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archaeoplays.bsky.social
ArchaeoPlays
@archaeoplays.bsky.social
5.5K followers 3.4K following 370 posts
They/them. Disabled/chronically ill Minecraft YouTuber, & digital archaeologist (alias: Dr. Heather Christie). Also early medieval Scotland specialist and glass bead nerd. Lead Researcher for Carved in Stone. Business enquiries: archaeoplays@gmail.com
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archaeoplays.bsky.social
Carved in Stone is HERE!!! @archaeonado.bsky.social called it “the best book on the Picts ever written,” so you should definitely check it out over at www.stoutstoat.co.uk/carvedinstone

🏺 #picts #archaeologysky #rpg #ttrpg #indiettrpg #dnd #pathfinder
A young person with braided red hair rides a spotted brown horse through trees, a determined look on their face. They have a brown cloak, a yellow tunic/dress, and black leggings. They're carrying a water flask and a leather book satchel. Whatever message they're carrying, it's clearly urgent.
November 12, 2025 at 10:25 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Excellent talk this morning by @rubiconarchaeology.bsky.social about social media in archaeology. Honestly, I've been meaning to work more on creating shorts from my longer videos, I just need to find the time! 😅
Slide from a presentation. Header is 'But why use Video for Archaeology?' Six symbols are spread actross the page, with a description of each. 1: 'A modern Deliverable that you can offer to your client'. 2: 'Showcases your hard working and competent staff - can hook in potential clients and/or new hires'. 3: 'It's a quicker method of getting information to the wider public'. 4: 'Gives an opportunity to focus on a specific find/site'. 5: 'Can populate your website, social channels, blogs forever - leaving a direct link for clients and interested public to see the amazing work your company is doing'. 6: 'Relatively cheap when you consider what you get back'.
October 26, 2025 at 12:15 PM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
And my super-exciting bonus option: Use the fringe!!! Going ALL the way back to the Orkney Hood, it has so many lovely strands in this decorative fringe. What if each strand was a spell? Or a spell slot? What if they unravelled when you cast the spell, so each morning you had to re-wind your fringe?
A repeat image of the Orkney Hood, with a green arrow pointing to the fringe.
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
And Option #3 is naalbinding! Or nålebinding - there are a few ways to spell it. Naalbinding is a fibre art technique that looks a lot like a cross between crocheting or knitting in the round, and uses your thumb and a needle. It’s also WAY older than crocheting or knitting. Millenia older.
White naalbound mittens from late 19th century Sweden, now held by Nordiska museet. They've also been embroidered with a variety of pansies and rosebuds.
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
We know the Picts used tablet weaving, because we have two examples of it on the Orkney Hood, but also because they CARVED it into their stones! Here’s an example from a stone from Rosemarkie, with the green arrow pointing to the tablet woven hem:
The hem design is unclear, but it seems to be some type of interlace.
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
You might think the small space and options for cards would limit the designs you can get, but you’d be surprised!
Examples of intricately-patterned tablet weaving in green and white. Most mimic a variety of Celtic knotwork designs. A variety of tablet-woven patterns in various colours. Many are intricate patterns of diamonds and swirls. A probably non-Pictish pattern of tablet weaving in various colours that reminds me of turtles or spiders or crabs.
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
I also mentioned tablet weaving! Pictish tablet weaving was probably done with a backstrap, rather than a specific loom, though I could be wrong. In tablet weaving, your warp threads are strung through stiff cards with holes in them, often 3-6. Turning the card puts different warp threads on top:
An example page from Carved in Stone. An older woman is showing a young child how to tablet weave using a backstrap. The warp threads extend off the page. The woven design is a black or deep grey pattern modelled after the T-pattern on Pictish carved stones, sitting on a yellow background. There is also a light blue border on each edge. The yellow and blue of the weaving match the older woman's dress and shawl/hood respectively. The young child is trying to keep track of the pattern on their fingers. Art by Jonah Walker.
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Maybe your various ‘Beast Shape’ spells are snakes in different levels of complexity, or ‘Bull’s Strength’ uses the Pictish symbol for a bull, and ‘Mass Bull’s Strength’ just has a bunch of them in one part of your robes!
A stipple and line drawing by Ian Gordon Scott of one of a whopping 30 bull carvings from Burghead, Moray, of which only six survive today. There are swirls characteristic of Pictish symbol art marking the joints. The bull faces to the right, with their head lowered in almost a charging position. Another stipple and line drawing by Ian Gordon Scott of one of the bull carvings from Burghead, Moray. There are, again, swirls characteristic of Pictish symbol art marking the joints. The bull faces to the right, with their head lowered, this time in a much more aggressive stance Another stipple and line drawing by Ian Gordon Scott of one of the Burghead bulls, with the same swirls marking the joints. The bull faces to the right, with their head lowered in an almost-charging position, similar to the first.
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
The base of your weave will use a specific pattern, like a herringbone or twill, but then your SPELLS can get fancier! Maybe ‘Hold Person’ is a woven design of a person held in place, or ‘True Strike’ is something based on this lovely carving on the Drosten Stone:
From the Drosten Stone at St Vigeans. A person with a beard (presumably a man) kneels on one leg and readies a crossbow. He's wearing a hooded cloak, though we can see some cloth from a tunic or something similar around his thighs. He is facing a boar, ready to shoot.
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Within weaving, you have two techniques as a Pictish person: weaving on a standing loom, or tablet/card weaving. For a standing loom, the warp threads are organised over a top bar, and loom weights tied on the bottom keep the threads straight and taught.
A line drawing of a standing loom with three heddle rods and several dozen loom weights at the bottom.
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Option #1: Weaving. Weaving is incredibly versatile as a fibre craft, and you can get pretty much any design you want into a woven fabric. That’s why most tapestries are woven, if they aren’t embroidered! The Unicorn Tapestries are a great example of intricately woven detail:
The Unicorn in Captivity: one of the Unicorn Tapestries, in which a unicorn is shown lying in a circular wooden fence. There is a pomegranate tree within the fence, and the unicorn is chained to it by its neck. Around the fence are hundreds of intricate, delicate flowers, including orchids, carnations, daisies, lilies, columbines, and thistles, among others. The Unicorn Purifies Water. From the Met Museum: "In this tapestry the unicorn kneels before a tall white fountain that has a pair of pheasants and a pair of goldfinches perched on its edge. Other animals both exotic and native to Europe lounge about, while twelve hunters in the back of the scene discuss the discovery of their quarry. Flora and fauna play a significant role in the narratives of the Unicorn Tapestries. Plants prescribed in medieval herbals as antidotes to poisoning, such as sage, pot marigolds, and orange, are positioned near the stream, which is being purified by the unicorn's magic horn." A recreation of the original tapestry 'The Hunters Return to the Castle', woven at Stirling Castle between 2002 and 2014. The Met Museum description of the original: "Two episodes of the hunt narrative are brought together in this hanging. At left, two hunters drive their lances into the neck and chest of the unicorn, as a third delivers the coup de grâce from the back. In some contexts, the unicorn is an allegory for Christ; the large holly tree (often a symbol of Christ's Passion) rising from behind his head may conceivably be linked to this association. In the other episode, at right, a lord and a lady receive the body of the unicorn in front of their castle. They are surrounded by their attendants, with more curious onlookers peering through windows of the turret behind them. The dead animal is slung on the back of a horse, his horn already cut off but still entangled in thorny oak branches—perhaps an allusion to the Crown of Thorns."
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
The brown colour of the hood is from the wool itself, rather than a dye, suggesting the wool came from Moorit sheep, probably an ancestor of the Castlemilk Moorit breed. But the feel of the wool was much closer to that of Shetland sheep, and it’s not uncommon for Shetland sheep to be coloured.
A Castlemilk Moorit sheep. It's a light to medium brown with tightly-curled wool. A Shetland sheep. This sheep has much looser-curled wool that is more of a cream to tan colour, but they can be a similar colour to the Castlemilk Moorit sheep.
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Both the hood and the wider tablet-woven fringe are from other pieces of clothing, & they’ve been cut out of those and stitched into this one in a wonderful display of early medieval recycling!

The hood portion is also a patterned weave, which looks like a herringbone pattern in this older drawing:
Drawing by Joseph Anderson of the Orkney Hood. This drawing shows the herringbone pattern of the hood more clearly, and seems to have drawn the strands of the fringe longer than the hood itself. I'm wondering if that's just from stretching the threads, though, rather than how they lie naturally - photographs of the original put the fringe around 3/4 to 4/5 of the length of the hood. But that could also be the angle of the images!
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
We DO have one surviving piece of Pictish clothing made from woven fibres: the Orkney Hood! It’s small, so likely made for a child, and it has 3 different components: the hood, a narrower tablet-woven band, and the wider tablet-woven band that includes the fringe.

www.nms.ac.uk/search-our-c...
A brown woven hood with a tablet-woven border around the bottom edge of the hood, and another, wider, tablet-woven hem with a fringe. The strands of the fringe are nearly as long as the rest of the hood is tall.
September 29, 2025 at 10:21 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Carving an entire spell is a bit much, though you're welcome it if you like! INSTEAD, though, you could carve mnemonics into a stick! The stick snaps or burns or disintegrates when you cast the spell, so you have to make new ones every morning!

The stick below says 'get eggs', art by Jonah Walker:
Coloured digital drawing of three sticks. The darkest does not have carvings. The small stick in the foreground only has a 'g' carved into it. The light-coloured stick has a y-juncture, and has 'get eggs' carved along it. Art by Jonah Walker.
September 19, 2025 at 9:33 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Ogham is usually a vertical writing system, certainly in the late 7th century. It's read from the bottom up, and the characters, or 'fid', are a series of lines marked in relation to a stemline. The ogham on this mug, which I absolutely NEED in my life, simply reads 'tea' (art by Anine Bösenberg):
Coloured digital drawing of an archaeologist's desk. A finds tray with several bags and a blue bead sits at the top left, while two other bags, one with a green bead and the other with a piece of stone, sit to the right. The archaeologist's white, freckled hands are writing someting in pencil in a notebook. Just to the right of the notebook and below the finds bags with the bead and the stone sits a white/grey mug full of tea. it reads 'tea' in ogham on the front. Art by Anine Bösenberg.
September 19, 2025 at 9:33 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Option #2 leans more towards folks who enjoy the spell component element of playing a wizard: painted quartzite pebbles!
Eight quartzite pebbles from Pictish sites that have been painted with a reddish-brown pigment. Three of the larger pebbles have numerous dots painted on them, and two of them have another motif - one appears to be a star, the other is more of a wiggly line. The fourth of the large pebbles is painted with an equal-armed cross with dots in each 'quadrant' of the cross. The four smaller pebbles have dots, and two of them have a linear design, but it's unclear if it's more than just a line.
September 19, 2025 at 9:33 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
BUT! Tattoos DID exist, as did pigment or various ways of staining the skin. The Picts were also INCREDIBLY detailed artists, and there were specific ways they carved certain animals or symbols into the stones that survive. Take these snakes from Newton House, Inverurie, and Baggerton, respectively:
A line and stipple drawing of a Pictish carved stone from Newton House, Scotland. The carving is a snake, whose body forms two switchback loops between the head and tail. It has scales down its body with dots in the middle of each, and there is a circular 'scale' in the exact middle of the body. The snake faces to the right. A line and stipple drawing of a Pictish carved stone from Inverurie, Scotland. The carving is a snake, whose body forms two switchback loops between the head and tail. It has scales down its body, though it lacks the dots of the snake from Newton House, as well as the circular 'scale' in the exact middle of the body. The snake faces to the left. A line and stipple drawing of a Pictish carved stone from Baggerton, Scotland. The carving is a snake, whose body forms two switchback loops between the head and tail. It has triangular scales down its body, though it lacks the dots of the snake from Newton House, as well as the circular 'scale' in the exact middle of the body. The snake faces to the left.
September 19, 2025 at 9:33 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
For anyone wanting to NOT agree to the new Academia.edu Terms of Service, which includes using your work for AI purposes, you don't need to accept the terms to delete your account.

Instead, click on the Terms of Service link in the pop-up...

🏺 #AcademicSky
Image of Academia.edu's new terms of service, which includes the highlighted sentence: By making any Member Content available through the Site or Services, you hereby grant to Academia.edu a worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, transferable license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, in connection with operating and providing the Services and Content to you and to other Members, including the generation and hosting of Output and the use of AI to generate adaptations and other derivative works of Member Content, provided that the Member Content is not sold to a third party for a profit.
September 18, 2025 at 9:39 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Pre-orders for Carved in Stone are open!! This book is gorgeous, and I am so grateful to use it (and the artwork!) in my videos.

You can pre-order from @stoutstoat.co.uk here: www.stoutstoat.co.uk/carvedinstone

Thanks to @archaeonado.bsky.social for the endorsement!

🏺 #archaeology #ArchaeologySky
A young person with braided red hair rides a spotted brown horse through trees, a determined look on their face. They have a brown cloak, a yellow tunic/dress, and black leggings. They're carrying a water flask and a leather book satchel. Whatever message they're carrying, it's clearly urgent. On the left of the image, there is a quote: "It's basically the best book on the Picts ever written. By starting from Scotland's environment and incorporating lessons from archaeology, history and art, this brings the Picts to life more effectively than any other depiction I've yet seen." from Dr Adrián Maldonado, National Museums Scotland.
September 12, 2025 at 1:32 PM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Goodness, chronic illness is awful this year, but I'm finally making videos again, and I just have to say:

Humans are ridiculous. In good ways, in bad ways, in all the ways.

Case in point: This tiny hedgehog on a wagon, from 1500 - 1100 BCE Iran (photo © Louvre)

🏺 #archaeology #ArchaeologySky
A white toy hedgehog standing on a black/brown toy wagon.
August 12, 2025 at 8:24 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
No stream today peeps - I've had a terrible cold and a terrible flare all week. I also can't take cold medicine, cuz they don't play nice with my painkillers. Bad colds are miserable with no cough/sinus/throat relief!

Instead, I shall continue to be a blanket heap. Feel free to also blanket heap.
A duckling wrapped in a green fleecy blanket and nursing a hot beverage, looking all cosy.
November 17, 2024 at 2:43 PM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
10: Ducks Are The Best! I love ducks. They make me happy. If you want to make me happy, sending me photos of ducks ALWAYS works. Or birds in general. Birbs are cool. I am not an ornithologist, I just like them. (art by KyuumiNya: kyuuminya.wixsite.com/to-beans)
Very cute emoji of a duckling wearing pointy sunglasses and doing finger guns. Cool vibes all 'round.
November 12, 2024 at 11:24 AM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
My husband got this for me for my birthday, and it's such a vibe 💚
A small woodcut diorama with a green frog on the middle. There is a sign just behind the frog that says 'I am very small please be nice to me.' The sign and the frog are surrounded by greenery, mostly clover with some small white flowers and a bush at the back.
November 3, 2024 at 3:11 PM
archaeoplays.bsky.social
Our Samhain Shenanigans event on Archaeo SMP starts in just under an hour and a half over an Twitch and YouTube!!!
ArchaeoPlays's Minecraft character stands amid five jack-o-lanterns of difference sizes, holding a lantern. One pumpkin is a music note, another is a little face (H_H), another is a cookie and one is a set of circles and lines. The fifth pumpkin is a wither skeleton face that glows purple instead of the usual yellow-orange of a candle. The background is a deep purple, with a moon-like light in the upper right hand corner. Stars dot the background, and several bats are flying around. The text reads: 'Samhain Shenanigans - 2 November 2024 - 12:00 GMT (8:00am EDT) - Catch us live on Twitch!' There is an Archaeo SMP Season 2 logo in the bottom left corner.
November 2, 2024 at 10:35 AM