Castles and Coprolites

Exciting news from Newcastle today - the proposal I have been working on for over a year, for a new BSc Archaeology degree, was approved today (pending some minor paperwork tweaks). I am really excited about this - it is something I have wanted to do since I started at Newcastle, and it's been hard work getting all the paperwork in place, but it has paid off, and fingers crossed is the first step in broadening our archaeological science teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, in line with our expanding research profile in this area. Newcastle is actually quite unusual, being one of the only Russell Group universities not to offer  both a BA and BSc in Archaeology. Archaeology is one of those truly interdisciplinary subjects that places emphasis on both science and humanities, and students usually have the option to focus their skills in either area. Since I joined Newcastle I have developed a number of new 'science' based modules in environmental and geoarcha...

What makes archaeologists angry? Please share your worst rants - it’s research for a new vlog 😈 — ArchaeoDuck (@ArchaeoDuck) 5 November 2017 Twitter is not long enough for this rant. I was reassured to see a lot of the responses to this tweet mirrored my own concerns. Whilst I do have academic annoyances about archaeology to do with methods and interpretation, these feel so minor in comparison to the frustration I feel about archaeology as a profession. It all links in with the history of archaeology as a discipline. Other responses touched on the 'cult of the object' - despite moving beyond being about pretty objects, the popular image of archaeology still focuses on the objects, rather than what archaeology can tell us about society, and how it is relevant to the present and future. What hope have we to convince people archaeology is an important academic subject when the popular opinion is that it is lovely and all that but really just frivolous. The history of arc...

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...

Well October has gone by incredibly quickly! Despite not posting much, there has been a lot happening, so much in fact that I have quite the backlog of things to talk about. For now just a few thoughts on academia and 'impact'. I read this article today that talked about focusing on impact as 'selling out' (for non UK readers, this is the drive towards having some sort of measurable impact beyond academia that is becoming increasingly required for grants and rankings). I get that, as I used to feel the same way. During my PhD I thought very much that the quality of the academic work is all that should matter. I guess this comes about because of the way we are trained as academics - we go from school, where the focus is on doing well, getting good grades, through university, undergrad to postgrad. Again, the focus is very much on your achievements as an individual, and the academic merit of your ideas and your writing.  In my experience, it is not until I started my str...

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...

Disclaimer: I was a huge Pokemon fan in the late 90s and played it religiously on my Gameboy. So I was always going to love Pokemon Go just from a nostalgia perspective. So I've been a bit surprised at all the moaning about it on social media - seriously, why be all grumpy about a free game that gets people outside and walking about? It's not like we haven't all been playing odd games on our phones for years. Candy Crush anyone? I think Pokemon Go is a brilliant idea, you literally have to leave the house and get some exercise to play it. We all lament so much that 'kids these days' spend all day sat down playing computer games instead of going outside, what could be better than combining the two? Something I did not expect was that I would learn so much playing it. Whereas the original game was set in a fantasy world, this one is set in the real world. The whole thing is based on a location based tourist app, that gives you little snippets of information on various...

We have just come to the end of our first week of digging here in Casa Bastione. The excavation is going really well, the students are starting to get the hang of things, and we’ve cleared and sieved most of the topsoil, ready to get started on the archaeological layers next week. The great thing about working in this part of Europe is that even the topsoil is full of archaeological material. We’ve already got bags and bags of pottery and bone, and the occasional lithics and some fragments of Byzantine glass. Even though this material is not in its original context, it’s great for helping the students to learn how to spot things, and the feeling that you are actually finding stuff rather than just sieving sterile soil. Of course, the mood on site has shifted noticeably over the past couple of days. I never get into politics in this blog, but it would be impossible not to mention the fact that we are here in Sicily, working with a British (including English and Scottish students!) and I...

I’m sitting here writing this on my laptop, on the patio of a rustic farm villa, with a lovely view of the mountains and checkerboard fields, sipping an espresso. Actually, I’ll probably be posting it at a later date, given that there is no internet up here in the lovely quiet hills, no sounds apart from the odd bleating goat and chirping swallow. Yes, it’s the best time of the year again; fieldwork time! I’m allowed to gloat at these surroundings, I’ve endured everything from 2 months sleeping on a floor with no mattress to 3 weeks with no electricity or running water. That means getting washed = a bucket of cold water over the head. But not this year! This year I’m working at a site called Case Bastione in central Sicily . I’m here as a geoarchaeology specialist, but also as a supervisor for our students from Newcastle University. The project is run by Italian archaeologist Enrico Giannitrapani, along with Newcastle’s Andrea Dolfini, and dates from the early Copper Age to Bronze Age,...

A little Tweet this morning inspired today's blogging: @er_crema #archaeology liked: there is a misconception among us that uncertainty is a negative aspect of our research http://t.co/fwGKEwvajm — Stefano Biagetti (@s_biagetti) June 11, 2015 You'd think that archaeological scientists would be willing to admit there is always uncertainty. However well we collect our data, however good the sampling strategy is (and it often isn't!), we are almost always dealing with a record that is complex and fragmentary. The best we can offer, to all but the most basic questions, is a range of possibilities. Multiple working hypotheses that we can continue to refine as techniques improve and more data becomes available. I think I read somewhere once that we should present a 'definitive story' of archaeology that can then be changed if needed. But I am not sure if this works - it can be hard to change an idea once it moves outside academia. As usual I think my perspectiv...

I was alerted to a blog post a few weeks ago with the (deliberately I'm sure) provocative title Archaeology is just an expensive way of finding out what historians already know... Of course I immediately felt the need to...actually I didn't. The post does have a point. Archaeology is indeed usually more expensive than historical research. I don't think the central criticism of the article is specific to archaeology. What is actually being complained about here is poorly designed research, without a clear objective. Though it is not clear whether this is because the actual excavation being discussed (a battle field) does not have clear objectives, or that the main source linked to is a Telegraph article. Saying that archaeology just shows what historians already know is a narrow view of the aims of both history and archaeology. Whilst the contribution of archaeology to (in this case) a 200 year old battle that is extensively documented, may be more limited, there are alway...

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,...

Sometimes I find it hard to put myself into a subject area box. I was a Geography undergraduate, a Geoarchaeology MSc student, and did a PhD jointly in Chemistry and Archaeology. What does that make me? I used to say I was a geoarchaeologist, applying the methods of geoscience to archaeological questions. But I realised that was too narrow, as even the methods I draw upon vary depending on the question being asked, and indeed a multi-proxy approach is something which I try  to promote. My main research interests are the relationships between humans and the environment, how this has changed over time, and how it varies in different geographic settings. Very much a theme of environmental archaeology, but also geography. Geography has been called the subject that bridges the human and physical sciences, encompassing the Earth and all of its natural and human components, and the dynamic relationship between the two. Physical geography seeks to describe and explain the spheres of t...

What do dinosaurs and archaeology have in common? Nothing, surely! the archaeologist may say with a knowing smile. There is a bit of a running joke amongst archaeologists that one of the first questions people ask is do you dig up dinosaurs? And the response being well no, you're thinking of palaeontology. Both disciplines are associated with trowel usage, and summers of field work digging stuff up. There may even be some overlap in terms of questions asked - the nature of long term environmental and ecological change, especially the further back in time we go to the earliest origins of hominids. In general however, archaeology is focused on the study of material remains of human societies (largely anatomically modern humans), whilst palaeontology focuses on all other life forms prior to the beginning of the Holocene. And not just dinosaurs. There is another area where these two research areas overlap, and that is the way in which discoveries in these disciplines make it from the...