Matthew Collins
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matthewcollins.bsky.social
Matthew Collins
@matthewcollins.bsky.social

Archaeology, University of Cambridge | The Globe, University of Copenhagen
Ancient Proteins | Medieval Manuscripts | Proteomics and AI | πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦

Matthew Collins, is a professor at the University of Copenhagen, formerly as a Niels Bohr professor, and also holds a McDonald Chair in Palaeoproteomics at the University of Cambridge. .. more

Biology 24%
History 22%

Were the Sea Peoples agents of change?

The displaced white-collar workers? πŸ˜€

The displaced hordes of white-collar workers... πŸ˜…

Thanks πŸ‘

9/ The Lesson for the C-Suite: Archaeology teaches us that complexity is a subsidy of stability. If you build your entire strategy on a "Palatial" supply chain (Nvidia/TSMC), you are vulnerable to a 1200 BCE-style collapse.

8/ Innovation through Constraint.
Will we are seeing the same "accidental" toughening. Because we can't all afford $40k H100s, developers outside USA / China are forced to use "charcoal" methods:

A more resiliant 'steel AI' would impact markets and change workpatterns

7/ The "Steel" of AI is a happy accident. Steel wasn't a deliberate inventionβ€”it was a byproduct of struggle. Smiths couldn't melt iron like bronze; they had to work it in charcoal fires. That charcoal "accidentally" introduced carbon, making the metal tougher and lighter than the "elite" bronze.

6/ The "Steel" of AI.
Bronze was brittle. Iron (and eventually steel) was resilient. The "Steel" of AI isn't a massive, fragile LLM in a single data centerβ€”it’s a million small, locally-tuned models running on "gaming PCs."

Resilience beats Scale when the environment gets harsh.

5/ Small Language Models (SLMs) are the new Iron.
If global trade or energy crises make 100,000-GPU clusters unsustainable, we move to the "Artisanal" era.

Quantisation: Making models smaller/faster.
LoRA: Efficient fine-tuning.
Edge Computing: AI running on ARM, Gaming PC not server farms.

4/ The "Iron Age" Pivot.
When the Bronze Age collapsed, the "Democratic" technology of Iron took over. Why? Because iron ore is everywhere. It didn't need a 2,000-mile trade route; it just needed a local blacksmith with the right "recipe."

3/ Palatial vs. Artisanal Economies.
Bronze Age empires were "Palatial"β€”highly centralized, elite-controlled, and fragile.

We are currently in the Palatial AI era: Power is concentrated in a few "Hyperscalers" (Big Tech/Foundries). Only "Palaces" (the data center) have the tech.

2/ The Dependency Trap
Bronze wasn't a "local" tech. It required Copper (common) + Tin (rare). Tin traveled 1000s of km to reach the Mediterranean.

Today’s "Bronze" is Compute. High-end AI requires specialized GPUs + HBM memory. If that hyper-centralized supply chain snaps, the "empire" halts.
The Bronze Age vs The AI Age
1/ Can archaeology predict the future of Big Tech?

Economists usually look back 50-150 years; archaeologists look back further.
When you look at the Bronze Age Collapse (c. 1200 BCE), are there any parallels to our current AI trajectory?
#AI #TechHistory #Archaeology
We have a new paper out in Rapid Comms in Mass Spectrometry about 14C dating bone using a minimally destructive approach.
analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Minimally Destructive Radiocarbon Dating of Bone
Rationale Bone is commonly used in radiocarbon dating in archaeology and other disciplines. Despite advances in collagen extraction protocols, the process remains destructive, requiring sawing, dril.....
analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Reposted by Matthew J. Collins

Good news everyone, _Nature_ has published 66 Open Access articles to date in 2026!

This means Springer-Nature has gobbled up USD$837,540 of science funding this year.

I'm sure we couldn't think of anything better to do with that money.

#OpenScience

Registration OPEN for Practical Palaeoproteomics Summer School Copenhagen! 🦴πŸ§ͺ

πŸ—“οΈ Aug 12–21, 2026 πŸ“ Copenhagen (In-person + 3-day remote option) πŸŽ“ 6 ECTS credits ⏳ Deadline: April 1st

Apply here: phdcourses.ku.dk/detailkursus...

#Palaeoproteomics #BioArch #Archaeology #Proteomics #PhDLife
Graduate School of health and Medical Sciences
RadEditor - please enable JavaScript to use the rich text editor.
phdcourses.ku.dk

#ZooMS infographic and ALT generated from a spoken prompt "Can you explain what zooms is and how this is used to identify archaeological bone? and medieval parchment?" πŸ¦΄πŸ“œ #Archaeology. Slightly scary, as while it is clearly AI, my net intellectual contribution was 18 spoken words.
πŸ“£ Work with us! πŸ“£

We are seeking to appoint a part-time, permanent Biomolecular Research Laboratory Technician!

Hear a bit more about the role from @matthewcollins.bsky.social

πŸ“… Closing date: 2 February

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/biomole...

Reposted by Matthew J. Collins

1/5🧡
🚨 New open access paper out today🚨
The Demodifier: a tool for screening modification-induced alternate peptide taxonomy in palaeoproteomics.
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
#palaeoproteomics

Reposted by Matthew J. Collins

🧬 New study co-authored by #ICArEHB’s Carli Peters identifies collagen markers from New Guinea faunaβ€”improving bone ID in tropical regions: doi.org/10.1098/rsos...
#Proteomics #Archaeology

Reposted by Naomi Sykes

Come work with us! 🧬 We're hiring a part-time Biomolecular Lab Tech @cam-archaeology.bsky.social .Join our team in the Henry Wellcome Building working on DNA & proteins.

Apply by Feb 2: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/biomole...

#ScienceJobs #Cambridge #Archaeology #STEM
Biomolecular Research Laboratory Technician (Part Time)
The Department of Archaeology seeks to appoint a part-time, permanent Biomolecular Research Laboratory Technician. The post holder will be based in the Department's laboratories, which are spread
www.cam.ac.uk

πŸŽ“ Fully funded PhD: AI & Imaging for Ancient Parchments!

Join NTU (UK) & UNamur (Belgium) to develop non-invasive workflows (ML, OCT, hyperspectral) for heritage science & biocodicology. πŸ“œ

πŸ—“οΈ Deadline: Feb 13, 2026 Apply for Project D145: isaac-lab.com

#HeritageScience #AI #PhD #Archaeology
An AI -aided data-driven approach to study the making, degradation and origin of historical parchments at Nottingham Trent University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - An AI -aided data-driven approach to study the making, degradation and origin of historical parchments at Nottingham Trent University, listed on FindAPhD.com
www.findaphd.com

Love this interview by @hankgreen.bsky.social with @Virginia Postrel, author of The Fabric of Civilisation.πŸ‘

A shout-out to CTR @ucph-soa.bsky.social and the TriVaL project ctr.hum.ku.dk/research-pro...

Where are the weavers in the Vikings TV series, when a (woollen) sail was the key technology?
The Second (or perhaps 3rd) Most Important Technology
YouTube video by Hank Green
www.youtube.com
18-month Postdoc in Biomolecular Archaeology at CNRS/CEPAM (Nice).
​Focus: Lipidomics & starch analysis of West African ceramics for the RainForStory project (Congo Basin agriculture).
β€‹πŸ“… Deadline: 12 Jan 2026
Portail Emploi CNRS - Offre d'emploi - H/F Chercheur.se en archΓ©ologie biomolΓ©culaire lipidomique archΓ©ologie africaine
Assurez-vous que votre profil candidat soit correctement renseignΓ© avant de postuler
emploi.cnrs.fr

Why is AAR (Amino Acid Racemisation; by implication #palaeoproteomics) so often overlooked for #geochronology?

New paper by @neaarlab.bsky.social, using Bithynia snails 🐌 to date the last 1Ma: 4 new reference sets for climate & Quaternary Science 🌍

open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/5-396
🧬 #Bioinformatics AEGIS #PostdocJobs in metagenomic pipelines & HPC: Ancient Environmental Genomics at @ucph.bsky.social to reconstruct ecosystems and develop climate-resilient crops. 🌍
Deadline: Jan 4, 2026.

Mikkel Winther Pedersen ([email protected])

#AcademicJobs #aeDNA #ClimateChange
Postdoctoral positions in ancient environmental genomics within the Ancient Environmental Genomics Initiative for Sustainability (AEGIS)
employment.ku.dk

New video of talk by @christinawarinner.bsky.social given at Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny posted by @ucsandiego.bsky.social explaining how advances in #aDNA and #proteomics can investigate the complex and diverse microbial communities from dental calculus
CARTA: Human Microbiome Evolution with Christina Warinner
YouTube video by University of California Television (UCTV)
www.youtube.com
New 2-year Postdoc: Ancient #Metagenomics & #Microbiome Sciences! 🧬🦷

Join Prof. @christinawarinner.bsky.social ’s group at @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social to study the evolution and ecology of ancient oral microbiota.

πŸ“… Apply by Jan 20, 2026: www.microverse-cluster.de/en/career/jo...
Jobs - Balance of the Microverse
www.microverse-cluster.de
New fully funded PhD! πŸ¦›πŸ¦΄ Explore the "Hippo & Hyena Haven" of MIS5e Britain w/ @whatkatiedigs.bsky.social @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social. Use isotope analysis & proteomics to study this unique Ice Age ecosystem.

Apply by Jan 14: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Very elegant! Who though tha #ZooMS would be used so creatively by so many πŸ‘