Castles and Coprolites

July appears to be whizzing by nicely. Unusually for me, I am still in the UK. For the past 10 years (has it really been that long?!) I have spent every summer abroad doing fieldwork, and for most of those summers at least a few weeks have been spent collecting samples at Catalhoyuk in Turkey. This year will be the second year that I have been unable to go - last year I was coming to the end of my contract on the Feeding Stonehenge project and had to stay in the lab , and this year I have too many teaching commitments and writing to complete. Depsite this I will still be doing some UK based fieldwork in the next couple of weeks, more on that as it happens. Lucky for me in the age of social media and blogging, I can keep up to date with the latest news from Catalhoyuk as it happens via Scott Haddow's blog, A Bone to Pick. Scott is a member of the osteoarchaeology team at Catalhoyuk and has been posting regular updates, including an amazing find of intact woven textile in a baby bur...

Following on from my post a couple of weeks ago , here is another snippet of geoarchaeological observations from my recent road trip across the US. As I mentioned in the previous blog, the coast to coast trip was a great chance to observe the gradual changes in geology, vegetation and climate that happen across the continent, and how these link with the archaeological preservation. In the humid subtropical climate of the Florida pan-handle we saw a lot of water action and salt precipitation occurring at Fort Pickens, with relatively degraded brick structures that are only around 180 years old. The contrast in New Mexico is significant. The climate here is semi arid to arid, and the preservation of the brick structures (about 1000 years older than those at Fort Pickens) in the Chaco Culture National Park is fantastic. However we do still see other types of weathering occurring. Whereas most people would be taking pictures of the fantastic structures (actually, I did that too...), I ...

Degraded brickwork at Fort Pickens, Pensacola Limited blogging from me over the past couple of weeks, due to a lack of internet rather than a lack of activity. In fact I've been incredibly busy with archaeologically and geologically themed adventures, travelling from Pensacola (Florida) to Powell Butte (Oregon) via Texas, New Mexico, Utah and Idaho. A 5 day drive across a major chunk of the US, it's been amazing to see the changes in the landscape, geology and climate, some of them gradual and some more dramatic. One thing that is particularly interesting from a geoarchaeological perspective is the difference in preservation of different sites that we've visited, related to the local environment. Salt stalactites Here for example we have Fort Pickens, a historic monument that was contructed in 1829, completed in 1834, and remained in use until 1947. Despite being quite recent in archaeological terms, much of the brickwork has started to degrade and/or has...