Castles and Coprolites

Today was the first day of the 2013 EAA conference , held this year in Pilsen, Czech Republic. I've been to quite a few of the EAAs now, and they are always great for catching up with colleagues from across Europe and beyond, and this year is no exception. I've probably spend more of the conference today discussing work over coffee than seeing papers! So far I've met colleagues from Bristol, Reading and York as well as some Edinburgh folk. This year, rather than giving a paper, I'm doing something a little different. Together with Julie Boreham from Earthslides, UK , I have put together a photographic exhibition of micromorphology slides from Paisley Caves. Julie did a similar exhibition a few years ago for the WAC 2008 conference in Dublin, which was a great success. The idea is to showcase 'Hidden Worlds' of archaeology under the microscope, and to communicate thin section micromorphology to a non-specialist archaeological audience. The large poster sized pho...

All over my news feed last week were links to news articles reporting on the 'earliest use of spices in Europe', specifically the use of garlic mustard seed ( Alliaria petiolata) by Neolithic people. The evidence used to support this is our old favourite microfossil, the phytolith (frequent readers will know they come up in this blog quite frequently), which archaeologists have recovered from burnt food crusts inside Neolithic pots. The original research article is open access in PLoS ONE and can be read here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0070583 I have been debating with myself whether to post these thoughts, as I know the team that did the work, and have great respect for them. But the subject is one I feel strongly about (as anyone who has discussed phytolith analysis with me will know!). So the aim here is to open discussion about the problems with microfossil analysis in general, and this happens to be a case study which illustrate...

In your sediments, post-depositionally disturbing your stratigraphy. Here we have examples of roots from modern plants that have grown into the archaeological deposits. They are easily distinguishable from archaeological plant remains as the tissue is fresh, organic and well preserved. Photo A shows a root that has grown into soft, ashy, compact midden at Boncuklu, Turkey. You can see clearly the void that has been created from the root's growth, which is the same shape as the root itself (3). We can also see a fragment of shell (1) and some small crushed bone fragments (2) embedded in the deposits. Photos B and C show close ups of modern root from Cesis Hillfort, Latvia. In B you can see where the root is divided into two rootlets whilst C shows the cell structure very clearly. Each of those 'jigsaw' shapes is an individual cell - it is cells like this that become infilled with silica during the growth of the plant, to produce phytoliths. This example of 'jigsaw' s...