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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · 12d

updated GIS methods can save money too though. For example, Field Maps STP forms -> interactive dashboard/map can be fully automated in advance and not require manual mapmaking for every project

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Aug 7

Congratulations!!! 🎊 🎉 🎈

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Reposted by Matt Howland, Ph.D.

SAHND and SHEL Archaeology and Ecology Labs @sahndshel.bsky.social · Jul 25

A great write-up of a recent paper led by lab Co- Director Jake Holland-Lulewicz (@archaeojake.bsky.social) published in @commsearth.nature.com on the legacies of past Indigenous land use on modern coastal ecosystems of the American southeast! #archaeology #ecology www.psu.edu/news/liberal...

Q&A: Discarded ancient 'trash' now protecting Georgia barrier islands | Penn State University

Penn State Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jacob Holland-Lulewicz and colleagues recently published research on how oyster shells discarded over thousands of years by Indigenous people have helped...

www.psu.edu

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Reposted by Matt Howland, Ph.D.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · Jul 4

Freedom from kings.
Freedom from fascism.
Power to the people forever. ♥️

Happy Independence Day 🇺🇸

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · May 30

It’s behind Greenland in the Mercator Projection

The Onion @theonion.com · May 30

World’s Cartographers Continue Living Secret Life Of Luxury On Idyllic, Never Disclosed 8th Continent theonion.com/world-s...

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Apr 30

not enough parking

Gabrielle Drolet @gabrielledrolet.bsky.social · Apr 29

Cartoon with caption by my buddy @jackhauen.bsky.social

Two people riding bikes in Amsterdam. One says “if anyone proposed this in my town I’d kill them”

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Apr 25

Max will be going to Purdue for (funded) further studies in the Fall!

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Apr 25

Congratulations to Max Gosch, student in my Geospatial Archaeology Lab, for his 2nd place finish in the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Forum poster competition at WSU!

Man standing in front of an academic poster titled, “the impact of fluvial erosion on archaeological sites in Kansas”

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Apr 25

Very proud of my MA student MJ Jacobs for successfully presenting her poster on using UAV photogrammetry to monitor erosion at archaeological sites at #SAA25!

Woman stands in front of an academic poster titled “preliminary study of erosion risks to heritage sites in Kansas”

Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Apr 23

Just got to Denver for #SAA2025 #SAA25!

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Reposted by Matt Howland, Ph.D.

Jake Holland-Lulewicz @archaeojake.bsky.social · Apr 22

Our most recent work has been covered by National Geographic!! Have we made it?! #archaeology #ecology #conservation #climatechange www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/...

How trash from ancient humans is protecting these coastal islands today

The barrier islands off the coast of Georgia are littered with millions of oysters left behind by Indigenous peoples. New research shows they’re still protecting the land.

www.nationalgeographic.com

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Apr 13

I found this really interesting!

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Apr 13

Since people expressed curiosity, here's an excerpt from my textbook Evolution (coauthored with Lee Dugatkin) that addresses fever as an evolved defense and why we can treat it safely nonetheless.

The proximate mechanisms responsible for triggering mammalian fever are relatively
well understood. When immune cells recognize the presence of a pathogen,
they release signaling chemicals known as cytokines. Among many other functions,
cytokine signals stimulate the brain region known as the hypothalamus, which is
responsible for regulating many of the body’s physiological systems (Figure 20.2).
The signals induce a shift in the body’s thermal setpoint for temperature regulation,
promoting warmth-seeking behavior while driving an endogenous increase
in body temperature and inducing fever (Osterhout et al. 2022). For example,
when components of the bacterial cell wall are bound by immune cells known as
macrophages, the macrophages produce the fever-inducing signals. The presence

of bacterial cell wall components is a strong indicator of bacterial infection, and
thus this pathway illustrates a mechanistic coupling between indications of pathogen
challenge and the fever response.
Consequences of Fever
In humans, higher fevers are associated with more severe infections. A number of
studies of human patients have shown that patients who receive fever- reducing
antipyretic drugs such as aspirin, acetaminophen, or ibuprofen recover less quickly
from viral infection (Hasday et al. 2000). These observations indicate that fever
may play a beneficial role in shortening the duration of infection. Studies of
patients with bacterial sepsis (a severe and very dangerous full-body inflammatory
response induced by bacterial infection) have often, but not always, revealed
a higher survival rate in patients that exhibit fever than in patients without fever.
It is important to recognize that this observed correlation does not provide direct
evidence of causation. Survival rates could be lower in patients without fever
because, for example, the inability to mount a fever response could be indicative
of more severe illness.
As we described in the introduction of this chapter, numerous nonhuman
species exhibit a fever response as well (Figure 20.3). In many of the species,
manipulative studies are possible. Animals infected with bacterial pathogens
and then treated with antipyretic drugs have more rapid bacterial proliferation
and higher mortality rates than individuals allowed to develop a normal fever
response. Similar results have been observed for viral infections. Because manipulating
temperature by pharmaceutical means may cause additional side effects
that make it hard to interpret the experimental results, researchers have also
conducted experiments in which they manipulate body temperature directly.
These studies tend to show comparable benefits to elevated body temperature.
Taken together, the correlational studies in humans and manipulative studies
in …

downtime—is far less than the cost of failing to produce a fever when it is needed
to clear an infection. Thus, we might expect that fevers should be relatively common,
and most should be unnecessary. If so, this means that in most cases, we
should be able to intervene safely, reducing fever with antipyretic drugs. Medical
technologies—most notably antibiotics and rehydration therapy—and improvements
in nutritional status further reduce the risk of death by infection relative
to what it would have been throughout much of our evolutionary history. Even
many of those infections that might historically have been lethal without a fever
response can now be safely controlled without fever. This is not to say that treating
most fevers with antipyretic drugs is necessarily a good idea. Further research
will be needed to resolve that issue. But it does provide an explanation for why we
can often safely interfere with fever, despite its role as an evolved defense against
pathogens.

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Apr 4

Compare:
Before - www.asor.org/about-asor/c...
After - www.asor.org/about-asor/c...

Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Apr 3

Is this a fucking joke @asor-research.bsky.social? You couldn’t send a clearer signal about how much you value diversity in this field

ASOR President Sharon Herbert and Executive Director Andrew Vaughn invite you to a virtual conversation about ASOR’s continuing efforts to address recent global actions impacting access, inclusion, and cultural heritage funding. This town hall meeting will be held via Zoom on Thursday, April 10th at 12:00pm EDT.

You may have heard that ASOR’s Committee, previously known as DEI, has proposed a new name: “The Carolyn Midkiff Strange Committee on Growth, Innovation, and Visibility (GIV),” and we encourage you to check out its mission. This new, interim name will be used on the ASOR website until the May 2025 ASOR Board meeting when discussion and a change to the bylaws can take place. We also invite you to review the Cultural Heritage Inititiatives section of ASOR’s website.

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Reposted by Matt Howland, Ph.D.

Tom Scheinfeldt @foundhistory.bsky.social · Apr 3

Lots of people are hurting today, but I think it’s important to say that the closure of NEH and IMLS is an existential event for #DigitalHumanities #DH

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Apr 3

Is this a fucking joke @asor-research.bsky.social? You couldn’t send a clearer signal about how much you value diversity in this field

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Reposted by Matt Howland, Ph.D.

Jake Holland-Lulewicz @archaeojake.bsky.social · Mar 26

🚨 Our new paper is out today in Communications Earth & Environment (@commsearth.bsky.social)!! “Modern coastal ecosystems of the American Southeast are shaped by deep-time human-environment interactions” Check it out! 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s43...

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Mar 18

go birds

Dan Diffendale @diffendale.bsky.social · Mar 17

they actually did it, the absolute madmen

Photo of the Leaning Tower of Pisa at night, lit up all in green for Saint Patrick's Day.

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Mar 11

or a Bret-à-Bret

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Mar 10

No one should be arrested for exercising their right to free speech, and the exercise of free speech certainly should not impact one’s immigration status

Evan Hill @evanhill.bsky.social · Mar 10

Trump signals the beginning of a new campus crackdown, promising "many" more arrests of students "across the country" who protested for Palestine or against Israel's war in Gaza

Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Mar 10

I would have thought citing yourself in the same paper was cutting-edge self citation methodology but apparently it is well-established

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Mar 9

"Paper self-citation: An unexplored phenomenon."

Yes, there are 44,000 papers that purportedly cite themselves in the Web of Science dataset.

These authors had the opportunity to do the funniest thing but alas.

arxiv.org/pdf/2503.04324

Paper self-citation:
An unexplored phenomenon
Robin Haunschild* and Lutz Bornmann*,**
*R.Haunschild@fkf.mpg.de, L.Bornmann@fkf.mpg.de
0000-0001-7025-7256; 0000-0003-0810-7091
Information Retrieval Service CPT, Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Germany
**bornmann@gv.mpg.de
0000-0003-0810-7091
Science Policy and Strategy Department, Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society, Germany
In this study, we investigated a phenomenon that one intuitively would assume does not exist: self-citations on the
paper basis. Actually, papers citing themselves do exist in the Web of Science (WoS) database. In total, we
obtained 44,857 papers that have self-citation relations in the WoS raw dataset. In part, they are database artefacts
but in part they are due to papers citing themselves in the conclusion or appendix. We also found cases where
paper self-citations occur due to publisher-made highlights promoting and citing the paper. We analyzed the self-
citing papers according to selected metadata. We observed accumulations of the number of self-citing papers
across publication years. We found a skewed distribution across countries, journals, authors, fields, and document
types. Finally, we discuss the implications of paper self-citations for bibliometric indicators.
1. Introduction
In simple terms, a self-citation usually happens when the citing paper and the cited paper have
at least one author in common (Carley, Porter, & Youtie, 2013). However, self-citations cannot
only be studied on the basis of authors, but also on the level of journals, institutions, and
countries (Bakare & Lewison, 2017). In these cases, self-citations are defined as citing papers
and cited papers that have at least one journal, one institution, or one country in common. Most
of the studies dealing with self-citations in previous bibliometric studies have considered self-
citations on the author level. The accuracy of the common author identification at the citing and
cited paper can…

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Mar 9

raises the question of who has “The Hockey Hair of Archaeologists”

The New York Times @nytimes.com · Mar 7

Minnesota’s high school hockey tournament is a fashion show of mullets, perms and bleach. With his “All Hockey Hair Team” video, John King, the self-described “archaeologist of hockey hair,” chronicles the lettuce and flow. nyti.ms/3DoYrII

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Mar 7

This year I’ll be co-directing the Wichita State University archaeological field school in Arkansas City, Kansas, for which EVERY student will receive a scholarship covering the ENTIRE costs of the field school!

Students encouraged to apply: www.wichita.edu/academics/fa...

Etzanoa Archaeological Field SchoolPlay

www.wichita.edu

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Matt Howland, Ph.D. @matthowland.bsky.social · Mar 4

My MA student Katy Reis designed this StoryMap about the devastating 2023 earthquake in Antakya, Turkey, based on an article by my colleague Jens Kreinath. Check it out: storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4adf...

In Search for Human Dignity

How aftershocks from the catastrophic 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes impacted the lives of locals and all that the city means to them.

storymaps.arcgis.com

Reposted by Matt Howland, Ph.D.

Antiquity Journal @antiquity.ac.uk · Mar 3

You can find more incredible Yup'ik #archaeology in the new Nunalleq Digital Museum (www.nunalleq.org), where the results of 9 excavation seasons are accessible whilst the original objects remain with the descendent community.

🆓 Antiquity research explores the project: doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

Screenshots of content in the Nunalleq Digital Museum, including illustrated reconstructions of Yup'ik life, 3D models of artefacts and in-depth explorations of specific activities featuring stories and workshops from local Elders and culture-bearers.

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Reposted by Matt Howland, Ph.D.

Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · Mar 2

Bricks from ancient Mesopotamia may seem boring, but there is more to them than mud and straw.

A short thread on some fun facts about bricks in ancient Mesopotamia from my book, Between Two Rivers.

Photo of a square shaped mud brick in excellent condition with a stamped cuneiform inscription near the centre

Photo of a stamp or mold used to press into a wet mud brick with cuneiform signs in relief poking out

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