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tigerlilyrocks.bsky.social
Dr Victoria Leonard
@tigerlilyrocks.bsky.social
3.2K followers 2.9K following 410 posts
Ancient, late ancient, and later ancient historian

Research Fellow, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London
[email protected]
#FRHistS
#WCCWiki
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tigerlilyrocks.bsky.social
Dr Victoria Leonard @tigerlilyrocks.bsky.social · Jan 23
What happened with #WCCWiki in 2025? How are women and non-binary classicists looking on #Wikipedia?

Here's a thread to wrap-up last year, and to forge a path for 2026 ...
Women villa della Pisanella Pompeii Museum Boscoreale. Fragment of a fresco wall decoration from the upper floor of the "Villa Pisanella", featuring a woman on a black background presenting fruits. End of the second style, beginning of the third, (40 - 20 BCE)
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
ancientjewreview.bsky.social
Today on AJR: Peter W. Martens writes about Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World by Ellen Muehlberger @emuehlbe.bsky.social @ucpress.bsky.social www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2026/10...
Adjusting the Past — ANCIENT JEW REVIEW
This essay was part of a 2026 NAPS Conference Book Review Panel devoted to Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World by Ellen Muehlberger. Read the full forum …
www.ancientjewreview.com
October 5, 2026 at 2:28 PM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
drnwillburger.bsky.social
Everyday objects are the real archaeological treasures!

Birch bark is perfect for making containers and wrapping. This 7,500-year-old wrapping was X-rayed, but unfortunately, it didn't show anything. It probably held something perishable.

From the Mesolithic settlement of Motala/Sweden. 🧵1/2

📷me
A compact, irregular item of folded birch bark with a rough, wrinkled surface in shades of reddish and brown, shown against a dark background.
October 6, 2026 at 8:05 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
whitchurchhospital.bsky.social
Welcome to all followers, new and old.

Here the history of Whitchurch Hospital is shared, opened in April 1908 & closed in April 2016.
Photo showing the front entrance of Whitchurch Hospital, taken before the closure against a cloudy but blue sky. The dome of the water tower can just be seen hidden behind the entrance block
October 6, 2026 at 8:39 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
irvlewis.bsky.social
On Saturday, 7 November, I will be running a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon around the theme of Byzantine women & genderqueer saints. I hope that this workshop will help to improve the coverage of women and LGBTQ+ history on Wikipedia.

To attend, follow this link: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wiki-edit-...
Wiki Edit-a-Thon: Byzantine Women & Genderqueer Saints
An in-person edit-a-thon that aims to improve the coverage of Byzantine women & genderqueer saints on Wikipedia. No prior experience needed.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
October 1, 2026 at 10:56 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
bmegyptian.bsky.social
Statue of a Priest, Wen-amun Son of Nes-ba-neb-dedet and Ta-sherit-Khonsu https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3412
Statue of a standing man in hard crystalline limestone. Conventional composition, frontal. Arms at sides, left leg advanced. Headless. Rear pillar carelessly inscribed for Wn-nfr, son of Ns’-b3-nb-dd.t and the sistrum player T3-sry.t-hnsw. Condition: Head missing. Body assembled from two pieces. Scattered chips. Portions of surface seem to have been cleaned with an abrasive to remove incrustations.
October 6, 2026 at 8:49 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
labrujulaverde.bsky.social
A Bronze Ring Engraved With the Lighthouse of Alexandria Has Been Found in Cleopatra’s Sunken Harbour www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2026/10/a...
A Bronze Ring Engraved With the Lighthouse of Alexandria Has Been Found in Cleopatra's Sunken Harbour
The Lighthouse of Alexandria has been gone for more than seven centuries. A series of earthquakes, including those of 1303 and 1323, brought down the tower that had guided ships towards the city for s...
www.labrujulaverde.com
October 6, 2026 at 8:52 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
antiquity.ac.uk
NEW Stone tools from a newly-excavated site in China. 70–100,000 years old, their small sizes indicate substantial technological shifts during the Late Pleistocene, hinting at early hominin adaptation in the Lower Yangzi River basin.

🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🏺 #Archaeology
22 small lithic tools.
October 6, 2026 at 7:15 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
groomb.bsky.social
View of Cyfarthfa Ironworks, Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, painting by Penry Williams (1802-85), Welsh artist.
October 5, 2026 at 11:43 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
bmegyptian.bsky.social
Relief Blocks from the Tomb of the Vizier Nespeqashuty https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/66628
Relief Blocks from the Tomb of the Vizier Nespeqashuty
October 3, 2026 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
joannechocolat.bsky.social
Harriet Brooks (July 2, 1876 – April 17, 1933) was the first Canadian female nuclear physicist. She is most famous for her research on nuclear transmutations and radioactivity. #CelebratingWomen
October 3, 2026 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
friendlesschurches.bsky.social
This year’s Christmas cards are now available to purchase and we have two designs for you to choose from.

From our Welsh churches, we have selected a photograph of St Anno’s, Llananno covered in a gentle dusting of snow.

1/4
October 2, 2026 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
relicsclerics.bsky.social
Warsaw Late Antique Seminar: Winter Semester 2026/7:
lateantiqueseminar.historia.uw.edu.pl
October 2, 2026 at 9:26 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
genderandhistory.bsky.social
We are excited to announce our Annual Lecture 2026!

Prof. Judith Evans-Grubbs (Emory University)

"An Illegal and Dishonorable Deed": The Sale of Children by their Parents in the Roman Empire (200-600 CE)

Wednesday, 21 October, 3:30 PM-5 PM (further details and links to come)

#skyhistorians
Gender & History Annual Lecture 2026
Professor Judith Evans-Grubbs (Emory University) will speak on the Sale of Children by their Parents in the Roman Empire (200-600 CE)
www.eventbrite.co.uk
October 2, 2026 at 9:22 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
jdmccafferty.bsky.social
Badge, medieval, "YI SIS MUS" S's reversed.

"Behold the Mouse". (British Museum)
October 2, 2026 at 9:31 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
bmegyptian.bsky.social
Carinated Core Scraper https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/123493
Carinated Core Scraper
October 2, 2026 at 9:37 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
katherinemcdon.bsky.social
Looks like this would interest lots of @womeninclassicsuk.bsky.social and #wccwiki people!
irvlewis.bsky.social Isabella Lewis @irvlewis.bsky.social · 5d
On Saturday, 7 November, I will be running a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon around the theme of Byzantine women & genderqueer saints. I hope that this workshop will help to improve the coverage of women and LGBTQ+ history on Wikipedia.

To attend, follow this link: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wiki-edit-...
Wiki Edit-a-Thon: Byzantine Women & Genderqueer Saints
An in-person edit-a-thon that aims to improve the coverage of Byzantine women & genderqueer saints on Wikipedia. No prior experience needed.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
October 1, 2026 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
northernpicts.bsky.social
Super pleased to see this out (and open access!). Moluag was clearly an important figure in Pictland, here we got to help the team who made such important discoveries at Moluag's monastery get the word on the street about the importance of Lismore and the new findings!
tinyurl.com/5cb9vf3p
A major monastic centre? Rethinking Lismore’s place in the ecclesiastical landscapes of early medieval Britain | Antiquity | Cambridge Core
A major monastic centre? Rethinking Lismore’s place in the ecclesiastical landscapes of early medieval Britain - Volume 100 Issue 413
tinyurl.com
October 1, 2026 at 8:56 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
archaeohawke.bsky.social
#HillfortsWednesday
Maiden Castle in England is one of the largest hillforts in Europe. Photograph taken in 1935 by Major George Allen (1891–1940).
#Archaeology
September 30, 2026 at 7:45 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
durotrigesdig.bsky.social
Bonus vertical kite photo of Edin's Hall / Odin's Hall / Edinshall broch #ScottishBorders showing the full extent of the earlier bivallate hillfort and pre-broch roundhouses

Proper lovely 😍

🪁 📷 © Hamish Fenton 2011

#HillfortsWednesday
Aerial photograph showing the grass covered ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort with trees, scrub and the stone foundations of a broch or Iron Age tower
September 30, 2026 at 7:04 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
alisonfisk.bsky.social
Fabulous fragment of an ancient Egyptian wall relief with three bears and an oil jar.

The paint has survived some 4,500 years!

Limestone relief from the Pyramid Temple of Sahure, Old Kingdom, 5th Dynasty, c. 2496-2483 BC. Neues Museum, Berlin 📷 by me

#ReliefWednesday
#Archaeology
My photo shows a circa 4,500-year-old limestone relief with some well-preserved paint in places, from the funerary temple of Sahure at Abusir, measuring 39 × 35 × 8.5 cm. It shows three bears (partial view only) and a tall one-handled pottery vessel, across two registers. The upper register at left, shows the two leds and hindquarters of a bear, and at right, a bear’s lowered head, chest, and foreleg, painted mid-brown. The lower register at left shows a tall, dark-reddish-brown pottery vessel with a long neck and single handle, and at right, the lowered head, neck, shoulder, and top of foreleg of a dark-brown bear. The bears wear collars tethered by ropes to looped fixtures in the ground. The fragment comes from a wall scene depicting tributes from the Levant. Bears were not native to Egypt. The bears represented are Syrian brown bears (Ursus arctos syriacus), which were quite common in Levantine mountain regions in antiquity. They were kept as exotic animals in enclosures by Egyptian kings, and also hunted.
September 30, 2026 at 4:47 PM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
drnwillburger.bsky.social
An amazing glimpse into Mesolithic everyday life: this more than 7,500-year-old ring was made from heather roots, carefully rolled up and prepared for later use.
It was discovered at the settlement of Motala/Sweden, where the same material was used for fish traps.

Dating 5750–5550 BC. 🧵1/2

📷me
A thick bundle of dried plant roots, tightly rolled into a ring and secured with fibrous ties, displayed on a dark grey museum plinth.
September 30, 2026 at 8:07 AM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
yaleclassicslib.bsky.social
October 8 2026 4:30PM BST = 11:30 AM EDT Online @ics.bsky.social Jessica L. Lamont @yale.edu Magic in Roman and Late Antique Corinth ics.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...
Magic in Roman and Late Antique Corinth
ics.sas.ac.uk
September 29, 2026 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
bmegyptian.bsky.social
Relief Blocks from the Tomb of the Vizier Nespeqashuty https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/66630
Relief Blocks from the Tomb of the Vizier Nespeqashuty
September 28, 2026 at 3:55 PM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
curtisdozier.bsky.social
This is the last week to submit an application to attend "New Perspectives on Classics and Race: A Workshop for Teachers and Researchers" in April 2027. classicalstudies.org/scs-news/cal...
Cover image of "The Cambridge Companion to Classics and Race" showing the head of the Apollo Belvedere sculpture
September 28, 2026 at 1:11 PM
Reposted by Dr Victoria Leonard
beccaeharrison.bsky.social
If I were running a university where staff spent weeks and weeks of time putting grant proposals together only for UKRI to feed them into LLMs without informed consent—effectively theft of the time and work—I’d be taking serious action to defend those staff. But I’m not running a university, so
jpsastro.bsky.social John Stott @jpsastro.bsky.social · 12d
Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky
I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful. Review process As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking. This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review. Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it. Feedback on your application Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage. To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.
September 25, 2026 at 8:38 AM