Castles and Coprolites

After yesterday's musings I figured I should post about some of the fun archaeological stuff I've been up to at Catalhoyuk this week. The reason we are here this year (we being myself and project postdoc Helen Mackay ), is that we were lucky enough to be awarded a grant from the Wellcome Trust. We are collecting archive samples to export for analysis, doing some burning experiments in the reconstructed mudbrick house, and general networking and scouting for collaborators for when we (hopefully!) do the full sale research project. The focus of the Wellcome project is to investigate the potential relationships between 'biofuel' use and respiratory health in the archaeological record. The materials that people used for fuel in the Neolithic (wood, dung, reeds etc) are being promoted today as sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels, however there has been a lot of research showing that these fuels are actually just as bad for respiratory health as fossil fuels. Biomass ...

A day in the life of poo! So I absolutely need a cartoonist to do a follow of this fab comic from Newcastle Civil Engineering and Geosciences , on showing how useful poo in it's various forms is in archaeology! Such an under-appreciated source of information, ancient poo from both humans and animals has a whole lot to contribute to our understanding of diet, health, environment, and early animal management in the past. And not forgetting that animal dung was (and is) and important fuel use in many societies. Ancient poo (aka coprolites or palaeofaeces ) provides a neat little package of information, containing everything from pollen, seeds, plant tissues and bone fragments to parasite eggs and lipid residues. The fact that it represents a snapshot of a person over just a few days has a huge advantage over more traditional methods of looking at health and diet (such as isotopes from skeletons), which tend to be more time-averaged or 'lifetime' signatures, and can miss the...