Castles and Coprolites

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 ...

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 Elbląg 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...

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...

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...