Castles and Coprolites

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 ...

Close-ups of decaying waterlogged wood. Upper left showing 1. latewood with secondary cell wall intact 2. earlywood with loss of secondary cell wall. Upper right showing loss of birefringence in areas subject to decay Another fab example of the sorts of things that go on in medieval waterlogged deposits. I posted some pictures of this waterlogged wood a couple of months ago, as well as a nice example of the formation of vivianite in the same deposits . Here we have another example of waterlogged wood, but I've added some close-ups in cross polarised light (XPL). For the non geoarchaeologists in the audience, this is a technique in microscopy where you change the type of light you use to look at a sample, by inserting polarisers on the microscope. Polarised light vibrates only in one direction. On the geological microscope, the lower polariser causes the light to vibrate in an E-W direction, whilst the upper polariser/analyser filters light that is not vibrating in the N-S d...

Following my post a couple of days ago I've been thinking about this quite a bit, and thought I would get some other opinions to add to my own. I had a chat with some senior academics I have worked with who have been involved in the hiring process of postdocs and academic staff, 1 from a science-heavy background, 1 who is a straight archaeology/regional specialist and 1 who is a bit of both. I asked a series of questions regarding publications, and the answers were pretty interesting. Largely they reflected my own perceptions, but there were a few noteworthy points that I hadn't considered. 1. What do you look for in terms of a candidate's publication record? As we know, peer reviewed journals are important, followed by books in the sciences, with the quality of the book publisher being important. Being an editor of conference proceedings was also noteworthy, but the quality of the papers mattered, and also where it was published. However the overall message was that go...