Mark Collard

Professor of archaeology and biological anthropology at @SFU.

BA from Sheffield Archaeology. PhD from Liverpool Anatomy.

Trainee Canadian. From Essex, UK.

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

Were T. rex and other giant theropod dinosaurs involved in an evolutionary (small) arms race with large prey species?
https://t.co/F0aeuoSEy1

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

@simonmontefiore @KemiBadenoch Yes, impressive, especially given Ed Balls was continually (and gleefully?) pressing her to make it political.

[Chris Stringer @ChrisStringer65]

New evidence for Early Pleistocene use of fire at Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa) https://t.co/PxJ89ySnv1

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

@DamCou Just watched the relevant interview. She was, as usual, excellent. It's a shame Starmer, Polanski, and the other party leaders haven't all said something similar. It's also a shame that she's leading a party so badly tainted by the mismanagement of Cameron, Johnson, and co.

[Chris Stringer @ChrisStringer65]

A Window into 40,000 Years of the Prehistory of Iberia: The Long Excavation of El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain | Journal of Anthropological Research: Vol 82, No 1 https://t.co/GBWUl2gFaB

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

@OldRoberts953 Given what happened in the George Floyd case, you'd think police officers in the English-speaking parts of the world would be immediately attentive to suspects saying 'I can't breathe', eh?

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

@OldRoberts953 That’s a hard listen. Geez.

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

Frontrunner for one of this year's Ig Nobels?
https://t.co/OEnLjPnlzu

[Chris Stringer @ChrisStringer65]

Chimpanzees and bonobos have human-like friend circles, study finds | ScienceDaily https://t.co/hYaTC9B0Xy

[Roberto Sáez @robertosaezm]

Homo luzonensis: ¿evolución a partir de una población asiática de Homo erectus en contexto insular?
Homo luzonensis and the role of homoplasy in the morphology of hominin insular species https://t.co/qggI7hcYlA

[Chris Stringer @ChrisStringer65]

New microscale insights into plant-based bedding construction and maintenance between 200 000 and 43 000 years ago at Border Cave, South Africa https://t.co/IkoIHqcj1m

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

Surely, (re)instituting national service has to be on the cards for NATO countries? At least basic training followed by 'top up' weekends on a regular basis, with a particular emphasis on fighting with, and defending against, drones.
https://t.co/QzfzdQ4LfK

[Chris Stringer @ChrisStringer65]

Support CARTA | Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA) https://t.co/q1hZIdBkle

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

@ProfSteveFuller A sanatorium run by a religious cult.

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

Can't quite believe I'm rooting for Arsenal.

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

This is such a ridiculous decision. Badly damaging an academic unit that's ranked no. 2 in the nation for research in any area, let alone a vital area like physics and astronomy, calls into question the senior administration's judgement.

[John Tasioulas @JTasioulas]

"Averaged over the past three official evaluations, in 2008, 2014 and 2021, the physics department at Nottingham has been rated second only to the University of Cambridge for research quality."

https://t.co/ajtzTKOKLa

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

This is a neat natural history story.
https://t.co/OJf97AB2Wa

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

Excellent statement about the BM's decision to postpone the ancient Jewish kingdoms event, from @simonmontefiore. Security concerns are a legit reason to postpone, obviously. But the BM needs to work with the Met Police to schedule a safe version of the event in the near future.

The final sentence of Simon's statement is perhaps the most important:

"[T]he society that ceases to allow to free discussion of ideas and stops respecting and recognizing the value of scientific and historical sources and facts is a society that will fail."

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

This matters.
An obscure London event on the history of the ancient Jewish kingdoms in Judea and Israel is cancelled because of ‘security concerns’ and it turns out this was a reaction to a campaign to fill and then undermine the event by activist disrupters.
How strange! Why would a posse of aggressive activists be interested in the arcane details of bullae and steles and ostraca and inscriptions and numismatics in some small South Levantine kingdoms in the Iron Age?
Well, it is a little more than that which is why it is both disturbing and important. And it matters because at its least it is a threat to history in Britain’s - but also the world’s - greatest temple of History @britishmuseum - and its scholarly integrity.
The BM and its leadership are decent and well-meaning and have explained that they wished to save an event from disruption by bullying vandals but I am sure the BM realizes it is essential to announce a new event fast lest it give the impression that the permission of tiny cadres of aggressive bullies are required before it hold events. But the significance is wider than an event about the Moab and Tel Dan steles in a great museum.
British cultural life is the right and exercise of civic and cultural freedom – a privilege of our liberal democracy - that does not require the permission of gangs of ideological activists nor can it cancelled or postponed nor endured at their beck and sufferance nor permitted with a bend of the knee to their permissions or veto. But that is what this appears to be.
Across the cultural world in the West, though the bewildered middleaged managers of our institutions that are confronting and often submitting to a wave of self-righteous blackmail and mob threat, there is an increasingly thin – indeed ever more fragile and sometimes nigh invisible – line between ‘security concerns’ – and institutional pusillanimity.
Then there is the history itself.
This event concerns the study of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel that existed between roughly 1100BC and 586BCin the Levant. It is not a coincidence that this was chosen for disruption. The history of the Judean kingdoms and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem that stood for most of the time between 1000BC and 70ADetc is important and fascinating history in its own right, supported by complex and growing archaeological finds.
These small kingdoms and the subsequent Temple priestly mini-state (restored by the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius 539BC) and then the larger Judean kingdoms of the Hasmoneans and Herodians – between 167BC and 135AD chronicle the long indigenous history of Jews in the region – which the protesters are keen to erase. This is a political project of ideological erasure and malicious incitement of course concerned with the complex, brutal Israel-Palestine conflict that has now gone on for a hundred years and is unlikely to be solved in a small lecture theatre in the British Museum. But it also attempts to deny or erase Jewish history itself – and by implication the heritage of British Jews who live here in Britain, a small community that is now under cultural and sometimes physical threat.
Incidentally - but it is worth saying, this history does not deny anyone else’s history, nor the many other small realms in this region through ancient times nor the many names of the region and its entities and the historical origins of those names (Canaan, or Philistia or Peleset, Phoenicia, Aram Damascus or Moab or later Nabatea and the provinces of Palaestina Prime, Seconda and Tertia and the Ghassanid kingdoms and so on etc etc). The history of one can not be used to erase the history of the other and does not need to do so. The pursuit of knowledge which is one of the delights of human life and is the mission of the BM and indeed anyone who writes, reads or enjoys history, can celebrate and recognize all of these.
Yet this protest and the many like it deployed across Britain nowadays is the opposite of that - an attack on history using the methods of intimidation and vandalism. Much of this involves distorting or dismantling actual history or often lying to replace it with a fabricated ideological structure that nourishes no one and helps no one but degrades our culture and civic life not to speak of history itself. By the way, the frequent claims that these histories or names are ‘denied’ or ‘noone knows them’ is nonsense: anyone and everyone who is interested knows this history. (Much of it appears for example in my book Jerusalem a history of the Holy Land.)
And this is relevant not just to those of us who write study or enjoy the history of the region but also to those who believe that cultural life and civic society is a right that must not be submitted to the aggressions and plots of loud well-organized much-indulged ideologues who take advantage of the freedoms of our society to undermine its principles and the very freedoms they are designed to guard.
Just as vital is a rule of history itself that concerrns the rise and fall of civilizations: the society that ceases to allow to free discussion of ideas and stops respecting and recognizing the value of scientific and historical sources and facts is a society that will fail.

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

A cracking performance.
https://t.co/O4DnxAOGJk

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

This discussion about the possible impact of smartphone use on fertility rates is worth a listen. I don't buy the hypothesis but it's interesting to ponder.
https://t.co/eLvQJIrTTQ