Castles and Coprolites

Finally back in the UK after 6 weeks in the US as a WUN visiting fellow at UW and subsequently conference participant at the SAA 77th Annual Meeting in Memphis . Since my previous update, I gave another seminar as part of UW Anthropology FAALS , this time on my micromorphology work at Catalhoyuk. Rather than giving the same presentation I normally do, I decided to incorporate some of the very latest work I've been doing at the site, including the analysis I did at UW, and even a bit of theory. It was great to get lots of questions and positive responses, and the discussion gave me some useful ideas on how to integrate larger scale spatial analysis with micromorphology (the focus of which, in my research at least, has been temporal). I was sad to have to leave UW after only 1 month - I intially thought this would be plenty of time, but it went by so quickly. Hopefully I'll be able to go back when my lab work with Feeding Stonehenge has finished. Before returning to the UK I s...

All those good intentions to update my blog on a daily basis seem to have failed, though this is good in a way as it reflects how busy I have been. Since my last update I have had a behind the scenes tour of the Burke Museum (absolutely fantastic collections of art from the northwest coast, including bent boxes, incredible!), I've visited the labs in Oceanography (which by the way, has a rather fantastic coffee/lounge area, see below), and have given my first department seminar for Archaeology (which attracted a decent audience despite being a friday afternoon and having the word biomolecular in the title). Lounge area, UW Oceanography I've also made significant progress on a paper I'm co-authoring on 'jumping scales' at Çatalhöyük, which is exploring the link between the scale at which data is collected, and the scale at which interpretations are made. It turns out UW is a great place to be working on this, as the office I'm in has a huge geoarchaeology l...

Having a great time at UW, and getting loads of microscope work and writing done! The lab I'm working in even has a big red danger button. I haven't tried pressing it yet. Maybe I'll give it a go if my seminar next week goes badly. Big Red Button Here are a few sneak peeks of the types of things I've been finding in the latest lot of samples from Çatalhöyük. The most exciting part of this analysis is going to be the integration of other data sets, especially the microbotanical remains, currently being analysed by archaeobotanist Dr. Ryan at the British Museum. Although we can see the depositional characteristics and micro-context of remains such as microcharcoal and phytoliths in thin section, it can be difficult to identify the types and relative quantities, so it is essential to combine the two approaches to get the most information. Top left: Ootic limestone pebble. Top right: Lithic chip embedded in ash. Bottom left: Large husk...

Feeling quite excited today as I have just finalised my travel arrangements to Seattle, where I will be a visiting fellow at the University of Washington, Department of Anthropology   in March and April, as part of WUN (Worldwide University Network) scheme. I'll be doing a whole bunch of things while I am there, including developing my research on Palaeoindian coprolites, and teaching seminars in bioarchaeology and geoarchaeology. I am also really looking forward to visiting the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and meeting Julie Stein. I remember when I was an undergraduate being inspired her research on shell middens. Shell middens are the reason I became an archaeologist - as an undergraduate I read geography, and was always interested in Quaternary environmental change, and the relationships between humans and their environment. I ended up working on a shell midden site in Fiji for my dissertation, and discovered that the socio-cultural side of the past was equall...