David
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archaeomather.bsky.social
David
@archaeomather.bsky.social
5.8K followers 1.5K following 5.4K posts
Minnesota environmental archaeologist, writer & terrible gardener - always researching the archaeology of bear ceremonialism, obsessed with museums, historical designations & monuments
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archaeomather.bsky.social
David @archaeomather.bsky.social · 10d
4. “Clio, Muse of History” by Charles Meynier at the Cleveland Museum of Art. She is my favorite and she seems to be pissed off which is understandable.
A woman with wings and a laurel crown seated and writing on a stone tablet with a fragment of an ancient carving at her feet.
Reposted by David
antiquity.ac.uk
Feeling a little worse for wear this #NationalHangoverDay? Just think of it as continuing one of humanity's oldest traditions. To prove it, here's a mini #AntiquityThread on the production and consumption of alcohol in the past 🥂 1/6 🧵

🏺 #Archaeology
January 1, 2026 at 1:25 PM
Reposted by David
kpw1453.bsky.social
Happy New Year and good fortune to everyone during 2026! Below is a relief of the Roman goddess Fortuna which was found at Castlecary Roman Fort on the Antonine Wall. Now part of the collections at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. 📸 My own. #RomanFortThursday #NewYear
January 1, 2026 at 7:38 AM
Reposted by David
newyorker.com
A New Year’s cover by Owen Smith, from the December 27, 1999, issue of the magazine. #NewYorkerCovers
newyorkermag.visitlink.me/0hNHog
January 1, 2026 at 1:00 AM
archaeomather.bsky.social
🎶 So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s …

wait, it’s what?

oh no

oh geez
January 1, 2026 at 12:56 AM
archaeomather.bsky.social
The World War I Liberty Memorial tonight in Kansas City
A very tall memorial pillar with the sunset behind.
December 31, 2025 at 11:59 PM
archaeomather.bsky.social
My breath smells like barbecue and bourbon. Nice for me, for others idk
December 31, 2025 at 11:55 PM
archaeomather.bsky.social
New Year’s Eve in Kansas City
Evening view of Union Station and the Kansas City skyline.
December 31, 2025 at 11:52 PM
archaeomather.bsky.social
What’s wrong babe? You’ve hardly touched your Dr. J. Hostetter's Stomach Bitters.
Mid-19th century medicine bottles with dark liquid inside, at the Arabia Streamboat Museum in Kansas City.
December 31, 2025 at 10:38 PM
Reposted by David
alisonfisk.bsky.social
As the year draws to a close, I’m signing off 2025 with a magical find!

An ancient amber bear. Carved some 10,000 years ago, it washed up on a beach at Fanø, Denmark, from a submerged Mesolithic settlement in the North Sea.

✨ Happy New Year all! ✨

National Museum of Denmark
📷 by me

#Archaeology
My photo shows a small figurine of an amber bear carved some 10,000 years ago during the Danish Mesolithic period. The bear is seen in profile facing right. The legs are incomplete. The ears, muzzle, and mouth are defined. The figurine is displayed on a small metal stand. The display lighting shines on the bear’s head and neck enhancing the translucence of the orange amber. The neck of the bear has a polished groove indicating it was once suspended on a cord or string. Length 6.5cm. The Fanø bear was found in 1991 on a beach on the west coast of the Danish island of Fanø, located off the south-western coast of Jutland. In the Stone Age the Danish coastline was different from today. “Since then the coastline has been influenced by later changes to the sea level as well as the rising up of the land after the last Ice Age. This rising of the land is still going on today. North of a line on the map the land has risen up and south of the line the coast has become submerged because of the subsequent rise in sea level. Therefore a proportion of Stone Age settlements south of the “tilt line” now lie under water or at the edge of the beach. Thus objects can be washed out in the sea and later be found on the beach”. The Fanø bear is one of a small number of amber bear figurines from the Baltic Sea region which have been assigned to the Mesolithic period by means of a typo-chronological approach Amber has many amazing properties: it’s warm to the touch, it’s a glossy translucent colour when polished, it gives off a fragrant scent when burnt, and when rubbed against fur or hair it can produce static electricity which ‘magically’ emits green sparks in the dark and can make hair stand on end.
December 31, 2025 at 10:26 AM
archaeomather.bsky.social
Fun to return to Afterword in Kansas City for cocktails and books.
A corner bar at night with a painting of a woman with her fist raised.
December 31, 2025 at 6:29 AM
archaeomather.bsky.social
Missouri sunset behind too many Minnesota State Parks annual passes. We are Kansas City bound.
A thin line of deep orange sunset at the horizon, through the windshield at the passenger side of a car.
December 30, 2025 at 11:39 PM
archaeomather.bsky.social
Reading this good book and learned that Birds of Paradise were first known in Europe in 1522 from skins from which the feet had been removed, leading Linnaeus to later name the species Paradisaea apoda, the footless Bird of Paradise.
Book cover of The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, by Kirk Wallace John.
December 30, 2025 at 11:07 PM
archaeomather.bsky.social
In the passenger seat on a New Year’s road trip, and taking a deep dive into a favorite book, Wild Rice and the Ojibway People by Thomas Vennum (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988) - signed at the wild rice conference hosted by the Great Lakes Indian Fisheries & Wildlife Commission in 1999.
Book cover of Wild Rice and the Ojibway People with a photo of a woman in a canoe bending rice stalks to harvest with knocking sticks. Title page with handwritten dedication by author Tom Vennum.
December 30, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by David
markrobbie.bsky.social
Ziggy Stardust ✨🪶
Sparkly green-backed and orange-breasted Anna's Hummingbird on the top of an aloe stalk Close up of upper back and head. Little light spot in his black-pearl eye
December 30, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by David
jurassicparks.bsky.social
Worth mentioning that this political moment already resulted in an unprecedented cancellation of a proposed Refuge expansion that had been developed over a few admins

www.texasmonthly.com/travel/texas...
December 30, 2025 at 12:43 AM
archaeomather.bsky.social
How I am walking out of 2025
December 30, 2025 at 1:48 PM
archaeomather.bsky.social
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Minneapolis tonight.
An old stone church with a tall steeple decorated with Christmas wreaths.
December 29, 2025 at 11:25 PM
archaeomather.bsky.social
My telework colleague is mesmerized by the reflections of melting icicles.
Fluffy cat looking past me with rapt attention.
December 29, 2025 at 7:34 PM
Reposted by David
langurlover.bsky.social
#Archaeology 🪶🦜
Ancient Puebloans kept macaws and parrots in great houses for ceremonial use
In a recent study, Dr. Katelyn Bishop conducted a zooarchaeological and archival data reanalysis of macaws and parrots recovered from Chaco Canyon to better understand their depositional contexts, mat...
phys.org
December 29, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by David
steveschulz.bsky.social
Three suns today, I guess.
Sun dogs over Minnesota.
December 29, 2025 at 2:28 PM
archaeomather.bsky.social
All dug out, I think we didn’t have it so bad with the storm here
December 29, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Reposted by David
jeremyfarr.bsky.social
Bringing the drama of a Caravaggio to asparagus 🫡
ahistoryinart.bsky.social Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 3d
'Still life of asparagus.' (1697) Adriaen Coorte's still lifes set against a plain dark background, are enormously appealing to the modern eye, his work fell into obscurity in the 18thC and 19thC; a reappraisal about his career was published in the 1950s.
December 29, 2025 at 9:35 AM
archaeomather.bsky.social
“Winter” by Peter Blume (1964), at Mia, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, seen in 2022.
“Winter was the first painting Peter Blume made in a cycle of the four seasons (1964-1989). It originated in a drawing he made off the coast of Sicily of, as he put it, "a magnificent cliff that came right up out of the sea." This gradually morphed into a windswept snowscape, a scene of survival among birds in winter. Blume was a dedicated birdwatcher and drew the birds during many hours of feeding and observing them in his backyard. The memory of that original sketch from the warm Mediterranean Sea reverberates in the sense of churning among the snowdrifts that swell in the distance.”
December 29, 2025 at 4:14 AM
Reposted by David
sahndshel.bsky.social
We’re obsessed with this 4800yr old piece of pottery made by Ancestral Muskogean potters on the Georgia coast! #archaeology #history 🏺
December 28, 2025 at 10:26 PM
archaeomather.bsky.social
“Snowy Landscape with a Red-Roofed House (Schneelandschaft mit rotbedachtem Haus)” by Gabriele Münter, 1935, seen recently at the Guggenheim in NYC.
Painting of a snowy landscape with a small house and a mountain in the background.
December 28, 2025 at 6:59 PM