Cave art expert and cognitive archaeologist. Currently a postdoc on the ERC project eSYMb: The Evolution of Early Symbolic Behaviour at Aarhus University. 🇬🇧 in 🇩🇰.
Dr Izzy Wisher
Loading...
So… exciting job news 🎉 Very happy to announce I’ll soon be joining the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research!
Over the next 3 years, I’ll be exploring how artistic traditions changed over the Palaeo-Meso transition - did art play an active, adaptive role in response to climate changes?
Had the surreal experience today of receiving a lovely email from @douglarkin.bsky.social about how my Aeon article inspired his band to make a song about cave art! I *highly* recommend (although I’m biased) giving it a listen here: cuppajoeband.bandcamp.com/album/k-vart
Achieved an academic milestone today - having our research be an obscure trivia answer on a quiz show! Thanks @felixthehauskat.bsky.social for sharing this with me!
Everyone knows the answer, right…? 🔵
Our new preprint (osf.io/preprints/ps...) was the first study that Kristian, Murillo, and I cooked up in eSYMb’s early days. We scribbled on Kristian’s whiteboard for hours, figuring out how we could get people to “decorate” or “communicate” using MSA engravings -very much feeling his absence today.
Dr Izzy Wisher
You can tsk tsk at the extreme cases and say 'that isn't me'. But it's meaningless unless you are analysing your everyday interactions with people - conversations, expectations - and recognising how misogyny is hard-baked into them. Because women can see it even if you can't.
Thought to be a Palaeolithic oil lamp, some of our most-read research from last year concluded this stone artefact was likely in fact a 13,000-year-old paint pallet, as it contains Europe's oldest instance of blue mineral pigment!
🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...
#ThrowbackThursday 🏺 #Archaeology
Highly recommend reading @fusaroli.eurosky.social detailed thread on the paper: bsky.app/profile/fusa...
John Schofield of York University on the value of archaeology - it’s not just about the past.
theconversation.com/six-reasons-...
📣 @antiquity.ac.uk is flipping to #openaccess for research content!
✅ All research content published in the journal from January 2027 will be permanently and freely available to read, download and share around the world 🌍. Find out more!
🔗 https://cup.org/4cvNjZj
#archaeology #SAA2026SFO
The shift from non-figurative (geometric designs) to figurative art (animals, mostly)—and what propelled it—is one of the big enduring puzzles of cave art.
We discuss a couple accounts of this shift, including
@izzywisher.bsky.social's intriguing suggestion that pareidolia offered a bridge.
Dr Izzy Wisher
The government plans to cut university subsidy for teaching archaeology by 50%, yet it’s never been more relevant to society.
Want to know more about why our Ice Age ancestors make art in the all-encompassing darkness of deep caves? Why not read my Aeon essay, that explores the sensorial experience of Palaeolithic cave art making 👇
(It also serves as a perfect introduction to my research!)
aeon.co/essays/why-d...
The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research is pleased to announce Dr Isobel Wisher @izzywisher.bsky.social and Dr Melina Seabrook as the eighth Renfrew Fellows in Archaeology.
👉 To find out more: www.arch.cam.ac.uk/news/isobel-...
Men aren't doing the work to undo millennia of cultural inequality. At its most basic, you have to work against the cultural assumptions that stereotype young women, middle-aged women, old women, uppity women, single mothers, that define our personhood solely in terms of utility to men.
Cambridge University Press - Archaeology
Antiquity Journal
New research transports us back to the shadowy firelight of ancient caves, imagining the minds and feelings of the artists
Exploring a cave by firelight, it's easy to "see things" in the walls. Bulges and cracks become bison or deer. Could pareidolia have inspired some of our earliest figurative art?
Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @izzywisher.bsky.social!
Listen: disi.org/illuminating...
Women everywhere are still fighting to get men to do their fair share of parenting and domestic labour. They are belittled and harassed by men constantly. The dehumanisation of women works from the tiniest acts to the most horrendous acts. It's the SAME PROCESS.
Dr Space Junk (Alice Gorman)
What function did ~100k-year-old engravings from Blombos Cave & Diepkloof serve? Decoration, identity marking, proto-writing? osf.io/preprints/ps... uses transmission chains + cognitive experiments to find out & help answering one of the hardest questions in cognitive archaeology. long thread! 1/
Dedicated to the memory of Kristian Tylén, who conceived and led the eSYMb project until his untimely death. His insightful mentorship, creative mind, and playful approach to serious science enriched every stage of the process. His absence is deeply felt.
Many Minds podcast
"Not all men" are rapists. But ALL MEN are part of a patriarchal system which treats women as domestic servants, with lower intelligence and skills. Everyday sexism and acts of violence exist on a continuous arc. You're still part of the system at the bottom of the arc.
Dr Space Junk (Alice Gorman)
Riccardo Fusaroli
Riccardo Fusaroli
This isn’t about women. This is about us. And it’s long past time we had this conversation
