Castles and Coprolites

Paisley Caves – a view from the microscope Today's post is for the Day of Archaeology 2013, go check out their website for lots of great posts about the diverse things archaeologists get up to on a day to day basis.

I never imagined I would end up being a specialist on the subject of archaeological poop, but there you go. Coprolites, animal dung, palaeofaeces you name it. So I was very intrigued by an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last week, claiming evidence for the earliest use of manure by European farmers 8000 years ago . Firstly let's consider the different methods that we can use to identify dung in the archaeological record. These can be divided into direct and indirect methods. The former include definitive evidence for the presence of dung, that is actual dung pellets, or lipid biomarkers which are found exclusively in dung (i.e. faecal sterols and bile acids from the gut). The latter include evidence which is suggestive of dung, for example weed seed assemblages. Although indirect indicators are often the only thing available in archaeology, in my opinion one cannot make definitive statements based on indirect evidence. The best we can do...

July appears to be whizzing by nicely. Unusually for me, I am still in the UK. For the past 10 years (has it really been that long?!) I have spent every summer abroad doing fieldwork, and for most of those summers at least a few weeks have been spent collecting samples at Catalhoyuk in Turkey. This year will be the second year that I have been unable to go - last year I was coming to the end of my contract on the Feeding Stonehenge project and had to stay in the lab , and this year I have too many teaching commitments and writing to complete. Depsite this I will still be doing some UK based fieldwork in the next couple of weeks, more on that as it happens. Lucky for me in the age of social media and blogging, I can keep up to date with the latest news from Catalhoyuk as it happens via Scott Haddow's blog, A Bone to Pick. Scott is a member of the osteoarchaeology team at Catalhoyuk and has been posting regular updates, including an amazing find of intact woven textile in a baby bur...

Floors at Kamiltepe, Azerbaijan. 1. shows the constructed floors, 2. is a layer of ashy debris with 3. is a fragment of bone and 4. shows more debris, this time with single crystals of gypsum. This month's micrograph shows more deposits from the site of Kamiltepe in Azerbaijan. I have mentioned the site in a few previous blog posts , where you can find a link to an article which has a bit more detail on the preliminary micromorphology results from other parts of the site. Analysis of the deposits is still in progress, but already there are some great examples of prehistoric floors. Floors like these have been extensively studied from sites like Catalhoyuk, largely by Dr Wendy Matthews of the University of Reading. The floors at Kamiltepe are a lot dirtier than those at Catalhoyuk - the latter which are notable for their cleanliness and lack of activity residues. In the micrographs here we can see fragments of bone, microcharcoal and organic debris. In the micrograph on the left...

Space Dagger! Apart from my latest project , which I made a seperate blog about here, there are a few things that are new this month. I am pleased to share a short article I wrote for The Post Hole , a very impressive and professional looking journal that is run by students at the University of York. I wrote a short piece related to the Teaching and Learning project I was involved in before I moved to Edinburgh, Archaeology Under the Microscope , that introduces microarchaeology and the importance of 'hands on' practical experience of laboratory work and microscopy in archaeology. You can access the article here , and do check out the rest of the website and previous issues. I also recieved a fab package in the post this month from fellow archaeology blogger Danny Welch, who writes an excellent blog, Archaeology Test Kitchen , about his experimental archaeology experiences making and using lithic artefacts. I present to you the Space Dagger , a nifty little tool hand craft...