Rocco Rotunno
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roccoro.bsky.social
Rocco Rotunno
@roccoro.bsky.social
Prehistory, pottery and African archaeology🏺🌍|
MSCA Fellow @ McDonald Institute Cambridge Uni| works on @EHSCAN_Project || views are mine (he/him) 🏳️‍🌈
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Happy and honoured to share this paper with @ercrema.bsky.social about pottery in Early Holocene Africa! Check out more in the thread!
Reposted by Rocco Rotunno
🚨 New paper out!

This work combines 3D geometric morphometrics, multivariate statistics, and machine learning to assess sexual dimorphism in great ape long bones — aiming to classify unsexed skeletal remains and reveal patterns relevant to human evolution.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
External Long Bone Morphology as a Tool for Sex Identification in Great Apes: The Case of the Humerus and Femur
Objectives Sexual dimorphism in primates reflects evolutionary, ecological, and social pressures and varies widely across species, complicating its analysis. This study builds on previous research t.....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 11, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Reposted by Rocco Rotunno
📣 PUBLISHED OPEN ACCESS 📣

Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dates suggest multiple origins of ceramic technology in Early Holocene Africa in Nature Communications by Rocco Rotunno & Enrico Crema

👉 www.arch.cam.ac.uk/news/statist...

📸 Westend61
October 9, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Happy and honoured to share this paper with @ercrema.bsky.social about pottery in Early Holocene Africa! Check out more in the thread!
October 3, 2025 at 3:03 PM
#SAFA 25 just ended... amazing week meeting friends and colleagues...thanks to all!
July 26, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by Rocco Rotunno
Today, the 25th of April, in Italy 🇮🇹 we celebrate the #Liberation from NaziFascism. We celebrate to remember the people of the resistance, we celebrate to remember that we kicked fascists' asses once and we can do it again.
April 25, 2025 at 9:37 AM
Reposted by Rocco Rotunno
In @nature.com we report the presence of the Mesolithic on Malta - upending everything we knew about the seafaring capabilities of late European hunter-gatherers and pushing back Maltese prehistory by 1000 years. Watch the clip, link to open access paper is below. 1/5
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
April 9, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Rocco Rotunno
I'm beyond excited to share our new paper in Nature! We sequenced the first ancient human autosomal genomes from the Central Sahara, two ~7,000-year-old individuals from Takarkori in Libya, revealing a long-isolated North African lineage: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Here's a short thread: (1/n)
Ancient DNA from the Green Sahara reveals ancestral North African lineage - Nature
Pastoralism spread through cultural diffusion into the Green Sahara, where an isolated, distinct North African ancestry persisted.
www.nature.com
April 2, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reposted by Rocco Rotunno
All this ⬇️
"It sounds ridiculous to say such things. It sounds unbelievable even to me. But it is where we are and the sooner we accept it, the sooner we can organise to change it." 🧪
Colleagues are cancelling their US work trips. I worry that international colleagues in the US are at risk if they collaborate with us on certain topics.

I've written a new post about the increasing danger of being a foreign scientist in the US.

christinapagel.substack.com/p/trumps-att...
Trump's attacks on universities get ever darker, with the shadows reaching our shores
The US has become a hostile and authoritarian state to foreign scientists and is choosing ideology over science.
christinapagel.substack.com
March 28, 2025 at 8:43 PM
Reposted by Rocco Rotunno
I'm very happy to share with you our latest work on stable isotope analysis on dessicated wild cereals from Takarkori rock shelter 🌱🌾
What a challenge!
Do not hesitate to contact us for a free copy ✨

#prehistory
#archaeology
Exploring the use of Wild Cereals at Takarkori (Central Sahara, Southwestern Libya) Through Stable Carbon and Nitrogen Isotope Analysis of Prehistoric Desiccated Seeds
Stable isotope analyses of archaeological plant material have increased in the last few decades with questions arising about climate, environment, and subsistence strategies. While the available st...
www.tandfonline.com
March 23, 2025 at 9:35 AM
📣Don't miss our CAAG's last talk this term... Saharan prehistory and pastoralism with @martinadm.bsky.social . Tuesday 18th, 1pm, McDonald Inst. @cam-archaeology.bsky.social
March 16, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Join us tomorrow for Prof. Amanuel Beyin's talk at CAAG Seminar Series...@McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research @cam-archaeology.bsky.social
March 9, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Join us tomorrow for the 2nd talk of Cambridge African Archaeology Group Seminar series...with @edwindejager.bsky.social at @cam-archaeology.bsky.social
February 24, 2025 at 11:54 AM
Reposted by Rocco Rotunno
Hot off the press! 📢
Honoured to have contributed to this special issue with @ameliebeaudet.bsky.social and team celebrating the iconic #Taung child for this centenary event. Stay tuned for more! #Palaeoanthropology #FossilFriday
To commemorate the #Taung centenary, a special issue of the SAJS came out today!

We present a collection of articles looking at aspects of the #history, #anatomy, #geology, #community and -#museum curation of the #Taung child in this post colonial era 🙌🏽

Link here 👇🏽👇🏽

sajs.co.za/index
sajs.co.za
February 7, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Reposted by Rocco Rotunno
📢Less than two weeks to the SAfA deadline!
Submit your abstract to our session on Digital Pathways (#56) and join us in Faro for an open discussion on the use of digital technologies to advance our understanding of the past.
@edwindejager.bsky.social

safa2025.icarehb.com/poster-and-o...
January 20, 2025 at 6:35 PM
All set for the new term!here the line-up for the next African Archaeology Seminar Series... save the dates🗓👈join us the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at UniCambridge
January 23, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Deadline is approaching!but you still have time!👈⏳️
📢🚨call for papers open @SAfAarchaeology 2025 @ICArEHB ....if you're interested in early POTTERY adoption and diffusion throughout time and space in AFRICA then share your research 👥
January 14, 2025 at 12:14 PM
📢🚨call for papers open @SAfAarchaeology 2025 @ICArEHB ....if you're interested in early POTTERY adoption and diffusion throughout time and space in AFRICA then share your research 👥
December 13, 2024 at 10:46 PM
Call for papers open...join us for our session at the next SAFA 2025. Hope to see you there
December 11, 2024 at 8:44 PM