Castles and Coprolites

Following on from my previous post , I am disappointed I couldn't go to Barcelona in person for the European Association of Archaeologists conference last week. The EAA itself is one of the few chances I get to meet up with European colleagues and friends in person, and Barcelona is one of my favourite cities. On the plus side, it did give me the opportunity to learn how to make a video presentation. It turns out my beloved Surface tablet has a bells and whistles version of PowerPoint that lets you record your presentation with video and sound all in one go, and export it as an MP4. The presentation focused on pilot studies I have been leading as part of a Wellcome Trust seed award in Humanities and Social Sciences, to test the feasibility of applying various civil engineering methods to an archaeological settlement, and building a network of researchers in Turkey and Europe. Pilot studies are fantastic as a 'proof of concept' to justify full scale studies, but also in som...

Last week was very busy. I was away in Vilnius, Lithuania for the European Association of Archaeologists annual meeting . The last one I went to was Pilsen in 2013  so it was good to go back and catch up with the latest research. I think I probably overdid it, giving a paper and a poster presentation, and also running the Newcastle University exhibition stand. I wasn't really able to do either effectively, having to jump in and out of sessions to sit at the desk. I ended up missing quite a few talks that I wanted to see. However, my paper presentation did go well, and I got some good questions and discussion. I was talking about Catalhoyuk, and assessing the past 25 years of 'multi-proxy' archaeology and approaches to use of space. Although some aspects were critical, the aim was to try and see what has worked and what hasn't worked, and some of the reasons why this might be. There is such a rich and unique record of the history of  excavation and methodology at Catalh...