Castles and Coprolites

Warning, if you read this blog for the fun archaeology, this post is unlikely to interest you! It's a bit of a personal grump about life and academia. Wasn't even sure whether to post it, but here goes. I'm having an identity crisis at the moment. It's been brought to the forefront because of Brexit, but it's something that I've always felt in the back of my mind for as long time. I never recognised it at the time, as it has been a process rather than a sudden understanding, but I think it started when my parents (mam in particular) decided that I should go to a private (fee paying) secondary school rather than the state school all my friends were going to. Up until that point, I was the same as everyone else in my family. Grew up in Wallsend, lived in a council house, walked to school which was the local primary. Had never been abroad on holiday, and never expected that I would. We didn't have a lot of money as my dad had lost his job in the shipyards, an...

It's been just over 3 weeks since I got back from fieldwork in Sicily and I'm still missing the sun, and the fun of doing fieldwork. I had hoped to be doing more over the summer and getting on with microscope work for the Ness of Brodgar midden samples , but for various reasons that isn't looking likely. I have a mountain of admin  to get on top of, including sorting out adverts and interviews for a PhD studentship I have been awarded (exciting stuff, I'll post more about it when the advert is live), sorting out adverts for a postdoctoral position I have, related to a successful grant application (even more exciting, more details as soon as the grant details have been confirmed!). As the grant is joint with Bristol's Organic Geochemistry Unit , I also have to make a trip down there in August to sort out details and a work plan. Added to all of this is our website migration to a mobile responsive system. This is very welcome news as the current site is a bit out of ...

I can't remember if I posted about this earlier in the year, but I was lucky enough to be awarded two student work experience placements as part of the  Newcastle NWE programme , where students complete flexible paid projects within the university. Two of my Environmental Archaeology students have been working for the past few months, digitizing my entire collection of thin section slides. At some point I hope to make these available online as an open access resource for teaching and research. They did a brilliant job! I've only just had a chance to go through all the scans, having been away on fieldwork, busy with exams, then graduation. Here is one of the scans of a thin section from medieval Riga, that I have been working on as part of the Ecology of Crusading project . Combined with the fact I have just moved the lovely Leica DM750P research microscope into my office (kindly purchased by History, Classics and Archaeology ), I can now get working on my mounting backlog of sa...