Castles and Coprolites

I've just been notified of the publication of this great new paper via Google Scholar citations, as it cites my paper on lipid analysis of coprolites . That's not the only reason I'm writing about it mind you - anything dung related gets my attention, and this is one of the first papers to come out of the Ce ntral Zagros Archaeological Project , which I was involved with a number of years ago. The CZAP project aims to understand the origin and process of animal domestication and agriculture in the Central Zagros region of Iran and Iraq, and the team have also conducted ethnographic studies in modern villages in the area, in order to help interpret the archaeology. This paper by Elliot et al reports on a mix of ethnographic studies and scientific analysis of modern dung and plants. The authors look at the dung spherulites in modern samples of sheep, goat and cows - those little spherical particles that form in the guts of animals . Despite being used frequently to support t...

Exciting news, a new open access journal has been launched, specifically for archaeological science: Science and Technology of Archaeological Research (STAR) by Maney . This is in addition to the recently launched Open Quaternary by Ubiquity Press. Joining Twitter was one of the best things I've done for my research. It has opened my eyes to a whole online network of research in my own and related areas, and has made me increasingly aware of the importance of open access research. That is, research that is freely available, rather than locked behind a pay wall. I am still unsure how this 'new' direction of publishing will impact the development of my career. As an early career researcher, I am all too aware of the need to publish in the big name (subscription) journals to get research (and job applications!) noticed by the wider community. I am hopefully taking a step in the right direction by making sure that there are open access versions of my papers available online...

I couldn't resist posting about this lovely micrograph, even though I blogged about this mineral quite recently . This is the same floor sample from medieval Riga, it's absolutely chock full of these iron phosphate crystals (vivianite) in various forms. The last image I posted showed the typical blue amorphous mass, here is another view, this time of a collection of smaller 'rosette' crystals, showing the monoclinic form. You can see that there is a mix of blue and yellowish/grey crystals in these rosettes. Vivianite turns blue on exposure to air, suggesting that this part of the deposit remained waterlogged whilst other parts were partially exposed. Curious that these little crystals appear to be clustering around that white area - a 'crack' in the floor.

I came across these two studies in Journal of Archaeological Science recently, through Google citation alerts . It's always satisfying when my papers are cited, as it shows that there are people out there actually reading them and finding them useful! It's especially satisfying when the citing papers are as exciting as these! Both are by the same team, with lead author Hans Huisman who you may remember gave me some very useful advice through my Micrograph of the Month feature on some of my thin sections. The first paper is " A question of scales: studying Neolithic subsistence using micro CT scanning of midden deposits " Here Husiman et al. apply micro CT scanning to thin section analysis. CT scan, or CAT scan, stands for computerised tomography, which uses a series of X rays to produce 3D images of components that are enclosed within a matrix. This is the same technique that is used in medical applications to look inside the body, but at a much smaller scale, hen...