Castles and Coprolites

Last month I spent a day at the Daresbury laboratory for a RICHeS data day, to think about how we will manage data for our facilities and make it accessible. This is a daunting task, but a challenge I am excited to tackle, working together with the Heritage Science Data Service team. One of the highlights of the day was touring the Visual Computing Labs. Seeing full laser scans and digital models of entire cities (in this case Liverpool) was genuinely awe inspiring. These aren’t just impressive visualisations, but complex data‑rich representations that can be interrogated. In archaeology, where we constantly move between scales, from microscopic residues to landscapes and infrastructures, the potentials are endless. What might we learn and better understand if we can apply these technologies to ancient cities? Another highlight was seeing virtual museums integrated with a treadmill system. The user sees a virtual environment and feels as if they are moving through it. It felt like an...

  I’m writing a book! “Archaeological Excrements and the Study of Foodways”, for the CUP Elements series, has been occupying most of my brain for the past few months. The heavy writing is now finished, which means I’ve reached my favourite stage, preparing the figures. In other words, an entirely valid excuse to spend quality time at the microscope, revisiting some old friends in the slide cabinet. This week’s nostalgia trip took me back to 2012, when I’d recently finished my PhD and was working as a research assistant. At the time, I’d started a small pilot study at the brilliant Boncuklu site in Türkiye. The idea was to compare the midden deposits there with those from Çatalhöyük, that were the focus of my PhD. Unfortunately a postdoc never materialised to take this project further, but writing the book has given me the perfect opportunity to look at these slides again properly. They are very different to the Çatalhöyük middens, not only in terms of taphonomy, but in the actual ...

I’m sitting in a playground, on a Sunday afternoon, watching decay happen in real time, like a small-scale experiment in taphonomy. Google tells me playground paint has a lifespan of around ten years. I can’t help thinking about where it goes. Tiny particles released into the surrounding soil, tracked away on shoes, washed into drains by rain. What are they carrying with them? Pigments, binders, trace metals? Potential pollutants moving through the environment, I wonder how far they become dispersed beyond the original structure?  I am thinking about how this would read archaeologically. A surface repeatedly repainted versus one left to crumble. Some structures maintained long past their original design life alongside elements allowed to fail. How far do the tiny particles we see in sediment micromorphology samples represent a local activity and how much comes from dispersal?