Castles and Coprolites

I was recently alerted to this interesting new paper (open access!) through Google Scholar citation alerts, which is a very useful service for finding out when your papers are cited by other authors (in this case my 2011 paper on faecal lipid residues at Catalhoyuk ). The authors studied a sequence of lake sediments from Lake Igaliku in SW Greenland, looking at changes in the quantity of DOC and fungal spores. DOC is a bile acid (deoxycholic acid), and is found in both human and ruminant faeces, but at a higher concentration in ruminants. Humans have higher amounts of LC (another bile acid, lithocholic acid). Interestingly no LC was found, suggesting that the DOC comes entirely from herbivores (and that the runoff 'polluting' the lake is largely agricultural, rather than coming from settlement sewage waste). The fungal spores that were found are from coprophilous fungi - i.e. fungi that grow on faeces! The amount of DOC present correlated with the number of fungal spores, wi...

I came across these two studies in Journal of Archaeological Science recently, through Google citation alerts . It's always satisfying when my papers are cited, as it shows that there are people out there actually reading them and finding them useful! It's especially satisfying when the citing papers are as exciting as these! Both are by the same team, with lead author Hans Huisman who you may remember gave me some very useful advice through my Micrograph of the Month feature on some of my thin sections. The first paper is " A question of scales: studying Neolithic subsistence using micro CT scanning of midden deposits " Here Husiman et al. apply micro CT scanning to thin section analysis. CT scan, or CAT scan, stands for computerised tomography, which uses a series of X rays to produce 3D images of components that are enclosed within a matrix. This is the same technique that is used in medical applications to look inside the body, but at a much smaller scale, hen...