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Showing posts from 2014

From the microscale to landscape

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A nice bit of good news for the end of the year - I was recently appointed as assistant editor and social media editor for Landscape Research , the academic journal of the Landscape Research Group , which is published by Routledge. This means that in addition to normal editorial duties (assessing manuscripts, assigning reviewers, encouraging a quality and speedy publication process), I am also responsible for developing the social media profile of the journal. In particular, I hope to build the audience in the archaeological community, and encourage collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches to researching and understanding landscapes. I blogged recently about how I jump in between disciplinary pigeon-holes , and the study of landscape is an area that falls into many categories. The individual elements of a landscape are from the past and present, the natural and the cultural, the tangible and the intangible. In order to understand the landscape as a whole, we need to investigate th

Micrograph of the Month: Krotovinas at Çatalhöyük

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Did you know that there is a word for an animal burrow that becomes backfilled with soil/sediment? That word is krotovina! At Catalhoyuk , burrowing by small mammals is probably one of the most destructive forms of bioturbation on site. Ground squirrels, or suslik as they are known in Turkey, have a great time digging their way through the nice soft archaeological sediments, mixing up the deposits as they go. When marking out locations for micromorphology sampling we try and avoid these burrows, as we want to look at intact stratigraphy. Every once in a while however, what looks to be undisturbed deposits turns out to have a hidden burrow when the slide is made. It makes the sample almost useless it terms of analysis, but in this case has given a nice example of bioturbated deposits for my teaching reference collection of slides! I have included pictures of the midden section that these micrographs come from, as it is much easier to understand what a krotovina is at the macroscale. The

The landscape of Stonehenge?

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Stonehenge c. 1885. Wikipedia. 10th battalion CEF marching past Stonehenge1914–15 Wikipedia It was announced earlier today that the A303 road which currently runs past Stonehenge will be re-routed through a tunnel, to remove it from view of the monument. This follows the closing of the A344 earlier last year. Although this is being done for the benefit of visitors who apparently complain about the road, I myself have mixed feelings about it. Which is odd, as I am the sort of person who generally prefers landscapes of trees and 'nature' to one of city skylines and roads. I guess the major thing that bothers me is the definition of a landscape as somehow belonging to Stonehenge. I am assuming we are trying to revert to what the landscape may have been like at the time Stonehenge was in use, by Neolithic people.  A303 road in 1930 from Stonehenge: a history in photographs Even if we could provide a truly accurate picture of what the landscape was like at this time,

Stonehenge in a global context

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English Heritage have just published a time line showing Stonehenge in a global context , and where it fits in with other major archaeological sites and monuments across the world, and also an interactive map showing what was going on in the rest of the world at the same time that Stonehenge was being built . These are the end products that came out of a report that I was commissioned to produce a couple of years ago on the world in 2500 BC, as part of the new Stonehenge visitor centre that launched earlier this year. The way archaeology is often taught, we tend think of sites in an isolated way, or simply in a regional landscape, rather than thinking of what the world as a whole was like, especially in early prehistory. Stonehenge is such an iconic monument in itself, that it is easy to forget that is was part of something bigger. The English Heritage time line is a great way to visualise world archaeology, and to demonstrate which sites were contemporary with each other. I

World Toilet Day - attitudes to poop in the past

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I found out that today is World Toilet Day ! What better chance then to have a think about toilets and the disposal of human waste in the past. Regular readers will know (and the blog title perhaps suggests...) that coprolites, or fossilised faeces, are a regular feature of my work. A big part of World Toilet Day is about education and the problems of sanitation that many people face on a daily basis. The campaign highlights the fact that excrement is a bit of a taboo topic for many people, it's something we don't feel comfortable talking about. It's a 'hidden' activity. Has this always been the case in the past? The answer from the archaeological record is no - from prehistory to the famous public latrines of the Romans , there are many examples of a more open or communal approach to defecation. The study of human waste in archaeology, particularly faecal waste, is however a neglected topic. Coprolites don't really fit neatly into any of the major existing s

Micrograph of the Month: Bits of Bones

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For the past few weeks I have been revisiting some old slides from the TP excavation area at Catalhoyuk . I collected these samples  in 2004, and they were some of the first that I worked on for my PhD. At the time I found them a bit disappointing, as there is a lot of bioturbation and erosion  going on in this part of the site, which means that trying to reconstruct activities using microstratigraphic analysis is difficult. The TP area is located very close to the surface of the mound, so despite the fact that these are the youngest deposits, the preservation is nowhere near as good as the earlier, deeply buried deposits. In the end I focused more on the South and 4040 areas, with the TP samples being used as a brief comparison of how different the taphonomic processes are in different parts of the site. Which brings me on to this month's photos! I was contacted by Kamilla  PawÅ‚owska who is conducting zooarchaeological analysis in the TP area, and is investiga

5 Trowel Blazers who have influenced my career

I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking over the past year about women in archaeology. I've become increasingly aware of the concept of privilege and the impacts it has on the structure of academia, and since joining Twitter it is something I reflect on regularly. Twitter really is one of the best sources of information and interaction on this topic, letting you connect directly with so many people and understand different viewpoints. It is through Twitter that I became aware of the Trowel Blazers website, dedicated to promoting the contributions of women in geoscience, palaeontology and archaeology. I did a post for them recently on Florence Bascom , and hope to contribute more in future. It got me thinking about my own career and the people who have influenced it, many of who happen to be women. So here is a list of inspiring Trowel Blazing women who have influenced my career from starting university to the present day, in roughly chronological order of influence! Dr

The interdisciplinary continuum in studies of Humanity and the Earth

Sometimes I find it hard to put myself into a subject area box. I was a Geography undergraduate, a Geoarchaeology MSc student, and did a PhD jointly in Chemistry and Archaeology. What does that make me? I used to say I was a geoarchaeologist, applying the methods of geoscience to archaeological questions. But I realised that was too narrow, as even the methods I draw upon vary depending on the question being asked, and indeed a multi-proxy approach is something which I try  to promote. My main research interests are the relationships between humans and the environment, how this has changed over time, and how it varies in different geographic settings. Very much a theme of environmental archaeology, but also geography. Geography has been called the subject that bridges the human and physical sciences, encompassing the Earth and all of its natural and human components, and the dynamic relationship between the two. Physical geography seeks to describe and explain the spheres of the E

Micrograph of the Month: The Other Paisley Poop

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Paisley Caves became well known a few years ago for it's famous coprolites, or fossil faeces, which were found to contain human DNA, dated between 14,170 and 14,340 cal. BP. Although there have been questions over the identification of these as human (and work is still ongoing), this ancient DNA analysis currently provides some of the earliest evidence for human occupation of North America. The research at Paisley has been key in demonstrating the utility of coprolites as an archaeological ecofact that can contribute to the wider picture of the human past, rather than simply a 'novelty' area of study or one which is purely ecological . But human poop isn't the only kind we find at Paisley Caves, in fact it isn't even the most common, by far! In this month's micrographs we have pictures of the poop that occurs most frequently at the site, bat poop. This stuff is fascinating, and is a huge contributor to the sediment profile of the caves. In the upper left at the

What do dinosaurs and archaeology have in common?

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What do dinosaurs and archaeology have in common? Nothing, surely! the archaeologist may say with a knowing smile. There is a bit of a running joke amongst archaeologists that one of the first questions people ask is do you dig up dinosaurs? And the response being well no, you're thinking of palaeontology. Both disciplines are associated with trowel usage, and summers of field work digging stuff up. There may even be some overlap in terms of questions asked - the nature of long term environmental and ecological change, especially the further back in time we go to the earliest origins of hominids. In general however, archaeology is focused on the study of material remains of human societies (largely anatomically modern humans), whilst palaeontology focuses on all other life forms prior to the beginning of the Holocene. And not just dinosaurs. There is another area where these two research areas overlap, and that is the way in which discoveries in these disciplines make it from the

Micrograph of the Month: Layers of reeds

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A little bit late this month as I've recently moved office and only just had my microscope camera software installed on my new PC. Incidentally this is also the reason I haven't added scale bars to these images, as I haven't had the chance to calibrate the magnification for the software (you have to tell the computer what the magnifications are by taking measurements of known lengths on a micrometer). The image to the left is at x10 magnification, the one on the right is x20. Here we are looking at some ashy deposits from the Babylonian city of Tell Khaiber, Iraq (being excavated as part of the Ur region project ). These are absolutely full of plant phytoliths and grass derived microcharcoal. The structure of these conjoined cell phytoliths is beautifully preserved. I have highlighted the multiple layers of plant tissue that are likely to be from reeds (a bundle of stems?). The stacked bulliform phytoliths are typical of reeds, and are often seen as individual cells. Here w

Closing down - Ness of Brodgar final day

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Not too much to report, aside from the fact I've had a productive and successful, albeit short, field trip this year. I managed to collect 20 large block samples during the week I've been here, which is more than enough to keep me occupied for the foreseeable future. The midden deposits I sampled in Trench T cover the early to late sequence, and hopefully we will be able to distinguish differences in activities and resource use between these phases. Will we see similar things going on here as we see in the main excavation area? Or will there be differences between these two parts of the site? Just some of the many questions we are hoping to answer! For now I will leave you with these fine images of the site being covered over until next year! More tyres than archaeologists

Ness of Innsmouth, Day 2

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Dig house in the distance, Stones of Stenness to the right. Ominous rain clouds overhead. Day 2 at the Ness. I had some things to sort out in Kirkwall this morning so took the local bus to site. It only takes about 30 minutes but it drops off on the main road, and then you have to walk all the way along the peninsula to get to the excavation. Lovely view, but increasingly rainy and windy the further you get towards site, almost as if it’s in its own little otherworldly wet dimension. Glad I invested in an all-weather notebook. On site I’ve been getting on with taking micromorphology samples out of the midden section in Trench T. The excavation in this part of the site is being supervised by Dr Ben Chan, who I previously worked with on the Feeding Stonehenge project. There are other familiar faces from York too – Prof Mark Edmonds and Alison McQuilkin, who recently completed her dissertation on phytoliths from the famous Mesolithic site of Star Carr. The Ness is like a magnet for

Return to the Ness! Day 1

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Layers of ashy midden deposits sitting on glacial till A dizzying view of excavations in Trench T After a small adventure involving delayed flights, gale force winds and navigating with no GPS signal (how did we ever cope before smart phones with Google Maps?), I finally arrived in Orkney yesterday. This is actually the last week of excavation before the trenches are covered over until next year, so it’s all very quiet on site. Most of the students have left, and the remaining teams are working to complete recording by the end of the week. I have had a quick tour around to get a feel for what’s happened since I was here last year, and have spent today planning my sampling strategy. As usual so much is going on and there’s plenty for a micromorphologist to do. This year I am focusing on collecting samples from middens in Trench T. Regular blog readers will have seen the snippets I’ve posted about my analysis of middens in the central excavation areain 2013 . Although analysis o