alchemical process of collaboration & creation between archaeologists, heritage interpreters and masters craftsmen to make 2 Iron Age chariots AND enact a burial. 🎥 : inc Prof Mel Giles' poem, composed & performed yesterday

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 24

Watching brilliant @drmirandakaufmann.bsky.social start her talk on HEIRESSES: Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery at @chalkefestival.bsky.social #Chalke2026

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 24

Jerky from yesterday's muntjac taking-apart is already done thanks to this insane heat at #Chalke2026

Photo of a hot-looking woman sitting in front of a hessian hanging, holding a large piece of venison jerky in one hand and smiling.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 24

Absolutely brilliant Day 2 yesterday at #Chalke2026, my mad idea for #Neanderthals vs Romans butchery event turned out fantastic - more pics & videos on my Instagram

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 23

And now students on stage being interviewed about their pathways into university and experiences studying archaeology!

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 23

Day 2 started here at #Chalke2026, our @livancworlds.bsky.social students getting stuck in explaining how we can explore ancient foodways using imagery and archaeological evidence 🍴 🏺

Photo of two school students sitting on a rug with an image from an Egyptian tomb in front of them, with two University students explaining ideas to them. Behind is a festival.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 23

Up with the larks & kites this morning - Day 2 #Chalke2026 is dedicated to secondary schools, plus I'm excited to do a #Neanderthals vs Romans 🪨🦌🔪 deer butchery demo! We'll be talking about hominin history of meat eating, comparing tech & resharpening. And it'll be venison stew for dinner...

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 22

Alex Compiani of Time Travellers Kitchen & me; classic Chalke temporal intersections with Here Be Flagons musicians and two members of Prehistory to Present; Phil Gregson working on the chariot reconstruction ; beautiful hand dyed and spun yarns from Castle Hill Heritage CIC

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 22

Very hot first day at #Chalke2026 but fantastic sessions with schools and all kinds of fun - I'm posting lots more pics & videos over on Insta follow me there! @rebeccawraggsykes

Two women standing and talking about stone tools in front of a table full of various archaeological objects and replicas including skull, ceramic bowl, bone. One of the women is dressed in worked skins.

Photo of a tent with an archaeologist talking to children they're all sitting on the grass in the shade, and a canbas is next to the tent with lots of negative hand stencils.

Photo of Chalke festival site including various historic style tents and an iron age roundhouse.

Photo of a man speaking with school children inside a tent.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 22

First #HearthOfScience session run by our @livancworlds.bsky.social experimental archaeology team at @chalkefestival.bsky.social is off, Ramses Kitchen Nightmares, exploring Ancient Egyptian foods! 🏺

Photo of a woman in a field, the sun is behind her and she is smiling.

Photo of a table in front of an open tent, with all sorts of archaeological objects on the table including a replica skull, charcoal, animal bones, a ceramic bowl with grain, and a sign saying Hearth of Science.

Photo of a man kneeling by a piece of fabric showing an Ancient Egyptian painting from Tom of Rekhmire, explaining the image to two children and an adult.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 22

Our #Chalke2026 set-up variously involved saying hi to lots of friends here; an extraordinary amount of time for two allegedly intelligent academics to put up the tent; brilliant students helping out; gorgeous solstice sunset; instant noodles at 23.30; an ethereal moonset

Photo of a large tent in the process of detection, on a festival site also being set up. The sunlight is low and giving long shadow to a man bending over.

Photo of festival tents silhouetted against a blue sky with pale pink, orange and grey sunset clouds.

Photo of a very yellow moon setting in hazy cloud behind a wood.

Photo of four students sitting at sundown on grass in from of a range of festival tents and a hill.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 21

Arrived at @chalkefestival.bsky.social ! Site still being set up but looking 👌 and we have new things at #HearthOfScience too including a deerstone!

Photo of a woman outside a medieval themed blue and white striped tent gateway. A painted fairground-style sign says Chalke History Festival.

Photo of a reconstruction of a prehistoric carved deerstone, with a tree and hill behind.

Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes@lemoustier· Jun 21

For 2026 there will also be a live #Neanderthals vs Romans deer butchery demo 🪨🔪🦌 for schools (day TBC), with me talking and the expert skills of two heritage interpreters, Memma The Cave Woman (with the Prehistory To Present group), and Alex Compiani of The Time Travellers' Kitchen.