Alison Fisk
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alisonfisk.bsky.social
Alison Fisk
@alisonfisk.bsky.social
12K followers 3.6K following 1.7K posts
Recent Masters degree in Archaeological Practice at Birkbeck, University of London.
Here to share my love of archaeology.
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alisonfisk.bsky.social
To bring a smile to your face, here’s an ancient Egyptian sketch of a tabby cat serving a mouse! 😁

The artist used a flake of limestone as a sketchpad to draw this comic scene some 3,200 years ago.

📷 Brooklyn Museum www.brooklynmuseum.org/en-GB/object...

#Archaeology
This Brooklyn Museum photo shows a sketch made in black ink on a stone-coloured limestone flake (known as an ostracon by Egyptologists). The sketch depicts a scene with a cat and a mouse imitating human behaviour. On the right, a tabby cat is drawn in profile with pointed ears, standing on its hind legs in front of a large mouse seated on a folding stool on the left of the scene. The cat is depicted as a servant; in one paw it holds a fan, and offers a plucked duck, in the other paw it holds a piece of linen cloth. The mouse has drooping breasts, wears a long skirt, has a lotus flower on its forehead, and its long tail hangs down over the back of the stool. The mouse holds a dish, a flower, and cloth (often held by pharaohs). Dimensions 8.9 x 17.3 x 1.1 cm. Dated c. 1295–1075 BC. Animals imitating human behaviour are well-known in Egyptian art. Their meaning is uncertain. Perhaps this sketch is a caricature or illustration of a long-lost fable, perhaps a satire of the royal family, or maybe just a sketch for fun!
December 4, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
chapps.bsky.social
This Hellenistic bronze statuette depicts a thickly-muscled craftsman, identified by his short tunic and by the wax tablets tucked into his belt. He may represent a famous or mythological figure - Daidalos, who built the labyrinth at Knossos, or the sculptor-architect Phidias. 🏺 1/

#MetMuseum 📸 me
This statuette is remarkable for its synthesis of Hellenistic immediacy and Classical composure. The figure can be identified as an artisan by his dress (a short tunic, ending just above his knee) and muscular build. Particularly telling is the pair of wax tablets tucked in his belt—the equivalent of a note pad—on which he would have written or drawn with a pointed stylus. His left arm is laid across his torso, his hand gripping his right side, and his bald head is pulled down towards his right shoulder. He's missing his right arm and leg. The bronze has a deep brown patina, with rich light highlights. The portrait is imbued with great psychological power and may represent a famous, even mythological, figure. For example, he may portray the Homeric hero Epeios, who with Athena's help carved the Trojan horse. It has also been proposed that he is the legendary master craftsman Daidalos, who built the labyrinth at Knossos, or even the famous 5th century BCE Athenian sculptor Phidias, creator of the chryselephantine cult statue of Zeus at Olympia and master craftsman of the sculptures of the Parthenon on the Athenian Akropolis. Greek, Late Hellenistic, ca. mid-1st century BCE. Bronze with silver eyes. Said to have been found in the sea off the North African coast, probably at Cherchell, Algeria. Met Museum, New York (1972.11.1)
December 4, 2025 at 12:11 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
antiquity.ac.uk
The hillfort of Brusselstown Ring, Co. Wicklow 🇮🇪 annotated with the locations of new test trenches #HillfortsWednesday
Excavation and aerial survey suggest the presence of hundreds of roundhouses, indicating a huge prehistoric settlement at the site.

🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🏺 #Archaeology
Aerial photograph of a hill with a stone wall around its summit. Four annotated points mark the locations of test trenches, one on the summit and three around the slopes.
December 3, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
bwallower.bsky.social
#Woodensday

Boat from #Herculaneum excavated 1982.
Found with building debris carried to beach in 1st volcanic eruption, overturned by force of violent seas, smashed and buried by pyroclastic flows.
>9m long x 2.2m. Here rudder attachments + planking visible at stern. #Roman #Archaeology 🏺
Remains of ancient boat showing internal ribs attached to long external timbers, and planking that would have covered ribs at the far end. It's held in a substantial steel frame in Herculaneum site museum.
December 3, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
kpw1453.bsky.social
Ceramic head pot from Roman York (Eboracum) depicting the Empress Julia Domna - wife of Septimius Severus who was based in York between AD 208-211. Now part of the collections at the Yorkshire Museum in York. 📸 My own. #RomanBritain #York #YorkshireMuseum
December 4, 2025 at 4:53 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
drnwillburger.bsky.social
Some 1,900 years ago a child was buried with an array of terracotta figurines in the #Roman town of Arae Flaviae, #Rottweil: 2 pigeons, 2 dogs, 2 roosters, a chicken, a duck, and a female figure, commonly identified as Iuventas, the personification of youth. Rather than....🧵1/2

🏺
📷 me
A museum display case with small white clay figurines arranged in a circle: several birds and two seated dogs on grey plinths surround a slightly taller nude female figure standing on a red pedestal at the back, with a few pottery fragments and a coin laid flat in the center on a grey surface against a neutral background.
December 4, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
azaleadunn.bsky.social
Extremely cool
alisonfisk.bsky.social Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 1d
The incredible ‘Orkney Hood’ from Scotland! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

So well preserved it looks like it was woven yesterday rather than some 1,500 years ago!

It’s thought the hood was made for a child. Found in 1867 in a peat bog in St Andrews Parish, Orkney.

National Museum of Scotland
📷 by me

#Archaeology
My photo shows a museum mannequin wearing a brown-coloured woven woollen hood with a long knotted fringe. The remarkablely well preserved hood was found in a peat bog on the island of Orkney in 1867. Organic clothing rarely survives, but the lack of oxygen in the peaty conditions of the bog served to practically halt its decay. The hood has been radio-carbon dated to between AD 250 and AD 615. On display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
December 2, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
alisonfisk.bsky.social
Take a closer look at the remarkably well-preserved woven fabric of the Orkney Hood
December 2, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
alisonfisk.bsky.social
The incredible ‘Orkney Hood’ from Scotland! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

So well preserved it looks like it was woven yesterday rather than some 1,500 years ago!

It’s thought the hood was made for a child. Found in 1867 in a peat bog in St Andrews Parish, Orkney.

National Museum of Scotland
📷 by me

#Archaeology
My photo shows a museum mannequin wearing a brown-coloured woven woollen hood with a long knotted fringe. The remarkablely well preserved hood was found in a peat bog on the island of Orkney in 1867. Organic clothing rarely survives, but the lack of oxygen in the peaty conditions of the bog served to practically halt its decay. The hood has been radio-carbon dated to between AD 250 and AD 615. On display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
December 2, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
archaeohawke.bsky.social
#TombTuesday
Barpa Langais, Isle Of North Uist is the best preserved Neolithic chambered cairn in the Outer Hebrides. It is typical of tombs built all over the islands by #Neolithic farming communities.
#Archaeology
December 2, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
antiquity.ac.uk
Our December issue is out now! Featuring great #archaeology such as:

🔵 The oldest blue mineral pigment use in Europe
⛰️ Mesoamerican mountain monuments and water worship
🐚 Playing the shell trumpets of Neolithic Catalonia

& much more! 🏺
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Cover of the December 2025 issue of Antiquity, featuring a photogrammetric image of an ancient quarry, with evidence for the quarrying of stone and a partially complete humanoid statue lying on its back.
December 2, 2025 at 10:22 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
archaeohawke.bsky.social
#FindsFriday

Pair of showy fibulae. Part of the Treasure of Untersiebenbrunn, from an East Germanic (Gepidic) grave discovered in 1910. #Gold plating on silver with inlaid garnet, glass, enamel.

#Archaeology
#Art #History #artwork #Jewellery
November 28, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
antiquity.ac.uk
By the medieval period, Norse was the dominant language of Scotland's Northern Isles #MedievalMonday
How Scandinavian culture, technology and lifeways took hold is obscure, but new radiocarbon dates from Orkney show the transition was long and complex.

🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🏺 #Archaeology
Plans of rectilinear structures from across Pictish Scotland. First thought to be Norse, the new dates indicate they were built prior to Scandinavian settlement.
December 1, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
malcolmstoneman.bsky.social
👀 Grosvenor Museum #Chester

Antefix fragments with LEG XX & decorated with a boar, symbol of the Twentieth Legion Valeria Victrix.

The museum believes V. V. stood for Valiant and Victorious, probably awarded to the legion after they helped defeat #Boudicca AD61

#Roman #Archaeology
#TilesOnTuesday
Two fragments of the triangular tiles known as antefix which terminated the end of curved tiles on a roof.
December 2, 2025 at 7:51 AM
alisonfisk.bsky.social
The incredible ‘Orkney Hood’ from Scotland! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

So well preserved it looks like it was woven yesterday rather than some 1,500 years ago!

It’s thought the hood was made for a child. Found in 1867 in a peat bog in St Andrews Parish, Orkney.

National Museum of Scotland
📷 by me

#Archaeology
My photo shows a museum mannequin wearing a brown-coloured woven woollen hood with a long knotted fringe. The remarkablely well preserved hood was found in a peat bog on the island of Orkney in 1867. Organic clothing rarely survives, but the lack of oxygen in the peaty conditions of the bog served to practically halt its decay. The hood has been radio-carbon dated to between AD 250 and AD 615. On display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
December 2, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
tonydivey.bsky.social
For #TudorTuesday here’s the Moot Hall, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, built around 1520. My 📷 taken last week
December 2, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
chapps.bsky.social
One object at the #BritishMuseum that never fails to enthrall people is this Achaemenid Persian gold model chariot, part of the Oxus Treasure. I love the guy sitting sideways on a bench wearing a kandys coat. Zoom in for the details! 🏺 1/

5th-4th c. BCE, Tajikistan. 📸 me
Model of a gold chariot drawn by four horses abreast. At the front of the cab are two diagonal bracing struts with a head of the Egyptian god Bes at the intersection. The two large wheels each have nine spokes, and the running surfaces are studded with small pellets to represent the bulbous heads of large stud-like nails which in the full-size original would have secured a tyre and felloe-sheathing of bronze. The main human figure in the cab is seated on a bench; he wears a long robe reaching to the ankles, the sleeves of which appear to be empty like those of the kandys (a three-quarter length leather or thick wool Persian coat). On his head is a hood or cap, around the front of which is a flat strip of gold, resembling a fillet, and around his neck is a gold wire torc. The driver wears a similar cap without a fillet, a short girded tunic and a wire torc; his legs are also formed of wires. The two human figures are fixed to the chariot by wires. The chariot is pulled via a pair of draught-poles fixed to four horses under a single four-bay yoke. On the yoke, above each horse, is a large loop, representing the terrets, through which the wire reins pass; alternating with these loops were originally four crescentic fan-shaped yoke ornaments. The chariot is pulled via a pair of draught-poles fixed to four horses under a single four-bay yoke. On the yoke, above each horse, is a large loop, representing the terrets, through which the wire reins pass; alternating with these loops were originally four crescentic fan-shaped yoke ornaments. The bits have large rings at the sides as rein attachments, and each animal has duplicate representations of the neck-strap and backing-element, the former with a pendant tassel, punched into the metal. Only nine of the original sixteen legs of the horses survive.
November 26, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
chapps.bsky.social
They say ‘fake it ’til you make it’, which might have proved embarrassing to the woman who once wore this snake bracelet, if the gilding chipped off at a party … to reveal the bronze beneath. Discount luxury, same as it ever was. 🏺 1/

Western Greek, from Cumae. 200-100 BCE. #BritishMuseum
Gilded bronze snake bracelet, with curved snake head terminals at either end. The body of the coiled bracelet is made of two medium thick wires of bronze twisted about one another. There’s a feather or vegetal pattern on the backs of the snake head terminals, reminiscent of the ‘agathadaemon’ snakes, which brought luck and fertility. Chips of gilding have worn off to reveal the dark bronze beneath.
December 2, 2025 at 6:03 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
kpw1453.bsky.social
Dedication stone from Roman Bath to the goddess Sulis which was set up by Priscus, a stonemason and tribesman of the Carnutes (a tribe in Gaul). Now part of the museum collections at The Roman Baths in Bath. 📸 My own. #EpigraphyTuesday #RomanBritain #Bath
December 2, 2025 at 7:11 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
kpw1453.bsky.social
Burial cist and part of the surrounding stone circle at Temple Wood in Kilmartin Glen, Argyll. The site was in use for over 2000 years (between 3000 and 1000 BC), and is part of a remarkable prehistoric landscape. #TombTuesday #Prehistory #KilmartinGlen #Argyll
December 2, 2025 at 7:12 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
drnwillburger.bsky.social
Somewhere in a Roman brickyard, around 1800 years ago, a fresh tile was drying ahead of firing - until a dog trotted straight across it.
Centuries later, the tile has made it into a museum: not because of an emperor, but thanks to one dog who accidentally walked his way into history.🧵1/2

📷me
A Roman tile with 13 dog's paws prints
December 2, 2025 at 7:01 AM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
alisonfisk.bsky.social
Something ancient and wonderful for the weekend! 🤩

The world’s oldest known sculpture of a horse!

This tiny figurine was carved from mammoth ivory by an Ice Age artist some 40,000 years ago!

📷 by me

#Archaeology
My photo shows a profile view of a small horse figurine with head to the left, displayed against a dark background. Sculpted from mammoth ivory, the surface is a mottled greyish-earthy-brown colour with a shiny patina. It was once likely pale white in colour. It measures 2.5 cm height, 4.8 cm width, and 0.7 cm depth. The head is gracefully lowered with a long curving neck and a convex curved back. The four legs are incomplete. The top of the tail remains. The eyes, nostrils, and mouth are carved as indents. The ‘Vogelherd Horse’ was excavated in 1931, together with a number of other ivory animal figurines from the Vogelherd Cave, Swabian Jura, Germany. It is the oldest known sculpture of a horse. On display at the Museum of Ancient Cultures, at Hohentübingen Castle, Tübingen, Germany.
November 29, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
angeladunning.bsky.social
My absolute favourite!!!!!! 😍🐴😍
alisonfisk.bsky.social Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 4d
Something ancient and wonderful for the weekend! 🤩

The world’s oldest known sculpture of a horse!

This tiny figurine was carved from mammoth ivory by an Ice Age artist some 40,000 years ago!

📷 by me

#Archaeology
My photo shows a profile view of a small horse figurine with head to the left, displayed against a dark background. Sculpted from mammoth ivory, the surface is a mottled greyish-earthy-brown colour with a shiny patina. It was once likely pale white in colour. It measures 2.5 cm height, 4.8 cm width, and 0.7 cm depth. The head is gracefully lowered with a long curving neck and a convex curved back. The four legs are incomplete. The top of the tail remains. The eyes, nostrils, and mouth are carved as indents. The ‘Vogelherd Horse’ was excavated in 1931, together with a number of other ivory animal figurines from the Vogelherd Cave, Swabian Jura, Germany. It is the oldest known sculpture of a horse. On display at the Museum of Ancient Cultures, at Hohentübingen Castle, Tübingen, Germany.
November 29, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
oz-of-the-ancients.bsky.social
#FindsFriday This fabulous little figurine of a woman was found in Egypt from ~3000BC

But based on the pose she was probably carved in Mesopotamia

Buuuut she's made from Lapis Lazuli from Afghanistan!

Quite a journey!

#archaeology #photooftheday

📍Seen in the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge🏺
A tiny blue stone figurine with arms crossed standing on a red museum plinth
November 28, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Reposted by Alison Fisk
katesfwriter.bsky.social
The Arch of Septimius Severus was erected in 203 AD at the end of the Via Sacra in Rome to celebrate the victories of the emperor and his sons, Caracalla and Geta, over the Parthians in ancient Persia.
#RomanSiteSaturday #AncientRome #Archaeology
📸 my own, October 2025.
November 29, 2025 at 10:27 AM