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localarchaeologist.bsky.social
yourlocalarchaeologist
@localarchaeologist.bsky.social
Archaeology student at KU Leuven | Especially interested in paleoanthropology and palaeolithic archaeology
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
A paper in Nature Communications presents archaeology of the Namorotukunan site in Kenya’s Turkana Basin, and the study’s findings suggests continuity in tool-making practices over 300,000 years, with evidence of systematic selection of rock types. go.nature.com/3WJnBrK 🏺 🧪
November 8, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Some fascinating new research is showing how fast ancestral humans evolved their skulls, outpacing all other lineages of apes. These methods intersect with work that my students and I are doing, fun to explain how they work and what the results may mean.

www.johnhawks.net/p/human-skul...
Human skull shape evolved faster than any of the apes
New research led by Aida Gómez-Robles helps illustrate how researchers study the evolution of cranial form.
www.johnhawks.net
November 14, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
New fossils reveal the hand of Paranthropus boisei🏺🧪
C. Mongle, Meave Leakey, @louiseleakey.bsky.social et al
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Suggests P. boisei capable of tool making and use in some capacity while also supports proposed dichotomy of dietary adaptations between Paranthropus and Homo
October 17, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Ardipithecus ramidus ankle provides evidence for African ape-like vertical climbing in the earliest hominins 🏺🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Examines the evolutionary context of human bipedalism by analyzing the morphology of 4.4 million-year-old hominin talus attributed to ARA-VP-6/500-023.
October 17, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Ancient Teotihuacan murals reveal possible 2,000-year-old Uto-Aztecan language

A new study published in Current Anthropology may have solved one of the largest mysteries of ancient Mesoamerica—the language spoken in Teotihuacan...

More information: archaeologymag.com/2025/10/teot...
October 17, 2025 at 2:53 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Ancient microbial DNA and proteins preserve in concretions covering human remains
Ancient microbial DNA and proteins preserve in concretions covering human remains
Archaeological remains covered with concretions, including human bones, are commonly found in certain areas and time periods of interest for understan…
www.sciencedirect.com
October 13, 2025 at 2:53 AM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
🏺 This book mostly makes me wonder what image Sally Rosen Binford might have chosen of herself if she'd written her own archaeological magnum opus

(of course, one might argue whether she would ever have chosen to write such a book or centre herself on its cover in the first place...)
Giving a lecture on settlement archaeology this week so you KNOW I had to include my favorite archaeological book cover of all time 😂🏺
October 13, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Isometric reconstruction of a previously unknown Tiwanaku temple in the Bolivian Andes, published this year in Antiquity. Its study reveals the complex trade and ritual interaction networks of this powerful pre-Inka state.

Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🏺 #Archaeology
October 13, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Remarkable archaeological finds are telling a new story of how prehistoric humans turned clothing from a necessity into a means of self-expression
How our ancestors invented clothing and transformed it into fashion
www.newscientist.com
October 13, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
A new study identifies traces of azurite on a concave stone artefact from the Final Palaeolithic site of Mühlheim-Dietesheim, Germany. This represents the earliest use of blue pigment in Europe. 
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
September 30, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Early European evidence of artificial cranial modification from the Italian Late Upper Palaeolithic Arene Candide Cave 🏺🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Signs of artificial cranial modification in a Late Upper Palaeolithic individual (AC12) from Arene Candide Cave, Italy (ca. 12,620–12,190 Cal BP)
October 3, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans
Diverse forms of Homo coexisted during the Middle Pleistocene. Whether these fossil humans represent different species or clades is debated. The ~1-million-year-old Yunxian 2 fossil from China is impo...
www.science.org
September 25, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Oldest-known hippopotamus ivory object found in Iberian Peninsula Copper Age site.
phys.org/news/2025-09...
Oldest-known hippopotamus ivory object found in Iberian Peninsula Copper Age site
Researchers at the Prehistoric Studies and Research Seminar (SERP) of the University of Barcelona have identified the oldest-known piece made of hippopotamus ivory in the Iberian Peninsula. This findi...
phys.org
September 25, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Can video games help advance #archaeology? By inputting their 3D model of South Africa's Sterkfontein Caves into the Unreal video game engine, researchers made this key site in human evolution research more accessible than ever #NationalVideoGamesDay

Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🏺
September 12, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
New study from Abrigo de la Malia shows early Homo sapiens hunted deer, horses, and bison in Iberia’s interior 36k years ago—challenging the idea of an “empty” plateau. #Paleoarchaeology #HumanEvolution #Iberia #Zooarchaeology #anthropology
Hunters of the Plateau: Rethinking Early Homo sapiens in Iberia
New faunal evidence from Abrigo de la Malia suggests that early modern humans settled central Iberia far earlier, and with greater skill, than once believed.
www.anthropology.net
September 9, 2025 at 1:00 AM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
An empirically-based scenario for the evolution of cultural transmission in the human lineage during the last 3.3 million years doi.org/10.1371/jour...
An empirically-based scenario for the evolution of cultural transmission in the human lineage during the last 3.3 million years
Humans accumulate an ever-growing body of knowledge that far exceeds the capacity of any single individual or generation. Social learning and transmission are essential for this process. However, how…
doi.org
September 8, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Hominin skull from Petralona Cave dated to be at least 286,000 years old

New U-series dates on the Petralona cranium,
a key fossil in European human evolution 🏺🧪
Christophe Falguères, Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social, et al
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
August 22, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Have you seen that maybe Neanderthals made arrowheads 80kya? It's out in PLOS but I'm not covering until Monday (because wheeeew am I tired after writing all this stuff up this week!).

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
Arrow heads at Obi-Rakhmat (Uzbekistan) 80 ka ago?
Lithic weapon points occasionally found in Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal sites are large and do not differ in size, shape or type from those used in other activities such as butchering or plant gath...
journals.plos.org
August 15, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Lets go??? New Australopith contemporaneous with Homo at Ledi-Geraru that IS NOT Au. afarensis or Au. garhi?? (Probably)

Vid soon!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
New discoveries of Australopithecus and Homo from Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia - Nature
Hominin fossils from the Ledi-Geraru Research Project area, Ethiopia, suggest that early Homo and Australopithecus species co-existed in the region more than 2.5 million years ago.
www.nature.com
August 13, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by yourlocalarchaeologist
Nature research paper: Hominins on Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene

go.nature.com/3HptvtL
Hominins on Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene - Nature
Early Pleistocene artefacts at Calio suggest that Sulawesi was populated by hominins at around the same time as Flores, if not earlier.
go.nature.com
August 13, 2025 at 7:59 AM