Castles and Coprolites

Denny Hall Day 6 in Seattle and time for a blog update. This is Denny Hall, my new home for the next month, which possibly rivals Kings Manor for one of the prettiest departmental exteriors where I've worked! I appear to have arrived right at the beginning of Spring Break, which is rather handy as it gives me time to recover from jetlag before all the students get back. In addition to a spot of sightseeing and family meet ups over the weekend I met up with Dr Ben Marwick on monday, and was introduced to the microscope I will be working with over the coming month. It's great to be back at the microscope after being in the lab for so many months, and finally having time to analyse all the new micromorphology slides that have been accumulating since last summer. As well as research related activities, I am also giving a series of talks for the departmental lecture series, details here . The UW campus is really beautiful. I was struck again by the way everything in the U...

Feeling quite excited today as I have just finalised my travel arrangements to Seattle, where I will be a visiting fellow at the University of Washington, Department of Anthropology   in March and April, as part of WUN (Worldwide University Network) scheme. I'll be doing a whole bunch of things while I am there, including developing my research on Palaeoindian coprolites, and teaching seminars in bioarchaeology and geoarchaeology. I am also really looking forward to visiting the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture and meeting Julie Stein. I remember when I was an undergraduate being inspired her research on shell middens. Shell middens are the reason I became an archaeologist - as an undergraduate I read geography, and was always interested in Quaternary environmental change, and the relationships between humans and their environment. I ended up working on a shell midden site in Fiji for my dissertation, and discovered that the socio-cultural side of the past was equall...