Marvellous Middens at the Auckland Palace Excavation

I was delighted yesterday and today to attend the excavations at Auckland Palace, a joint project between the Auckland Project, the Department of Archaeology at Durham University and Archaeological Services Durham University. This is actually the first time I've had the chance to meet any of the Durham undergraduate students since I started my new job at the department in April, and it was great to see everyone in action. Field schools are one of the best parts of doing an archaeology degree - the chance to go out on a real archaeological dig and learn the process of excavation and recording first hand with professional practitioners, and be involved in everything that happens afterwards with samples and artefacts that go back to the laboratory for analysis. Durham has a great set up and lots of the students will have the chance to continue working on material from the excavations for lab projects and dissertations. 

I was particularly pleased to see this absolutely massive midden deposit - all that dark black deposit you can see is midden. Middens are the best, I really do believe that (not just because I did my PhD on middens). They are the repository for all sorts of material. I am curious about the formation processes - how does this go from being a dump of heterogenous debris to an apparently homogenous black deposit? Is this related to the decay process of charcoal and ashes? What information is contained within these at the molecular level?

Funnily enough, it has some interesting parallels with the deposits I was sampling last year - the 'fuel waste' from the bath house at Birdoswald Roman Fort, which is quite similar in appearance (and we thought that was massive at the time!). Separated in time by hundreds of years, they represent a similar activity - the deposition of large volumes of fuel and other waste, probably on a daily basis, even multiple times a day. We can see bits of charcoal and bone in the field, but what else might we see when we look at these under the microscope? As ever, my interests lie in what this might tell us about human-environment interactions. How many trees were being cut down to provide this fuel? Which species, and was this managed? What impact did this have on the landscape. Discussions with academic director Prof. Chris Gerrard indicate that there is quite an extensive historical record relating to the palace, which is a highly managed 'garden' landscape. Perhaps there is some indication in these letters and documents about where all the fuel was coming from...?