Castles and Coprolites

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...

As its pretty much a year to the day that I made my last post, I thought I should sign on briefly to let you all know that I am still around, it's just been an incredibly busy year, largely taken up by maternity leave, then catching up with research and teaching after returning to work. I have so many new things to share, I have to just hope I find a bit of time to spend on the blog. I can't remember if I mentioned earlier that I was also promoted to senior lecturer last year, not long before going on maternity leave. Turns out getting promoted means a lot more responsibility (along with a pay increase, yey! And increased student loan contributions, boo!), and I am currently partially in charge of two rather large external review processes for the archaeology subject area at Newcastle, as well as overseeing an expansion of our lab facilities, trying to start a small business through the university, and starting soon, a co-I on two major new research projects that will include 3...

It's been a frustratingly long process, but we have finally been given an end date for the set up of the new Earthslides lab at Newcastle - I am pleased to say that it will be up and running by the 22nd December. I started discussions about acquiring Earthslides way back at the end of 2017, when previous owner Julie Boreham announced her retirement. It wasn't until April that I mentioned this on my blog, which is about the time it took to put forward a proposal to the university to purchase the equipment/business, and to secure the funding. After getting an agreement in principle the next major hurdle was finding a space to house the new lab. Space is always an issue, but we managed to find a room in the same building as our existing Wolfson lab , which is ideal. However, as the room was currently a tea room/storage area, it has required a complete refurbishment to make it suitable to use as a lab, hence the rather long delay in the whole process. I have never been in a pos...