Castles and Coprolites

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...

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...

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,...