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Showing posts from 2012

Christmas Parcels

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What excitement is this? Parcels in the post over Xmas! Perhaps more exciting than all the Xmas chocolates and treats? It's the long awaited box of micromorphology slides from Medieval Riga, Latvia! Ok, so maybe not quite as exciting as chocolate, but still pretty fab. I've been waiting for these to be ready since September so it's quite a nice suprise to see them all finished and coverslipped, just in time to get back to work after the holidays. Excuse the camera flash, I will scan them in properly at some point. Waterlogged and charred plant remains, and also (I suspect) animal dung Occupation debris accumulated on a medieval floor from the city of Riga I also got sent a copy of The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade by Aleks Pluskowski , PI on the Ecology of Crusading project. Parcels of excitement This is something else I have been looking forward to - I did a lot of the line drawings for it and it has been very exciting seeing it come together

Patience when phytolith processing

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Not what you want to see when going to check on samples in the drying oven This week I've mostly been packing up boxes and boxes of samples and books ready to be shipped to Edinburgh in January, as well as getting on with the final bits of data tidying for the Feeding Stonehenge project, getting it ready for publication in spring. I can't wait to share the details! I was also sent a set of samples for urgent phytolith processing for the Ecology of Crusading project, to include in a preliminary environmental report for the ElblÄ…g project. Phytolith extraction is probably one of the most straightforward lab processes that I do, though it can be time consuming as it involves lots of stages where the samples need to be dried out. Let this be a lesson; ramping up the temperature of the drying oven may help dry your samples out quicker but it may also have unforseen consequences. In this case I have ruined 3 of my lovely petri dishes. Though bizarrely they haven't actual

Micrograph of the Month - Beautiful Basalt

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These are examples of some of the floor deposits from Margat Castle, Syria (you can see the full thin section in my previous post here ). The upper left shows A. a microscopic fragment of charcoal, B. A rounded basalt pebble and B. a rounded weathered basalt pebble, all embedded within a calcitic fabric, most likely a lime based material. The upper right shows a lower portion of the floor, where the inclusions are angular. The 'bubbly' shape of part A. suggest vesicles from vitrification. Part B is the inner unweathered core of basalt. The lower left image shows A. smaller fragments of weathered vitrified granite that appear to have been crushed up and embedded in the B. lime floor matrix. The lower right image shows A. a fragment of highly weathered bone in B. a 'pure' lime floor that overlays all the pebbly floors. At least, that's what I make of it so far! Might have to enlist the help of a geologist to figure out where the materials are coming from and ex

News from November

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Setting up the new microscope lab November has certainly been a busy month, so busy in fact that I didn't have time to blog about half of what I got up to, so here's a bit of a catch up. The new microscope laboratory in S-Block at the University of York is now set up (minus the computer needed to run the camera software, but I'm working on that). After several demonstrations from various companies, I am happy we decided to go for the Leica models. Although they are more expensive, the difference in quality is very clear - these are pretty much as good as the top end research microscopes, just without some of the fancy features. For straight forward micromorphology and microfossil analysis, these are fab, and can also be upgraded in future. Leica DM750P with integrated digital camera So, just as I get the perfect space set up for my microscopy research and teaching, it appears I am leaving York in January. Though I already technically 'left' in August

A curious incident

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Corroding sample! Yesterday's ICP samples are coming along nicely. I'm happy to say nothing had exploded when I went to check on them this afternoon. Today I also started boxing up the last few samples from medieval Riga, and came across this oddity ---->. All of the samples from Riga were waterlogged, and something strange has happened to this one; you can see all that orange spreading across the bottom of the sample? It is some sort of iron staining, and is very clearly seeping from the sides of the tin into the fine grained clay floor part of the sample. There were also lots of little salt crystals all over the surface, and you can see to the centre right a small area at the top of the metal tin has corroded! I'm wondering if there is a metal object in the block somewhere that is degrading? A few of the other samples had unfortunately started growing mould. In future I will learn to wear a mask when unwrapping waterlogged samples! Hopefully this was just on th

Elementary, said he

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80s-tastic plasma lamp (Wikipedia) Today I was mostly preparing lake sediment core samples for ICP. ICP stands for Inductively Coupled Plasma, and comes either in the MS (mass spectrometry) or OES (optical emission spectrometry) variety. Both are methods for measuring the different elements present in a sample. The ICP bit is a 'torch' containing a gas, typically argon, that is ionised by heating it via electromagnetic induction (remember those weird glowing globe plasma lamps?). Still confused? This means there is a coil wrapped around the torch, which produces a very strong electromagnetic field when turned on. The argon gas is ''lit' by an electrostatic spark, and the gas becomes ionised. The sample (dissolved in liquid) is sprayed into the argon flame, and also becomes ionised. As different components in the sample become ionised they gave off a characteristic energy. The MS and OES parts is the bit that detects the elements present. MS does this by measur

Riga slides in progress

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Riga town samples set in resin, ready for cutting into slides Another week of lab work in Reading this week for the Ecology of Crusading project. The samples I boxed up in September for resin impregnation are now ready for cutting, and hopefully some of them will be finished into slides by the end of the week. They look like they've set really well; I was a little worried there would be problems as some of them were quite damp with lots of 'manure' layers, which can sometimes distort when dried or interfere with resin curing. I boxed up a few more samples from medieval Riga (Latvia), and 3 from Święta góra (Poland) today. It's going to be a tremendous amount of microscope work to get them all analysed, but I'm looking forward to it! I also started preparing some lake core samples for ICP analysis today, which was delayed due to some minor hiccups which will hopefully be corrected tomorrow. That should take the rest of the week, with the Association for Envir

A day in the life of a maritime archaeologist

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Guest post! Despite having similar theoretical backgrounds, it is obviously clear that the methods and technologies used in maritime archaeology differ drastically from terrestrial research. Though volumes have been written on my particular discipline, I wanted to present a more personal and perhaps more accessible example of what life on the water is truly like.      As with any field archaeological project our day starts early, typically before sunrise. We usually rise somewhere around   5 am and prepare for the day. We arrive at the local marina where our survey vessel is currently stowed, in this particular case we have the luxury of keeping the vessel in the water and don’t have to launch and recover it on a daily basis. Supplies are refilled, boat engines are checked and the equipment is prepped. For the current survey we are utilizing a side-scan sonar and magnetometer, supported by an echo-sounder to gather bathymetric data (water depth, etc.). The si