Castles and Coprolites

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...

I was hoping to post this whilst on the train but the not so great free wifi scuppered my plans. I arrived in London yesterday evening following a day of exam board meetings. The exam board is where we go through all the marks and see who has passed, what grades they have, and who gets prizes. The whole process is anonymised until final marks are confirmed, then we get to see who got which prizes. I was really happy to see some of the first students I taught when I joined Newcastle finish their degrees and do so well! No names though as I'm not sure the details have been released to students yet. So, I'm in London for two reasons - firstly to go to an appointment at the Turkish consulate to collect visas for myself and other team members for fieldwork at Catalhoyuk in July, and secondly for University Archaeology Day . I think the last time I went to Turkey was 2013 - how time goes by so quickly! Up until then I had been pretty much every year since 2004! University Archaeol...