Castles and Coprolites

When we talk about the foods of the future, insects regularly appear on the list. They are increasingly discussed as an alternative source of protein that could form part of more sustainable food systems. But there’s something slightly odd about calling insects 'alternative' protein - humans have been eating them for thousands of years! In my new paper, Edible insects as heritage foods: towards an archaeology of alternative proteins for food sustainability , published in World Archaeology , I explore what archaeology can tell us about the long history of eating insects, and what that history might contribute to current debates about sustainable food. The archaeological evidence is surprisingly diverse. We can find insects directly in human coprolites, preserved faeces that contain remnants of foods that people actually consumed. At Paisley Caves in Oregon, for example, coprolites dating to the Younger Dryas and early Holocene contain evidence for the consumption of Jerusalem cr...

For a discipline fundamentally concerned with people, archaeology has long relied on a surprisingly narrow definition of what constitutes the human body in the past. Human remains, in most archaeological and heritage contexts, effectively mean bones. Occasionally teeth and cremated material. But much of what bodies actually produce, shed, and leave behind falls outside these dominant categories and, as a result, outside many of our analytical priorities and ethical frameworks. My recent paper in World Archaeology, More than bones: rethinking ethics and epistemologies of bodily exuviae in archaeology , reflects on this imbalance. It brings together a range of what can be termed bodily exuviae, coprolites, dental calculus, material traces of bodily processes, and suggests that we take them seriously, both analytically and ethically. It has been encouraging to see that the paper is already among the journal’s most-read articles over the past 12 months, which hopefully indicates that peopl...

Some personal good news amongst the Covid19 chaos - I have a new paper currently in press in Earth Science Reviews  (currently pre-proof so check in at a later date for definitive version with updated figures etc). This is a substantial review my team and I have been working on for a couple of years now, chipping away at it in the background as part of our NERC research project , and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. We posted it as a pre-print a few months ago on EarthArkiv , the first time I've used a pre-print server. I was hoping to engage in an open peer review process, but we didn't get any comments (do pre-prints really get peer reviewed...? A discussion for another blog post). On the plus side we did get 264 downloads before the paper made it through peer review with Earth Science Reviews. One of the points we make (albeit briefly) in this paper is that coprolites should be subject to the same strict protocols for access and analysis that have been propos...

I have been meaning to write something about my new role as editor for the Archaeological Journal . I took over from Prof. Howard Williams officially in March, and it has been pretty full on since then. I am pleased to announce that my first issue is now available online ahead of print (vol 175 for 2018), with a great mix of papers spanning the Neolithic to post-Roman and historic periods, and topics ranging from social zooarchaeology to mortuary houses. The major change I made when taking over was moving to an online submission system , rather than dealing with papers manually via email. I personally find this a much easier system, as an author and an editor, and it makes the whole process much quicker. On the whole it seems to have worked well with the majority of authors submitting papers, and reviewers submitting comments within a reasonable time frame. I have still had one or two authors having problems (either technical or in principle!) with the online system. But it makes li...

Preparations are well underway for the 7th biennial Developing International Geoarchaeology conference, otherwise known as DIG, which we are hosting at Newcastle this September. We are in the process of confirming our guest speakers, and I have just received confirmation from the editorial board of Geoarchaeology journal that we have been provisionally accepted to produce a special issue of the journal based on the conference papers. This is great news, and hopefully will ensure a speedy turnaround of the papers for publication, and a lasting legacy for the conference. We are also hoping to film the talks (with speaker permission), and to host these online - details on this as soon as we have confirmed. Geoarchaeology is the ideal venue to publish the conference papers, as the journal remit is a good reflection of the aims of DIG, including all areas of geoarchaeology from landscape to material culture. Geoarchaeology has previously published papers from DIG2011  under the th...

Writing this post as quickly as possible to make sure I don't have a month with NO POSTS! Since my merry xmas post  in December, I took a break from anything work related over the holidays, then as soon as the new year happened, I went to Belize for 2 weeks , where I had zero email or internet access. That was quite nice in some ways, and it was especially enlightening to see how long my iPhone battery lasts when it is not connected to anything ( a whole week!). The last few days of the trip we were staying at a rather fancy resort , which of course had wifi, and I spent much of that time going through a huge email backlog, desperately deleting all the 'not important' ones, to try and narrow the list of things that requires a response to something manageable. I have so many things to blog about in relation to my experience in Belize, everything from plant taxonomy to fieldwork and family, to Mayan archaeology and the similarities and differences between different subjects...

Well this is actually 'old news' in that I've known about it for quite a few months now, but I thought it best to wait until the transition process was well underway. Also, it's on the website now so I guess that means it's official - I will be taking over as editor of the Royal Archaeological Institute's Archaeological Journal in May 2017. I have been shadowing the outgoing editor Prof. Howard Williams for a few months now to get a feel for things, and am in the process of handling my first few submissions, as we transition from an email submission system to an online editorial management system with Taylor and Francis (side note, go and check out Howard's Archaeodeath blog! ). When I saw the position advertised earlier this year I jumped at the chance to apply. Strangely enough I really do enjoy editorial work, and having gained a lot of experience as a guest editor and assistant editor for a number of other journals, figured I could take on this new c...

Last week was very busy. I was away in Vilnius, Lithuania for the European Association of Archaeologists annual meeting . The last one I went to was Pilsen in 2013  so it was good to go back and catch up with the latest research. I think I probably overdid it, giving a paper and a poster presentation, and also running the Newcastle University exhibition stand. I wasn't really able to do either effectively, having to jump in and out of sessions to sit at the desk. I ended up missing quite a few talks that I wanted to see. However, my paper presentation did go well, and I got some good questions and discussion. I was talking about Catalhoyuk, and assessing the past 25 years of 'multi-proxy' archaeology and approaches to use of space. Although some aspects were critical, the aim was to try and see what has worked and what hasn't worked, and some of the reasons why this might be. There is such a rich and unique record of the history of  excavation and methodology at Catalh...

Since joining Newcastle I have been on two shortlisting panels, one for a temporary teaching post and the other for a permanent lectureship. Having been on the other side of things for such a long time , I think I have honed my own application skills considerably, and it has been quite eye-opening to see how the hiring process works, and what other peoples' applications look like. It was really obvious the people who 'knew what they were doing' (i.e. had probably talked to senior colleagues and gotten advice) versus those who just wrote what I would consider a 'first draft' type application. The application is like a piece of work for publication; everything needs to be spot on. It was frustrating to see what were probably good candidates not really sell themselves well, and often not demonstrate how they actually fit the job criteria. There was a tendency I think in many cases to make assumptions, that the reader would just know what the technical skills were, or w...

No tweets! Having already written about 2000 words on the AEA conference, I thought I'd save these last few thoughts for a separate post, as it feeds into something I've been thinking about in general. It's a bit late considering the conference was back in November 2015 , but better late than never and all that. The AEA is the first conference I've been to that had a social media guidelines, in the form on Tweet/No Tweet symbols. I wish I had actually taken note of the use of the symbol, though qualitatively I think most people were ok with it. Someone made the observation that it was mostly early career researchers that were using the No tweet. This may seem surprising at first, as us 'early career' people are supposed to be all over this social media thing, right? I've seen some discussions on Twitter that really don't see the problem with sharing someone else's work in a public forum; science should be open, and open means sharing. I think th...

I made my first ever video this week. It is an attempt to visualise a concept that can be difficult to express - the relationship between micro (and sub-micro) stratigraphy that we can see under the microscope, to the macroscale deposits that most (non-micromorphologists) are familiar with in the field. It is hard to imagine something you cannot see, and as an archaeologist who has the privilege of being able to examine the 'invisible' archaeological record, I want to be able to show others these insights, which can have a significant impact on the process of interpretation. It is this thought that is the focus of a short article that has just been published on Then Dig , a peer reviewed blog hosted at Berkeley. The thoughts that I express there are a short glimpse into the theoretical (and practical) problems that I ponder frequently, and on which I hope to write something more extensive in the future. To come back to the video, I am quite pleased with how it turned out. I m...

I'm pleased to announce the publication of the final article on my work at Margat Castle, Syria: Shillito, L-M., Major, B., Almond, M., Anderson, E. and Pluskowski, A. in press. Micromorphological and geochemical investigation of formation processes in the refectory at the Castle of Margat (Qal’at al-Marqab), Syria Journal of Archaeological Science For those without a subscription the final version of the manuscript is also available open access on my academia page here (you'll need to log in). This is the end product of a pilot study I started in 2010. It was initially envisaged to be a test for a larger program of research, looking at differences in activities and resource use between different phases of the castle's occupation, but unfortunately due to the deteriorating situation in Syria, I was never able to return. I still have the lovely gifts I was given by the Syrians I worked and lived with. I wish there was some way of knowing if they are ok. I have posted ...

Exciting news, a new open access journal has been launched, specifically for archaeological science: Science and Technology of Archaeological Research (STAR) by Maney . This is in addition to the recently launched Open Quaternary by Ubiquity Press. Joining Twitter was one of the best things I've done for my research. It has opened my eyes to a whole online network of research in my own and related areas, and has made me increasingly aware of the importance of open access research. That is, research that is freely available, rather than locked behind a pay wall. I am still unsure how this 'new' direction of publishing will impact the development of my career. As an early career researcher, I am all too aware of the need to publish in the big name (subscription) journals to get research (and job applications!) noticed by the wider community. I am hopefully taking a step in the right direction by making sure that there are open access versions of my papers available online...

I came across these two studies in Journal of Archaeological Science recently, through Google citation alerts . It's always satisfying when my papers are cited, as it shows that there are people out there actually reading them and finding them useful! It's especially satisfying when the citing papers are as exciting as these! Both are by the same team, with lead author Hans Huisman who you may remember gave me some very useful advice through my Micrograph of the Month feature on some of my thin sections. The first paper is " A question of scales: studying Neolithic subsistence using micro CT scanning of midden deposits " Here Husiman et al. apply micro CT scanning to thin section analysis. CT scan, or CAT scan, stands for computerised tomography, which uses a series of X rays to produce 3D images of components that are enclosed within a matrix. This is the same technique that is used in medical applications to look inside the body, but at a much smaller scale, hen...