Castles and Coprolites

Oh the excitement! Today I received a parcel from Earthslides , with 20 new thin section samples from the Ness of Brodgar . These samples were collected in 2014 and are mostly from the Trench T midden. Although I don't yet have the kit in place to do a proper analysis, I couldn't resist having a quick peek with my old Swift scope. The level of complexity is daunting - so may fine layers of stratigraphy hidden within layers that appear relatively homogeneous in the field. But already I can see something interesting things - layers of burnt peat,  a very large amount of burnt bone, and even a tiny fragment of red ochre pigment, about 2mm in diameter. This pigment has been found in various contexts in Orkney (and elsewhere around the world), for example Gordon Childe at Skara Brae found containers of pigment he interpreted as 'paint pots '.  At the Ness it is thought that the pigment was ground down and used as a paint for the stone walls in buildings. Behold my attempts a...

Just taking this opportunity to share a video I recently posted on my YouTube page, from my talk at the Archaeological Research in Progress conference 2015, organised by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland . Any feedback and comments on this would be much appreciated, as it is the first 'full length' talk I have done that has been recorded (by the talented Open Access Archaeology ). I now have a grand total of 3 videos posted on YouTube, and it got me thinking about the idea of doing video-blogging. Is this something that people would find interesting? I was thinking of doing short videos that summarise different aspects of my work (and related research areas), and including PowerPoints that I have previously used in my teaching - this could either be at a very introductory level, or a little more advanced. What sorts of topics would people like to see? Also taking this opportunity to share my IndieGoGo campaign again, which is now half way through and on 21% - thank yo...

Some exciting news for my research at the Ness of Brodgar! I just heard from Earthslides.com that the 2014 samples are well under way being set in resin. I thought readers might be interested in a quick post on the process of creating archaeological thin sections, and I do recommend that you go check out the Facebook page, Hidden Worlds , if you want to investigate this further. Below you can see block of sediment, as collected in the field. These were posted direct from Orkney to Cambridge, wrapped up tight in tissue, tape and bubble wrap, to avoid disturbance during transport. These are carefully unwrapped and air dried over a few weeks, before being transferred into large desiccators. These are the big glass domes you can see below, and they have tight sealing lids that create an air tight seal. Resin is added to the plastic boxes containing the samples, and the whole thing is put under vacuum, using a pump. This removes all the air and draws the resin up into all the little spaces...

Back in March I mentioned that I was involved in a sciart collaboration, where artists and scientists come together to work on collaborative art projects, inspired by scientific research. I love this idea. I was always really into both art and science growing up (and took Art as an A Level subject!), and although I choose to go down the 'science' route for my career, I have maintained a keen interest in art, and particularly how we can use artistic expression to communicate scientific research. The artist I have been working with is Molly McEwan , an Edinburgh based artist and graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and talented ceramicist.  The photos to the left are a sneak preview from Molly's exhibition at Wednesday's Girl, a free exhibition showcasing the work of female artists from Scotland, held at Space Club and supported by Somewhere To , an organisation provides spaces and venues for young people across the UK. Molly's solo exhibition , ...

I found out this weekend that my application to take part in an exciting art/science collaborative project was successful! It was only by chance that I found out about the project, through some random browsing around Twitter. Joining Twitter was one of the best things I ever did, so many opportunities and connections to be made that I would never get the chance to see otherwise. The project I am joining is ASCUS/TNS Engage project. ASCUS is a non-profit organisation that supports collaboration between arts and sciences, and builds connections between different organisations, institutions, individuals and the public. TNS is The Number Shop , an art studio and gallery. Artists from the studio will be developing new work based on dialogues with scientists, as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival . Some of the work will actually be produced during Open Studios during the festival, so that the public can come and experience the work being produced. The idea is to bring the ...

Not too much to report, aside from the fact I've had a productive and successful, albeit short, field trip this year. I managed to collect 20 large block samples during the week I've been here, which is more than enough to keep me occupied for the foreseeable future. The midden deposits I sampled in Trench T cover the early to late sequence, and hopefully we will be able to distinguish differences in activities and resource use between these phases. Will we see similar things going on here as we see in the main excavation area? Or will there be differences between these two parts of the site? Just some of the many questions we are hoping to answer! For now I will leave you with these fine images of the site being covered over until next year! More tyres than archaeologists

Dig house in the distance, Stones of Stenness to the right. Ominous rain clouds overhead. Day 2 at the Ness. I had some things to sort out in Kirkwall this morning so took the local bus to site. It only takes about 30 minutes but it drops off on the main road, and then you have to walk all the way along the peninsula to get to the excavation. Lovely view, but increasingly rainy and windy the further you get towards site, almost as if it’s in its own little otherworldly wet dimension. Glad I invested in an all-weather notebook. On site I’ve been getting on with taking micromorphology samples out of the midden section in Trench T. The excavation in this part of the site is being supervised by Dr Ben Chan, who I previously worked with on the Feeding Stonehenge project. There are other familiar faces from York too – Prof Mark Edmonds and Alison McQuilkin, who recently completed her dissertation on phytoliths from the famous Mesolithic site of Star Carr. The Ness is like a magnet for ...

Layers of ashy midden deposits sitting on glacial till A dizzying view of excavations in Trench T After a small adventure involving delayed flights, gale force winds and navigating with no GPS signal (how did we ever cope before smart phones with Google Maps?), I finally arrived in Orkney yesterday. This is actually the last week of excavation before the trenches are covered over until next year, so it’s all very quiet on site. Most of the students have left, and the remaining teams are working to complete recording by the end of the week. I have had a quick tour around to get a feel for what’s happened since I was here last year, and have spent today planning my sampling strategy. As usual so much is going on and there’s plenty for a micromorphologist to do. This year I am focusing on collecting samples from middens in Trench T. Regular blog readers will have seen the snippets I’ve posted about my analysis of middens in the central excavation areain 2013 . Although analysis o...

Getting ready for upcoming fieldwork at the Ness of Brodgar by going over the micromorphology slides I collected last year from middens. Analysis of these is still ongoing, but here is a peek at some of the things we can see so far. The image below shows two different types of material, char and charcoal. On the left are the images in PPL, on the right, XPL . Charcoal can be seen in the lower left image, and obviously is the remains of burnt wood, we can see the cell structure quite clearly. On the upper left however is something that initially looks like charcoal, but on closer examination is a little different, tentatively interpreted as char. Char is a term given to burnt debris from other organic material. I haven't see this in any other slides I've analysed, but it has come up in a couple of references, where it is suggested to be the result of fat burning. At first I thought perhaps the charcoal could just be highly broken up and degraded, but it looks as if the charred...

Happy new year from Castles and Coprolites! The first news item of 2014 is a write-up by Michael Balter about the latest research on Stonehenge, featuring snippets about my work on pottery residues as part of the Feeding Stonehenge project , as well as summaries of work by the faunal team and other specialists. There's also a brief mention of our unpublished pilot study on pottery residues at the Ness of Brodgar, which we carried out as a comparison whilst working on the Durrington Walls assemblage. If you'd like to read it and don't have access to Science online, drop me an email and I can send you a pdf. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6166/18

Micromorphology block being impregnated with resin. Photo by Earthslides. Not too much to report on my own activities this week, apart from the neverending email stream that has to be tackled on a daily basis. Sometimes I think it would be nice to declare an email bankruptancy and just delete them all and start anew. More exciting than the contents of my inbox however, are the updates from Earthslides on the progress of my micromorphology samples from the Ness of Brodgar . Julie Boreham from Earthslides runs a page called Hidden Worlds, Off the Bench, where she posts updates of her daily goings on in the lab. This week she has been working on the Ness samples, which are currently being impregnanted in resin, the first step in the process of turning them into slides. Check out her page here for more details!

Ben Chan discusses this week's progress on the site tour This week has gone by so quickly, but we have managed to collect some great sets of samples, more than we can get made into slides at the moment! The first lot have already been sent off to Earthslides to get made into thin sections. An important lesson from the field - if you get over enthusiastic about collecting blocks of soil that weigh >1kg each, they will not fit in your luggage and will incur hefty postage fees. And lesson 2, blocks of soil wrapped in tissue and tape look very odd on the airport X ray and your bags will likely be searched. I ended up taking about 20 block samples in all, and spent much of my last day in Orkney panicking about how to transport them back.  Friday was my last day on site, and the day started with a site tour with each supervisor summarising what has been going on in the building/trench that week. A week is just not long enough to get my head around everything going on at the Nes...

Planning sampling strategy with Jo After planning the sampling strategy, the next few days have been spent collecting samples. I decided to focus on two areas of nicely stratified midden for the main sampling, and have collected overlapping sample blocks to provide an overview of the entire sequence. Already it's possible to see some quite ashy areas, so hopefully we will be able to get some nice information on resource use, and hopefully what activities the fuels relate to. We decided on a further 4 areas as secondary sample sets with a smaller number of samples, testing specific hypotheses from the excavations. More on those later this week. As well as the Orkney students, we also have a team here from Willamette University, Oregon, led by Professor Scott Pike . Professor Pike has a background in geology and expertise in pXRF (portable X-ray fluorescence). In brief this involves using a piece of kit that looks like a ray gun to fire X rays at material, which then...

ORCA project officer Dan explains what's going on with middens Marvelous midden at the Ness of Brodgar - check out those ashy layers! Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to be awarded 2 small grants from the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Orkney Archaeological Society , to carry out a pilot microarchaeology study at the Ness of Brodgar site in Orkney. The Ness of Brodgar is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site , and excavations are directed by Nick Card of ORCA/UHI . The site is one of the finest examples of Neolithic archaeology in the UK (along with the rest of Orkney!), and the extent of preservation of the buildings and middens provides a rare opportunity to study the subsistence activities of the inhabitants. The architecture here is some of the most impressive I've ever seen. It's interesting to note that the dates for the Neolithic here go to around 2500BC - roughly the same date that the Great Pyramid of Giza was cons...