Models of pre 1722 (first European visit) changing climate & population decline have been built on large numbers of obsidian dates on literally unstratified knapping debris, on spurious logic that more debris = more people. More in my book (yes parts are that nerdy). No evidence for such decline 2/2

At Stonehenge yesterday. As you'd imagine, very dry, dead grass showing disturbances underground. Straight-angled rectangles are 1950s/60s re-erection pits & concrete. Circular patches are older, unexcavated prehistoric pits: bronze age Y/Z Holes, & (larger feature) a pit for mising stone in circle

Very sad to hear of Roger Bolton's passing. Fairlight supremo & wonder musician, he wrote much TV music (Attenborough films including Lost Gods of Easter Island, endless themes, 999, Money Programme, Late Show, Question Time, Sister Beckett etc etc), a lovely crazy man & one-time drinking friend

This is exactly what Polynesian people were doing in the Pacific before Europeans arrived, notably on Rapa Nui where volcanic “rock mulching” was a key part of a remarkable strategy of soil management and improvement (including fallowing & crop rotation) entirely overlooked by early archaeologists

And at the V&A from July 20: British-Indian Bharti Kher's figure sculptures, including new Gaia (4m bronze depicting "a female warrior who carries a house on her head", no photo). Below: Warrior with Cloak & Shield (2008), more Mesolithic (+ banana leaf) than Neolithic! www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/...

Want to hear surprising stories about about Rapa Nui? See photos of its breathtaking statues and archaeology? Come to my talk at the Marlborough LitFest in September! www.marlboroughlitfest.org

Visiting Stonehenge Expectation: great whale in its prime breaching & diving in the ocean, seen at close but safe distance from a small boat Reality: elderly dolphin in fish tank, gazing out forlornly at crowd of unruly gawpers Part of my job as an archaeologist is trying to make expectation real

New show at Tate Modern, Cuban-American Ana Mendieta. She saw her works as "in the tradition of a Neolithic art", non-portable landscape impressions. This Imágen de Yágul, photographed surreptitiously at the Mexican site, reminds me of the Shanidar Neanderthal burial www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tat...

Currently 82%

Conclusion. Ignoring evidence, however much we want to believe the opposite of what it tells us or however important our belief might be, does not make something true. As they say in politics (Alfred's statue in Winchester, my photo)

Claims Philippa Langley was dismissed as an amateur (“elitist behaviour” confronting “someone from outside mainstream academics”) are wrong. She wanted to dig. Archaeologists dug, with her as consultant. Disputes arose after the dig. Her status was never an issue (Photo University of Leicester)

2. As the article says, the Richard III dig came about because of an amateur. It was done by professional archaeologists. They listened to Philippa Langley & agreed to do the dig, because they could see there was a case (Richard III's statue in Leicester, my photo)

New excavation in 1990 failed to prove anything. I found there to have been at least 11 other previous modern investigations in the area, none of which had found anything helpful to this cause (Photo University of Winchester)

Here is a detail of the 1798 plan noted in the press article, Hyde Abbey in Winchester where royal remains had been reburied for the second time in 1110. Many stone coffins & other burials were thrown about & reburied when a gaol was built in 1788. Archaeologists later dug on the site in 1836

Alfred’s burial records are more detailed. But his story is considerably more complex, as I explained in a British Archaeology piece I wrote in 2014 (images). He was originally buried in Winchester cathedral. His remains were later moved around. A lot. And muddled up with other bones

Meanwhile in Newbury

In some ways the best copy of all, however, is a set of hand-coloured engravings made and still held by the Society of Antiquaries, London, in the early 1820s, between damage sustained during the French Revolution and later 19th-century repairs 3/3 www.sal.org.uk/collections/...

This roll, along with visits to the real thing, was used in 1885 by members of the Leek Embroidery Society, Staffordshire and other embroiderers for the copy now in Reading Museum – they faithfully copied the V&A’s tidied up (by men apparently) nudity 2/3 www.readingmuseum.org.uk/collections/...

Did you hear talk of Reading Museum‘s Bayeux Tapestry on Front Row? There are at least 3 copies in England. The V&A has 2 photographic copies made in 1873. One consists of full-size prints hand-coloured by art students and joined together in a 65 metre roll 🧵 collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O118318...

I was only just thinking it was time for a change in direction

My obituary for Ittai Gradel is in today's printed paper www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

Shout out for @metmuseum.org. Island at the Edge of the World, like my other books, has my own diagrams & photos (the latter chosen from 500 Kodachromes & Ektachromes I shot on Rapa Nui in 1994). It also has a photo page of wooden carvings courtesy The Met’s outstanding Open Access scheme

I am reminded, as I sort out my childhood and family paperwork, that in 1966 the General Post Office had 2 events to celebrate with its postage stamps. As it happened, the more recent occurred on the day I first visited Stonehenge

RIP ExxonMobil boss Lee Raymond Fought climate-change policies, funded lobby groups, paid for press advertorials, promoted contrarian science, fostered public scepticism Also happy to deal with "bloody and corrupt autocracies” & to discriminate against gay staff www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2...

I was pointing out this is unreal – lending my expertise for free. But I can take it further if you like. It’s your job to check stuff out. Fakery is everywhere: fight it. It’s a photo: why no credit or link? Why anonymous poster? View their posts. Use Google Here are 3 photos I found online: mine

In British Museum this week where @frannabel2010.bsky.social found some Routledge letters including Rapa Nui reports by Katherine & Scoresby. S asked curator CH Read to propose him as a @antiquaries.bsky.social fellow, duly elected 1918. But he never proposed his wife K! See Salon 577 (link below)

..of prints from an amazing collection of 22k Paul Laib glass negs, given to the Cortauld 1974. He photographed art and artists. I was amused by these hands: Ben Nicholson & Hepworth (top), with ring 1933 but selected by her 1970 from same series without. They had divorced but feels more than that

What critics are saying about the Courtauld's Barbara Hepworth show is true: it's small but quite lovely. A student girlfriend at Goldsmiths & I all but wrote her off (Moore was the man), but now Hepworth just grows & grows in my image of 20C art. Also on the floor below a tiny show ... 1/2

metro.co.uk/2026/06/11/m...

Congrats to Anna Sharples on the new British Archaeology, I'd have been pleased to have published articles like these when I was editing! Takes work to make a magazine that brings you stories you wouldn't see anywhere else