Castles and Coprolites

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...

This week we had the annual research away day for the Department of Archaeology at Durham . It was the first such event I have been to since joining the department just over a year ago, and it was great to see the range of brilliant work going on across the breadth of the discipline. I presented a short provocation on what the future of archaeology might look like in an era increasingly shaped by biomolecular data.  We are unquestionably living through what has been termed a 'biomolecular turn' in archaeology. Advances in ancient DNA, proteomics, lipids and isotopic analysis have opened up extraordinary possibilities for reconstructing past lives, movements, diets and relationships. These methods have transformed the kinds of questions we can ask, and in many cases, the kinds of answers we can plausibly give. But they also raise important challenges. As with DNA evidence in forensic science, biomolecular data is powerful, but it does not speak for itself. It must be interpreted...

I can't believe it's already June, getting close to a year in my job at Newcastle . I can't even call it my new job anymore! It's been an amazing year so far. Even though I have been swamped with designing new modules and getting used to the teaching and admin processes here, I have really enjoyed everything. I even managed to get some research related activities in. I applied for a NERC new investigator grant back in January, which in itself was a learning process. 10,000 words in total for that application, and that wasn't even the hard part; sorting out the finances for an international project split between two institutions (my co-I is at Bristol) was more of a headache that I expected. Then the reviewing process, oh the reviewing process. Despite being told that being interdisciplinary is one of my major strengths, and I do believe that it leads to better, more innovative research, it makes things surprisingly hard when it comes to applying for funding. There...

Blog readers, I need your help! Or rather, a fellow blog reader and student needs your help. Fleur Shinning is a Masters student in Heritage Management at Leiden University  in the Netherlands. Her research is investigating how the use of blogs and social media contributes to the accessibility of archaeology, and she is studying several blogs as case studies, Castles and Coprolites being one of them. Her end goal is to contribute to improving public outreach activities, and she is hoping to get blog visitors to answer a series of questions regarding their motives for visiting the blog. You can access the questionnaire here:  http://goo.gl/forms/z3BAUTyYUL . As an incentive anyone who answers the questionnaire will be entered into a competition to win 6 issues of Archaeology Magazine! As the blog author I have also answered a series of questions on blogging for Fleur's research, and it reminded me about the blogging carnival that I took part in durin...

A little Tweet this morning inspired today's blogging: @er_crema #archaeology liked: there is a misconception among us that uncertainty is a negative aspect of our research http://t.co/fwGKEwvajm — Stefano Biagetti (@s_biagetti) June 11, 2015 You'd think that archaeological scientists would be willing to admit there is always uncertainty. However well we collect our data, however good the sampling strategy is (and it often isn't!), we are almost always dealing with a record that is complex and fragmentary. The best we can offer, to all but the most basic questions, is a range of possibilities. Multiple working hypotheses that we can continue to refine as techniques improve and more data becomes available. I think I read somewhere once that we should present a 'definitive story' of archaeology that can then be changed if needed. But I am not sure if this works - it can be hard to change an idea once it moves outside academia. As usual I think my perspectiv...

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...

Sometimes I find it hard to put myself into a subject area box. I was a Geography undergraduate, a Geoarchaeology MSc student, and did a PhD jointly in Chemistry and Archaeology. What does that make me? I used to say I was a geoarchaeologist, applying the methods of geoscience to archaeological questions. But I realised that was too narrow, as even the methods I draw upon vary depending on the question being asked, and indeed a multi-proxy approach is something which I try  to promote. My main research interests are the relationships between humans and the environment, how this has changed over time, and how it varies in different geographic settings. Very much a theme of environmental archaeology, but also geography. Geography has been called the subject that bridges the human and physical sciences, encompassing the Earth and all of its natural and human components, and the dynamic relationship between the two. Physical geography seeks to describe and explain the spheres of t...

So as noted over on Doug's Archaeology blog , many people who have been taking part in the SAA Blogging Carnival didn't post anything for February, in response to the open ended question of blog about whatever you like. My excuse is, that I did start working on something, but it started to evolve into a full length piece which I will probably submit to either the IA issue or e-book on blogging archaeology that are in preparation . I couldn't help but do a little background reading into the use of social media and blogging as a research tool, and became immersed in the vast amount of literature on the topic. So my theme for February ended up being, Archaeological Blogging as a Tool for Self Reflexivity...or something along those lines. It actually links in very well with a lot of thinking I've been doing recently about bringing together archaeological science and theory, partly due to co-convening a course in theoretical archaeology this year, but also the experience of ...

Who'd have thought I'd find myself as co-convener for a third year Theoretical Archaeology module? Such is the situation I find myself in towards the end of my first year at the University of Edinburgh. I used to be one of those people who thought theory was all a bit confusing with no relevance to 'real' archaeology. This is an attitude I have found especially of researchers in archaeology who have a background in the sciences. What is the point of theory? Or I'm a scientist, I don't need theory! As an undergraduate I had a compulsory Philosophy of Science module, but I'm not sure how common this is for most science degrees. I think sometimes we don't realise that even as scientists with 'hard data', we have to interpret our data - and in archaeology especially, these data are always flawed in some way, and our interpretations steeped in our own experiences. It's a myth that scientific results can only have one interpretation. The way we us...

Having a great time at UW, and getting loads of microscope work and writing done! The lab I'm working in even has a big red danger button. I haven't tried pressing it yet. Maybe I'll give it a go if my seminar next week goes badly. Big Red Button Here are a few sneak peeks of the types of things I've been finding in the latest lot of samples from Çatalhöyük. The most exciting part of this analysis is going to be the integration of other data sets, especially the microbotanical remains, currently being analysed by archaeobotanist Dr. Ryan at the British Museum. Although we can see the depositional characteristics and micro-context of remains such as microcharcoal and phytoliths in thin section, it can be difficult to identify the types and relative quantities, so it is essential to combine the two approaches to get the most information. Top left: Ootic limestone pebble. Top right: Lithic chip embedded in ash. Bottom left: Large husk...

I'm having a rest today after 2 hectic days of co-organising the 6th Experimental Archaeology Conference with colleagues at the University of York. Funny actually that I just wrote that, when what I am actually doing is marking student essays on the development of cities and social inequality. But it involves sprawling on the sofa with the laptop on my knee, so is sort of having a rest, compared to the past two days of session chairing. The conference went really well, with only 1 or 2 small last minute hiccups, and led to some useful discussions and ideas for future papers and whatnot. I find myself thinking more and more about subject areas that I always thought I wasn't interested in, or were not relevent to me, as a 'scientist'. In particular the philosophy of science and archaeological theory, and the nature of archaeological data. One paper at the conference also got me thinking about the way that people teach and learn archaeology, and how this then has impact...