CK Watts
Archaeology PhD Candidate & CRM (she/they)
microscopic usewear, raw material sourcing, experimental archaeology, landscapes, provenance, geochemistry, & crystallography • ground stone tools 🇪🇸 & megaliths 🇮🇩
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- Reposted by CK WattsNew article! "Changing the Landscape of Archaeological Publishing" in Current Anthropology, by a giant collaborative group of coauthors fearlessly led by Jess Beck and including @bridgetalex.bsky.social @benmarwick.bsky.social @christinawarinner.bsky.social www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....
- Reposted by CK Watts"This career has it all: creativity, customer-facing dynamics, a pointy hat." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/you...
- Reposted by CK WattsI don't mean to seem alarmed, but it appears Google's book search function is, just...gone. In a sane country it would be a huge deal, front page news, that a privately owned utility that millions researches, from journalists to scholars, rely on every day to advance knowledge can just disappear.
- Reposted by CK Watts“The right to complain — to be visible, to put your name to something — is one of the basic building blocks of worker power.” @alexnpress.bsky.social jacobin.com/2026/01/minn...
- Reposted by CK WattsMutual Aid by Dean Spade is free on Libro for the next week (until 2/2). We know that books can't fix everything, but they can help us show up for and strengthen our communities. Our employee book club read this last year, leading to a great discussion. We hope that it helps others do the same 💗 ⏬
- Reposted by CK WattsIs it about time that someone told @wiltshiremuseum.bsky.social that their "Tourmaline stone axe" is actually made of cheese?
- Reposted by CK WattsJust a heads up, tomorrow is Large Boulder the size of a Small Boulder, hope you've done your shopping and holiday meal prep.
- Reposted by CK WattsAt the end of the day, the Black Lives Matter era was about whether people should be killed in the street, and lots of people decided yeah and put those little blue flags on their cars. It spread to everyone because it stopped for no one.
- Reposted by CK WattsExtraordinary natural slabs, upright blocks & perched erratic boulders in glaciated rockscape of the northern Rhinogydd last week 😮 These puzzling phenomena must have been marvelled over by communities in prehistory
- Reposted by CK Watts🎓 FCT PhD Fellowships 2026 ICArEHB invites inquisitive and motivated candidates to pursue a PhD in Prehistoric Archaeology or Primatology through the national FCT Program. 📍See our poster & details: www.icarehb.com/fct-phd-fell... #PhD #Archaeology #FCT #ICArEHB
- Reposted by CK WattsGalaxies and stories tucked away inside a rock. Geology feels like a tiny peep hole into secret land. It makes me think about snorkeling and feeling like you're spying on another world. What a privilege it is to be alive and to see the world on so many beautiful scales.
- Reposted by CK WattsIf you find any gen A.I. images in academic journals that are not in my collection yet, you can report them at this form: bit.ly/JournalSlop
- Reposted by CK WattsNone of these anti-AI assessment strategies y’all are promoting are at all reasonable for adjuncts or folks who teach asynchronous online classes or who have large large classes. Imagine adjuncting an asynchronous online class of 50 students and doing oral exams.
- This semester marked my first time teaching my Monuments class. Focused on anthropology/archaeology work on the subject Final projects were student proposals for their own monuments (including 3D mockups) and absolutely blew me away! Looking forward to being able to teach this again soon. 🏺
- Reposted by CK WattsGeologists, too! Not too long ago someone commented to me that there’s little value in rock sample and core libraries because everything important had surely been digitized. Relatively little has (and, even if it has, it’s hard to run a chemical or physical test on an image or PDF file).
- Reposted by CK WattsI’m sorry, but it is disgraceful to be an academic who uses this technology to conduct research. It should be prohibited in all of our scholarly institutions, including universities and journals.
- Reposted by CK WattsHow did prehistoric communities interpret natural rock phenomena? This smooth-faced igneous rock formation inside St David's Head coastal promontory fort displays an extraordinary natural chevron design, long celebrated in the #Neolithic rock art of northwest Europe 🤔 📷 My own, Tuesday
- Reposted by CK WattsEach semester I go in my classroom and I try to figure out what we would use to block the doors, if it would be safe to crawl out the windows, where we could hide if there was a mass shooter in campus. It’s such an indictment of this country how we have normalized these preventable tragedies.
- Reposted by CK WattsLook, I just don't give a fuck. I'd rather support people who want to game the system than risk harming those who are vulnerable. I just don't care. The wealthy can afford to pay taxes to pay for it. The math works out. We can support everyone. It's just the will to do it.
- Reposted by CK WattsIf you run across a gen A.I. slop 🤖💩 diagram in an academic journal, I’d love to know about it! Please fill out this form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Slop in journals is illuminating about journals’ quality control. And journals would like you to forget their mistakes. #AcademicChatter
- Reposted by CK WattsThe author is a GREAT example of someone who should have taken (and learned from) anthropology classes rather than reading Jared Diamond. Happily, @michaelhobbes.bsky.social and @notalawyer.bsky.social learn from anthropologists and historians and then rip this bullshit to shreds.
- Reposted by CK Wattsstraight to jail www.404media.co/a-researcher... (I'm joking, but god what another horrible stake to the heart for the future of science.)
- Reposted by CK WattsMoqui marbles - concretions from the Navajo Sandstone in Utah (images created from a photo taken in the field) 🧪⚒️
- Excellent to see the aurora here in Iowa
- What a week to be lecturing on monuments as propaganda 🏺
- Filing this away for the next time I teach my Monuments class 🏺
- Conservative-leaning tech investors are racing to build a new American colossus, and they want something much, much bigger than the Statue of Liberty. Meet the new monuments men of the tech right and their plans for statue-maxing: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
- Reposted by CK WattsHere I am. Once again. I'm out of archaeologists. We matched 576 groups w/archaeologists, leaving 13 groups unmatched. This brings me pain! We've never run out of scientists like this before. 598 requests for one category is A LOT. But still. Archaeologists 🥺 www.skypeascientist.com/sign-up.html
- Reposted by CK WattsHappy International Geodiversity Day! ⚒️ 🧪 #PhiGeo @geodiversityday.bsky.social youtu.be/LtFzkDMsYtI?... www.geodiversityday.org/what-is-geod...
- Reposted by CK Watts262 of #365Minerals 🧪⚒️ Sillimanite: - An aluminosilicate mineral - A polymorph of both of kyanite and andalusite; same formula (Al2SiO5) but different structure - Forms in high grade metamorphic rocks - Named after Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864), a chemistry/geology professor #minerals
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- Reposted by CK WattsThe professor has been fired and senior administrators removed from their post. No mention of this in the New York Times, The Free Press, The Atlantic or other outlets who drove the campus speech moral panic.
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- Reposted by CK WattsAxe Class: Jade Culture: China Medium: Jade metmuseum.org/art/collection/sear…
- Reposted by CK Wattsyour periodic reminder that “archaeology isn’t political” is a political statement
- Reposted by CK Watts"What mattered, I realized, was not to be some imaginary perfect mentor with all the answers, but to get to know my mentee ... and offer whatever guidance and support I could based on my own experiences." #ScienceWorkingLife scim.ag/3URUdys
- Finishing up my Monuments and Megaliths syllabus and I only wish I could add in more fun projects for the semester! But unfortunately there is only so much time 🗿
- Reposted by CK WattsSomething that I have been thinking about with attribution of "PhD level intelligence" or "PhD level expertise" to a machine is that it reflects an increasing trend among these AI bros and their sycophants to want the products of highly skilled training without actually doing any of the work.
- Reposted by CK WattsThere’s an active shooter at a building ancross the street from the main CDC HQ in Atlanta. I just received a photo from inside a CDC office building of a window full of bulletholes.
- Reposted by CK WattsCALL FOR PRESENTERS 🏺♿🧵 Overcoming Access Barriers in Archaeology A Lightning Round session at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology #saa2026 April 29–May 3, 2026 San Francisco, CA
- Reposted by CK WattsMy University has opened a virtual scholar scheme for scholars from Gaza. Please share widely and help stop scholasticide. www.exeter.ac.uk/faculties/ha...
- Summer this year looks like syllabus prepping, writing fellowship applications, and harvesting about 10 lbs of tomatoes a day
- Reposted by CK Watts[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by CK Watts“Some of us aren’t creative enough to brainstorm without ChatGPT!” Well then maybe you should sit this one out.
- We’ve had some absolutely disastrous flooding in parts of Iowa this week & while the area I live in is largely unscathed (thankfully) the house I live in is not. Our basement flooded Friday and contractors had to remove all the flooring Saturday morning with no idea of when it will be replaced 🥲
- Reposted by CK WattsIt’s always “Ladies, if you are alienated by overwork, drop out of the public sphere and become a tradwife” and never “Ladies, if you are alienated by overwork, form a union.”
- Reposted by CK WattsWe are almost there: let's do this! "Because of your contributions so far, we have been able to cover tuition for 9 out of the 12 students. All students are deeply thankful for your help and are currently focused on completing their semester exams" @gmandreou.bsky.social
- Reposted by CK WattsAugen means “eyes” in German, and are formed by the metamorphic shearing and deformation of rocks. This is a beautiful example. TY Callan Bentley.
- Reposted by CK WattsThis ca. 5,000-year-old Neolithic polished flint axe with its original ash wood handle is remarkable well preserved. During the Neolithic period in Denmark, as agriculture began to expand, farmers had to clear the forests, which involved felling trees and burning away...🧵1/2 📷 me 🏺 #archaeology
- Reposted by CK WattsHooray, dates for a Carnac region stone row! Fascinating excavation of a tomb, aligned standing stones & cooking pits at Le Plasker shows that the stone alignments were built piecemeal c.4680-4250 cal BC, and the tomb was built on the site of Mesolithic occupation: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- I’ve used AllTrails a lot over the years. Both in the US for leisure and elsewhere while working and conducting surveys/gathering samples from easily accessible roadcuts. I feel like this change will render it almost unusable- not to mention the issues with increased risks to hikers & recovery teams
- Reposted by CK WattsMy latest for American Scientist Magazine helps give scientists the tools to fight back against politicized charges that our research is silly or pointless- tools that will work whether you’re asked “why are we funding this” from your asshole uncle at Thanksgiving or an asshole US Senator. 🧪🌎
- Reposted by CK WattsRelatedly, if you haven't been in an archives you have no idea just how much historical material is not online, not even a digital record of it. An LLM cannot research data it doesn't have. It can't even extrapolate where to find that material.
- Reposted by CK WattsDid you know that WAC-10 World Archaeology Congress (next week) is free for students to attend online? Register here: worldarchaeologicalcongress.com/wac10/
- PhD data collection is continuing for the next few days, including analyzing this beautiful piece from a historic collection 🏺
- Reposted by CK WattsGood article laying out how the administration is stripping cultural resource protections 🧪🏺
- Reposted by CK WattsWant to learn about the history of the labor movement in American cultural resource management 🏺? Check out our Labor in Archaeology Zine! A printable version is available on google drive at the link in our bio so you can print your own copies to share!
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- Reposted by CK Watts> The past is not a terrifying place that we have 'evolved' from, it's a constellation of human & non human relationships that we are constantly negotiating. There were no 'Dark Ages'. People have always resisted oppression & worked to care for each other & understand their worlds. So can we.
- Spending most of my time in the lab these weeks finishing up some data collection, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t time to visit the most beautiful mineral museums I’ve ever seen (Museo Geominero de Madrid).
- Reposted by CK WattsHelp save SAPIENS magazine! The Wenner-Gren Foundation, our funder, may decide to close the magazine in the coming weeks. But the Board of Trustees hasn't made its final decision. A letter from you could help! Sign here: actionnetwork.org/letters/urge...
