Dr. Robert Barry Mason
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robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason
@robertmason.bsky.social
2K followers 1.6K following 710 posts

Archaeology, museums, science, & my garden. I also write fantasy stories (in an effort to keep the fantasy out of my archaeology). Tolkien & Pratchett nerd. 🌱🏹🏺🗡️📚📖⛏️✍️🚀🪐⚒️

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Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Nov 18
1/🧵 I am an archaeologist, have been since I was a teenager working for the unit in my hometown of Southampton who then gave me a job for a few years. Eventually I got a D.Phil from Oxford (1994) and jobs at the Royal Ontario Museum & University of Toronto.
Here I am excavating in Southampton in 1981, photo by a Southern Evening Echo photographer. Shorts like that were less of a statement in 1981. I think I got the hat at the Glastonbury rock festival.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · 19h
Happy Year of the Horse to all who observe the Lunar Calendar! I could post a beautiful antiquity, but instead here is my favourite fictional horse: Maximus!
a close up of a white horse with a bridle and reins
ALT: a close up of a white horse with a bridle and reins
media.tenor.com

Reposted by Aidan O’Sullivan

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · 22h
I have been reading about the history of Gaza lately. Apparently they minted very early coins from the mid-5th century based on the Athenian silver drachm, but with the bearded head of their own deity rather than Athena. Unfortunately the ROM doesn't have one so I stole this image from the internet!

Reposted by Robert Mason

historicalsoton.bsky.social
Historic Southampton @historicalsoton.bsky.social · 1d
John Everett Millais was born on Portland Street in Southampton on 8 June 1829. He was baptised in All Saints’ Church on the corner of Southampton High Street and East Street in the December of that year. Most of his early childhood was spent in Jersey.

1/5
Portland Street. Plaque on Portland Street. Portrait of Millais.

Reposted by Robert Mason

kaysunahara.bsky.social
Dr Kay Sunahara @kaysunahara.bsky.social · 6d
I have been busy photographing #Roman coins minted in Alexandria, #Egypt in the collection @romtoronto.bsky.social This one of Probus is dated to 278 CE. I like the standing eagle on the reverse. Browse the whole series online here: collections.rom.on.ca/search/910.2...
#MuseumWork #Numismatics
Obverse side of a bronze coloured tetradrachm coin with the bust of Roman Emperor Probus, facing to the right. He crowned with a laurel wreath. Dated to 278 CE. Reverse side of a bronze coloured tetradrachm coin with a standing eagle facing to the right with wings arrayed.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · 16d
I was recently sent some 17th century Iranian Safavid tile images that are of the type in a book published by Lisa Golombek and I last year. Most of them we had already seen, but one added the poop-deck to our ship!

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · 28d
Both of my daughters play Sims, so I thought I would give it a go. I made a Sims version of the monastery in Syria where I did fieldwork for some years, Deir Mar Musa.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Jan 6
An interview with my friend Fr. Jihad Youssef at Deir Mar Musa, in Syria.

religionunplugged.com/news/mar-mus...
The Unlikely Place Where Syrian Muslims And Christians Become Friends
The climb to Mar Musa al-Habashi monastery is deliberate and demanding. Three hundred forty stone steps wind up a stark, treeless mountain ridge in the Qalamun region. But complete the journey, and yo...
religionunplugged.com

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Dec 23
Trying to pin down this North Elmham pottery at the ROM. This group is mostly Thetford Ware, 3 Ipswich Wares, & 3 St. Neot's ware. The latter has shell (you can see it in this photo). Ipswich ware is supposedly grittier than Thetford Ware. Time to break out the microscope.
#MedievalSky #Archaeology

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Dec 11
It snowed. Yay.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Dec 9
Tricky working out the numbers on the North Elmham pottery sometimes. I think this is NEP 67 102. I assume 102 is what they call a feature in the publication, what we called a context number in my day (70's-80's). Unfortunately this number is not in the publication!
🏺 #MedievalSky #Archaeology

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Dec 9
Working on the North Elmham medieval pottery from England at the ROM and found this guy. Seems a merry sort. 🏺
#MedievalSky #Archaeology

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Nov 15
Reclaim our heritage? Is he talking about Windscale? The nuclear industry gives scientists a bad name.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Nov 14
This really is not natural. The trees know when the winter is coming, they drop their leaves before the first snows. Usually there is enough time to clear the leaves before the snows come. Things are messed up.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Nov 14
I think I'm fatigued and leaning about myself. This was right after a field season in Syria!

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Nov 11
MEN! Have you thought about the Roman Empire today? 🏺

My pic of 2005.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 28
I follow someone that posts historical photos and stories about my hometown, Southampton in England. Recently, he posted a story about a man that was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in 1939, just before WW2. In his defence he had said that Mr. Hitler had been "on his nerves" of late.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 28
So many moustaches...I'm surprised that there aren't more beards. Apart from the influence of the King, surely some of these men were ex-Navy? But then I googled for sailors in 1914 and got no beards again!
George V Italy WWI Group of British Sailors at the Vatican

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 27
I have just written a science-fiction story in which the main character has the ability to create circular kilometer-wide "cities". Today I discovered Nördlingen. However, this German city was built in a meteor crater, not by alien technology! 📚🪐 #BookSky

medium.com/the-kraken-l...

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 25
I thought I had better get a pic of these fuchsias before the frost hits tonight! 🌱 #FlowerReport

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 24
Nice use of satellite imagery to reveal the destruction of cultural heritage.

www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/u...
See the White House’s East Wing demolition from satellite images | CNN
Satellite images show how dramatically President Donald Trump’s plans to build a new ballroom have affected the historic structure.
www.cnn.com

Reposted by Robert Mason

historicalsoton.bsky.social
Historic Southampton @historicalsoton.bsky.social · Oct 24
I think we can all sympathise with Douglas Walker, a 44-year-old fruit salesman of no fixed abode, who was charged with being drunk on Havelock Road on 26 August 1939. Two days later he pleaded guilty and said: “I think Mr Hitler had got on my nerves a bit during the day. I had certainly had a few.”

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 23
Looking up the precise location of the site producing the Anglo-Saxon pottery I have been asked to look at in the ROM. North Elmham was apparently the seat of a bishopric until 1071, and the excavations were to the southwest of the now ruined cathedral. 🏺 #MedievalSky

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 20
I wrote this story for a prompt by The Kraken Lore on Medium. It is the kind of fantasy that helps me sleep at night.

In a good way!
medium.com/the-kraken-l...
The Emissary
Would you want to save the world?
medium.com

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 20
They are probably starting to panic. The mid-terms may become a bloodbath for the Republicans.

Fingers crossed.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 19
People that want to make everything grey need help.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 19
If you saw this chap, and you knew he had a story, would you be interested in knowing what that story was?

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 15
I was traumatised there by the Welsh National Opera's "Madame Butterfly" in which the petite Japanese wife was played by an enormous woman, and the strapping American captain was played by a ginger-haired chap who looked about 4'6" tall. Took me over 30 years before I could try opera again.

robertmason.bsky.social
Dr. Robert Barry Mason @robertmason.bsky.social · Oct 15
44 years after I last excavated in Anglo-Saxon Southampton (fondly known as "Hamwee,"or actually Hamwih, to its excavators), I have been asked to catalogue some English early mediaeval pottery. A reward for a career studying the vibrantly colourful pottery of the medieval Middle East! #MedievalSky