Help! Who is going to protect the women from the male bathroom cleaners!? Where is JK Rowling and her lawsuits when you need her 😱😱😱

Miraculously I still have 10 fig seedlings from my experiment, including the 1 grown from a dried fig seed. They have started to smell of fig, which is amazing, so finally potted them out. Not sure what to do with 10 fig trees if they all survive ... experimental archaeology gone wild 😜

Great fun bringing my research with Milica Rajić on the truths about the fig trees growing in Sheffield on the River Don. Introduced the international audience to the wonders of British fig roll biscuits too. A bit more work to do on early pre-Industrial fig trees in Sheffield before publication.

Obsessed (and slightly distracted) by the beautiful building hosting our sessions in the Archaeology Museum in Lisbon.

Day 2 of @postmedarch.bsky.social conference in Lisbon, hosted by the wonderful Maritime and Archaeology museums. Our maritime session starts the day in the maritime museum exhibition hall. Speakers themselves becoming exhibits amongst the boats for passing tours!

So. Much. Fun
Spend the day at Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet with the blacksmith making a knife Crocodile Dundee would be proud of. Started with a rectangle of high carbon steel. Hit it a lot. Ground it a lot. Hard work. Wrists are a bit wrecked. But absolutely brilliant! And it is gorgeous.

Frosts and snowdrops at Manchester Uni. Welcome to Semester 2, back to teaching, kicked off with a lovely chatty group of 1st year archaeology students.

Yeah, I could be in a Monday morning work meeting, or I could be enjoying a walk along Manchester's queer canal on my way to a day long tattoo appointment.

Hi! I am back after 3 weeks ill in bed, so a belated happy Christmas, Hanukkah, & new year! I was gutted to miss SHA in New Orleans, but really not well enough to travel. My long Covid has been reactivated, so I'll be easing back to work, life, & exercise. Will keep you posted.

Superb end to @tag45.bsky.social with the SPMA Geoff Egan Memorial lecture given by @lauramca.bsky.social on the materiality of the North of Ireland Troubles. Thank you @bournemouthuni.bsky.social for a super TAG!

Day 3 @tag45.bsky.social starting, appropriately after the TAG party with the archaeology of cosiness. Kate & Emma in pyjamas asking can we make academic conferences cosy?

Sunday will round off @tag45.bsky.social with the SPMA annual Geoff Egan Memorial lecture, by Professor Laura McAtackney 'The potentials and limits of conducting archaeologies of the Northern Ireland Troubles and peace process: reflections over 20 years.' We have a table, come say hi!

Today @tag45.bsky.social I presented with Mili Rajić on story telling as archaeological method, based my PhD & her superb Hollis Croft comic. We use the gaps between & beyond 'data' as spaces to explore the marginalised, excluded, & othered people overlooked in narratives of the past.

Teaching has ended for 2024 which means the annual academic archaeological pilgrimage down to @tag45.bsky.social begins! 5hrs on a train to Bournemouth.

Great day at Burlington House, this time @geolsoc.bsky.social with the pleasure (I think) of rounding out the Energy Group Ground Modelling for Offshore Wind conference with a look at the challenges and opportunites for incredible work in Australia with First Nations on submerged palaeolandscapes.