Castles and Coprolites

This post is many years in the making! Back in 2018 I was on an excavation at a site called Cronk Guckley on the Isle of Man with my colleague Prof. Chris Fowler, a brilliant theorist and Neolithic specialist, who is co-director of the Round Mounds project. This is a great project with some really exceptional finds, including this beautiful jet bead necklace. The excavation finished in 2022 and we are now completing all the post-excavation analysis. The project is investigating the nature and timing of Bronze Age ‘round mound’ construction and how funerary practices evolved, on the Isle of Man and surrounding islands. These structure are large earthern monuments that were constructed over the top of a burial. The jet necklace is an exciting piece of evidence, not just because of it's beauty, but because it gives us insights into the people - the jet has been sourced to Whitby, so is great evidence for connections between the Isle of Man and mainland Britain in the Bronze Age, an...

As promised, a new post that is actually on geoarchaeology. I never used to be into industrial archaeology. Having grown up in the north east, I always thought the buildings were ugly. The skyline from our house was filled with the cranes of Swan Hunters shipyards, and I remember the siren that used to go off to call people to work. My dad would grab his bait box and walk there, down the path into what is now Segedunum Roman Fort. He likes to tell me the story of how the end of the wall was right outside the cabin where he would sit with his mates on a break. This was all just whatever at the time. I prefered nature - beaches, rocks and trees - to being in the urban landscape. After my dad was made redundant when the Shipyards was closing down for good, the industrial landscape became associated with decline, poverty instead of pride. A reminder that we were poor and lived in an ugly place with ugly old buildings. I was so happy to move away from that at age 18 when I went to univers...

Some personal good news amongst the Covid19 chaos - I have a new paper currently in press in Earth Science Reviews  (currently pre-proof so check in at a later date for definitive version with updated figures etc). This is a substantial review my team and I have been working on for a couple of years now, chipping away at it in the background as part of our NERC research project , and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. We posted it as a pre-print a few months ago on EarthArkiv , the first time I've used a pre-print server. I was hoping to engage in an open peer review process, but we didn't get any comments (do pre-prints really get peer reviewed...? A discussion for another blog post). On the plus side we did get 264 downloads before the paper made it through peer review with Earth Science Reviews. One of the points we make (albeit briefly) in this paper is that coprolites should be subject to the same strict protocols for access and analysis that have been propos...

I am excited to announce a new AHRC research project starting at Newcastle  in January,   TerraSAgE: Terraces as Sustainable Agricultural Environments .The project is led by PI Prof. Sam Turner, and I am one of the project coIs, overseeing the geoarchaeological aspects of the project. Sam and his team have been doing pilot studies for this project for a while now, developing a new OSL dating method to understand the chronology and formation of agricultural terraces from prehistory to historic periods. I became involved in the project last year to advise on geoarchaeological and soil science approaches to the analysis of archaeological and historic terraces. The major aims of the project are to understand how and when terraces were constructed and how they were maintained and managed, and how this varies in different geographic regions, and in different time periods. We also want to understand why terracing developed, and conversely, why it was abandoned in some places but not...

I have been meaning to write this post for a while, but have been busy behind the scenes sorting out all the logistics. Finally I can announce that Earthslides is to be relocated at Newcastle, as a new facility within the McCord Centre . After many years providing one of the best thin section processing services in the world (seriously!), Earthslides owner Julie Boreham is retiring in June. We have been in discussions since last year about Newcastle taking over the facility. The whole process has taken up a large part of the past year for me, from getting permission from the university, securing the funding to purchase the equipment, to finding a space at the university to put it in (harder than you could ever imagine!), to finally this morning, our first meeting with estates to assess the new space and go over the requirements for getting it refitted. This has been a long term dream of mine - setting up my own micromorphology lab, where we can train researchers and develop amazing c...

Sitting on a train back from London to Newcastle so I thought I would make wise use of 4 hours and get round to a much needed blog update. But what to update about? You can tell by the uninspired blog title it's going to be a random mix of stuff. There is a lot going on at the moment (both academic and general life), some of which is super exciting but I have to wait to talk about until it is finished. I've just about recovered from the whirlwind that was the  DIG2017 conference , just in time to get started on the edited volume that goes with it. The conference was a great success, and we were lucky enough to get funding to cover the recording and publishing of the talks (speakers permitting), the majority of which are  now online  (unfortunately I can't actually watch them on my train journey as Youtube streaming is blocked...). This is going to make a great research teaching tool - we have presentations of papers available to view, and also updated written papers appea...

Well, August has come and gone, and no blog post. This is the first time since I started my blog that I haven't made at least one post per month. It will haunt me forever that 0 posts in the list. The reason August was so busy was largely due to the Developing International Geoarchaeology conference , which we hosted at Newcastle last week. So whilst I wasn't blogging, I was very busy live-tweeting and generally making sure the whole thing ran smoothly with my event management hat on. Who would have thought the job of an academic also included event management - I know more than I ever thought I needed about coordinating multiple external companies (hiring poster boards, printing, conference badges, a dinner for 70 people...), internal purchasing and booking procedures. Making sure we didn't accidentally leave someone stranded in the middle of nowhere along Hadrian's Wall during the field trip. I don't even know where to start about the papers - we genuinely had a f...

Registrations for DIG2017 closed over the weekend so I've been collating all the information for preparing information packs and confirming catering etc. I've been playing around with the delegate information and thought I would share some fun figures. All the data is based on the registration details provided by the delegates, with designation of male or female from delegate name. The first figure shows the geographic distribution of delegates (residence rather than nationality). We have around 80 people attending from 20 different countries, making DIG2017 truly international! The highest number attending are from the UK, which makes sense given the location this year, but we also have a good number from north america, and a wide spread from across Europe. Our furthest afield is coming from Australia! I'm happy to see that we have an almost even split of early career researches/students to established researchers, and a good gender balance of 43% female 31% male. It...

Remains of stone wall base, and a whole lot of roof tiles at Olynthos Anyone who is familiar with Catalhoyuk, or indeed Near Eastern prehistory in general, will know there has been a lot of focus on mudbricks. What are they made of? What can the raw materials and manufacturing processes tell us about Neolithic society? And also floors - we love floors in the Near East, counting them, describing them, analysing them. I was therefore a little surprised when I was doing some background research on Olynthos , to find that no-one has really looked that much at floors, or mudbricks, in classical archaeology. In fact, I was surprised to find out that the houses were made of mudbricks at all, though this is probably just due to my lack of familiarity with the period. We are so used to seeing the remains of stone walls, and the stone monumental architecture, but the mudbricks don't seem to preserve. The roof tiles on the other hand are everywhere (as can be seen nicely in the image from...

Today was my last day on site at the classical Greek city of Olynthos in northern Greece. Although I have never studied Greek archaeology, or indeed anything classical, ancient Greece is something I was always fascinated by as a child. If I'd thought to study archaeology as an undergraduate I can imagine that ancient Greece is something I would have gone for. Regular blog readers know I was a geographer before I was an archaeologist, and that background has situated me more in prehistory, with it's greater emphasis on long term environmental change and human-environment interactions. But yet again I find myself being fascinated by themes and comparisons rather than specific time periods, and also the differences in approaches to archaeology in different areas. Ancient Greece is exciting as there is a wealth of documentary evidence and we know so many of the little details compared to prehistory. But like other historic periods I have worked on (e.g. The Ecology of Crusading ...

This semester I've been teaching archaeological sediment micromorphology, as part of a third year module in geoarchaeology. I mentioned a few weeks ago how hard it was to teach a subject this complex in only 2 hours per week, and that in future I was thinking of removing it from Geoarchaeology and turning it into a stand alone module. I still haven't decided whether to do this, as I think it's important to have some teaching of it at UG level, but a module focusing entirely on micromorphology is probably more suitable for Masters level. Related to my frustrations, I made an offhand comment on Facebook that despite it being one of my specialist subjects, sediment micromorphology is very boring to teach. More than any other method I have studied, micromorphology is definitely the one filled with the most jargon. Don't get me wrong, I think jargon is important. We need the specialist language to describe the many complex features and processes that we see in thin sectio...

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...

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...

I am pleased to announce I will be co-convening a session on Geoarchaeology at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2017 . Please do consider submitting an abstract to our session - there is funding available to support the participation of early career researchers and researchers from low income countries. The deadline for support applications is December 1st 2016. For further details on our session and how to register see here .

When I started at Newcastle one of the first major roles I undertook was taking over as Director of the Wolfson Archaeology Laboratory. This sounds rather grand, but in reality it mostly involves managing room bookings and making sure everyone has all the kit they need for practicals, research and teaching. Part of the job involves looking after a zooarchaeology reference collection, hence the post last month about attending the zooarchaeology  short course at Sheffield . I have also made various wonderful purchasing decisions, vastly expanding our suite of microscopes to include a range of Leica DM750P scopes for teaching, and dedicated scopes for research with even fancier specs including reflected light capabilities, image analysis software etc. The next stage will be to transform the side room, currently used mostly for storage, into a dedicated space for research. With a new lab based PhD and PDRA started in January, and possibly a Fellow later in 2017 (if all goes to plan), i...

Back in February I announced that Newcastle would be hosting the 7th Developing International Geoarchaeology conference in 2017. Plans are slowly coming along and I am happy to say the conference website is now up and running, which you can view here . There is all sorts of information about travel and whatnot, and we will be updating it regularly, so keep checking. We have also issued the first call for papers , almost a year in advance so plenty of time to make your arrangements! Information on conference accommodation will be available soon and will be bookable at the time of registration, which we hope to have ready by the end of September this year. Student and early career researchers may be interested to know that we are going to have prizes awarded for the best paper and poster submissions, kindly sponsored by the School of History, Classics and Archaeology . We are also making arrangements with Geoarchaeology journal for a potential special issue related to the conference, su...

I'm missing the Sicilian weather already. As much as I love Newcastle, I'm very much a fan of hot weather, and the 35 degrees in Sicily suited me nicely. Likewise, I don't think I can ever have ice cream in the UK again after 2 weeks of Italian gelato. And oh how I miss the coffee. I feel very invigorated after the fieldwork. Despite the depressing news we received while were away, the excavation reminded me of everything that originally got me interested in archaeology. Travelling, the excitement of discovery , and the satisfaction of successfully completing hard work. This is my first year of involvement in the project, but I hope to dedicate time to it over the next few years (not just because of the gelato and coffee, though that does help). As I am sure you have guessed, my role in the project is to conduct a series of pilot geoarchaeological studies to investigate the formation processes of some of the more unusual deposits and features on site. The first of these is...

I read this lovely post the other day, " We were all that kid " about a little girl who brought her collection of objects to a museum for the curator to look at. It made me smile, as it reminded me of myself, and how I ended up being this thing called a geoarchaeologist. As early as I can remember I was fascinated by the natural world. My biggest obsession was with rocks and gemstones, though I also loved insects. I still have a lot of my collection - the rocks and gems anyway. I did have a red tailed bumble bee and a stag beetle that I tried to preserve with my non-exist childhood conservator skills, but they didn't survive. I have a distinct memory of a school field trip to London. I bought a book from the NHM on gemstones, and I remember how it had all the chemical names of the minerals, and how I tried to learn them. I still remember my birthstone peridot is magnesium iron silicate. The NHM is huge with so many flashy displays and interactive things, but I was quite...

One of the main reasons I started my blog was in an effort to promote the first conference I organised, back in 2012 . After the stress and time it took  I told myself I was going to take a break from organizing big events. But now I've had a few years off I'm going to do something even bigger and better (hopefully!) for the 7th Developing International Geoarchaeology conference, which I'm pleased to say we will be hosting at Newcastle University in September 2017 . The call for papers is likely to be issued towards the end of this year, so follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook for updates. DIG is one of the first conferences I went to as a PhD student, and I am pleased to be focusing more on specialized events at the moment, after a few years doing the SAA and EAA . Those huge conferences are great for catching up across a wide range of research areas, but I find them very exhausting and not so good for networking. I'm much better at interacting with people in a mo...