Castles and Coprolites

I just got back from a great visit to Bristol, to discuss timetables and a plan of action for the NERC grant. My coI is Dr Ian Bull of the OGU , and expert on all things faecal biomarker related. The last time I was in Bristol was in 2014, when I was a research fellow at Edinburgh , doing a whole range of pilot studies on various projects. The first time I went to Bristol was during my PhD, around 2004, to be trained in faecal biomarker analysis. Ian is like the unofficial third supervisor and the guy who showed me how to write a good academic paper. So it's somewhat surreal, but exciting, to be going back there as a PI. I'm always blown away by the amazing laboratory facilities they have -  it has to be one of the best places in the world for organic geochemistry, and there's always some fancy new kit to gawk at. We had a visit to the new radiocarbon AMS lab in archaeology. It's the first time I've seen one of these in person - such a complex bit of kit, it's i...

We are in the process of updating the School website for History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastl e. I've been asked to provide some high resolution photos for various sections, and so have been digitally digging through my image archive. I came across this amsuing photo from 2004 - my first ever visit to Catalhoyuk . It was either during my MSc or just after I finished. So long ago that I still dyed my hair black! I remember this midden - I think it was Unit 1668, and probably isn't there anymore. The first midden I worked on, looking at archived micromorphology slides at the University of Reading, and trying to compare the phytolith data from the same units. Although the Masters project had a lot of limitations (working with archive samples is very difficult when trying to compare microstratigraphic data), the lessons I learned formed the basis of the project I went on to do for my PhD. So I still have a soft spot for this particular midden! These were taken using one of...

If you follow me on twitter you may have seen a series of posts over this year relating to a NERC application I submitted. From writing the thing, >10,000 words (that's a whole undergraduate dissertation!), going through the internal review process, finally submitting it in January. Then anxiously waiting for reviewer feedback, frantically responding to reviewer queries within a very short time frame, then waiting for another couple of months to hear...the amazing news that I was awarded the grant! When the administrative process is complete, I'll write a proper post about the project and what it is we hope to do, but for now I wanted to tell the story of how I ended up working on a project that initially seems far removed from working on Neolithic middens in the Near East, or even Neolithic pottery in Britain. I like this story, as it goes to show how opportunities turn up in strange ways, often when you don't expect them, and that the research process can take you in ...

Originally posted on The Archaeology of Tomb Raider . The site was archived for a while so I figured I would share it here (though it appears it may be back up and running last month, do go and have a look!). 1) Pavlopetri – The City Beneath the Waves In the original Tomb Raider Lara finds herself in the fabled lost city of Atlantis, known only through the written accounts of Plato around 360 BC, where it is said to have vanished beneath the waves some 9000 years earlier. This would make Atlantis around 11,000 years old, pushing its occupation right back to the beginning of the Holocene, or the end of the last Ice Age. In archaeological terms, this date corresponds with the early Neolithic cultures of sites such as Jericho in the Near East, or the hunter-gatherer ‘Clovis’ culture, one of the earliest groups of people to inhabitant North America. Alas, Atlantis remains a myth but until some lucky person becomes the most famous archaeologist of all time and finds the legen...