Castles and Coprolites

Today I am doing three hours of teaching for PG students on soil. This follows two hours yesterday of teaching 3rd year students sediment micromorphology. My 3rd year Geoarchaeology module is challenging this year, as the class is 75% geography students, so I have had to modify the content a bit to make sure we go over the archaeological concepts. Having non archaeologists in the audience makes you really just how jargon filled the subject is! At the moment the module is set up so that the practical classes are about 25% bulk soil analysis and 75% thin section analysis, but I am tempted to switch this next year and focus on the bulk sediments. As much as I love micromorphology, it is a very challenging subject to teach as it is so time intensive, and I think it would work better as a stand alone module. This will give the students more time to work on materials, and to focus the seminars specifically on micromorphology. At the moment the Geoarchaeology module seminars are focused on br...

I have just been sorting through my Folders and found a file called The Stranger's Bag. I had zero recollection of what this was, but on opening remembered that a while ago I entered the Tyne and Wear  Metro Morning short story competition . Needless to say I didn't win, but it was fun nonetheless, and a good challenge trying to write something interesting in 250 words. Whether I succeeded is a matter of debate. I'm pretty sure this format is not my forte. Opinions good or bad encouraged in the comments! The Stranger's Bag What was that? She glanced sideways at the strange shapes protruding from the bag of the passenger beside her. She hoped it wasn’t too obvious she was staring. There was just something familiar about the shape, something seemed not quite right. Then she realised, and stifled a gasp. Bones. Human bones. Her heart started to race. It was early; they were the only two people in the carriage. How far to the next stop? She stared straig...

If you follow Hidden Worlds on Facebook you may have spotted a set of samples from Sicily have been progressing nicely over the past few weeks. These are samples that we collected last summer during a field school, at a site called Case Bastione . It is a Bronze Age settlement located in central Sicily, and has some really interesting features that we are describing as clay lined pits. The functions of these are unclear. It was initially hypothesized they had something to do with metal working, but chemical analysis has suggested other functions. We have taken a number of samples to try and figure it out. The thin section samples are taken from the pit linings, and a range of 'domestic' deposits. I am hoping we can recruit an enthusiastic student to look at these samples for a dissertation project, though I might not be able to resist having a look at them myself!

Preparations are well underway for the 7th biennial Developing International Geoarchaeology conference, otherwise known as DIG, which we are hosting at Newcastle this September. We are in the process of confirming our guest speakers, and I have just received confirmation from the editorial board of Geoarchaeology journal that we have been provisionally accepted to produce a special issue of the journal based on the conference papers. This is great news, and hopefully will ensure a speedy turnaround of the papers for publication, and a lasting legacy for the conference. We are also hoping to film the talks (with speaker permission), and to host these online - details on this as soon as we have confirmed. Geoarchaeology is the ideal venue to publish the conference papers, as the journal remit is a good reflection of the aims of DIG, including all areas of geoarchaeology from landscape to material culture. Geoarchaeology has previously published papers from DIG2011  under the th...

As part of a postgraduate module I am co-convening, Landscape Archaeology: Theory and Practice, I will be taking a group of Masters students into the field in a few weeks time to teach them the joys of soil transect surveys. We've even bought a brand new shiny hand auger kit. I am quite pleased with how the handbook and plan have turned out. We're lucky to have the amazing landscape of Northumberland to work with, and the area we are looking at, Milfield Basin, has had extensive archaeological and geoarchaeological analysis so there is plenty of background material for the students to refer to. Preparing this exercise has been strange in some ways and almost nostalgic, as this was one of my first experiences as a geoarchaeologist. As part of my MSc Geoarchaeology, we were tasked with doing a borehole survey and writing it up like a professional commercial report. I remember distinctly the terror of being sent out with a hand auger, and being left to get on with it. There is not...