This week marks the 1900th Birthday of Hadrian! Born on 24th january 76 AD in Italica, Spain, Hadrian was a Roman conquerer that lead the Romans toward entrenchment and consolidating the empire rather than ongoing expansion. And so, we’ve got a doozy of updates for you in our first post of 2022 – which we reckon will be called 202TUBA!

Revealing Magna

This week, Vindolanda was featured on BBC Breakfast showing the incredible impact of Climate Change at Fort Magna. The rapid heating and drying of climates over the past few decades have led to a drop in the ground and water levels, resulting in parts of Roman masonry becoming exposed. Vindolanda Trust produced an absolutely fantastic video to discuss this:

We’re absolutely thrilled to be part of the scientific investigation into why these changes are being observed, and the rapid destructive impact being made to the delicate artefacts that have been preserved for thousands of years. We started this work last summer, drilling bore holes in what turned out to be the hottest week of the year – and the hottest summer on record! We have never been so grateful to see a single lone tree in the field offering shade for refuge…

Digging up Memories

We’ve also been part of the Digging up Memories online exhibit (we chatted a little about this here), which saw volunteers at Vindolanda Museum select and discuss their favourite wooden artefacts. Through the online exhibit, you can find interviews, videos, behind-the-scenes information and many of our 3D models showcasing a wonderful narrative of life at Vindolanda.

We urge you to check it out and dive through the archives! You can still view them at: www.vindolanda.com/Listing/Category/digging-up-memories

Individual Milestones

As this is our first post of 2022, we thought it would be nice to have a quick look at some of the milestones achieved by the team.

We published the first work we started with Vindolanda in Scientific Reports, writing all about the chemical and microbial factors toward the vivianite formation in one of the ditches at Vindolanda. We’re thrilled to see this come out to such great reception!

Helga submitted her 31 MB thesis (plus supplementary files!) in time for a well-deserved Christmas break with baby Breki.

Rhys was awarded his doctorate in Developing pXRF soil analysis of preservation at Vindolanda, and is now Lecturer in Forensic Science. Congrats Dr Williams!

Gillian was appointed Associate Professor in Research at Teesside University where she’s already powering through the development of analytical techniques towards forensic and archaeological applications.

Becki Scott joined Teesside University and TUBA in September – we’re looking forward to driving forward provenance research with her fantatsic expertise. Look out for some of our blog posts together coming soon!

New year new me, except clearly TUBA has always been dedicated to high quality research and public engagement – we’re allowed to gloat in the conclusion, right? Until next time!

TUBA

This summer, TUBA were hard at work with 3D scanning for the Digging up Memories – Making Connections online exhibit that has now officially gone live! You might even have seen snippets yourself or read about it in the recent Teesside University press release. And so, we thought it’d be nice to give a little behind-the-scenes of this amazing opportunity.

How does 3D scanning actually work? Well, there are lots of different types of 3D scanners, all with their own applications and uses. For this exhibit, we used a structured light scanner (SLS), which works by projecting a tightly calibrated set of patterns onto an object. The pattern changes shape as it falls onto an object, resulting in 3D measurements. This process takes a full, closed scan of the camera view, which we then apply a texture to by applying red, blue and green light filters:

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How can we use this in our work with Vindolanda? As you may have noticed in some of our previous blog posts, we’re big fans of 3D here, including animal and human heads on pikes, and the Locomotion. We’ve even published on 3D scanning of ox crania used in target practice, and have some further outputs on their way. The key outcome from 3D scanning for the museum environment is access. How often have you visited a museum and though “hey, that’s a pretty cool object, I wanna look closer”? 3D scanning provides a digital model of the object that you can freely zoom in and out or rotate around, which is.. well, pretty neat! However, we can then run some bespoke processes to make these 3D printable. That’s right – you can properly get hands-on with highly accurate replicas of delicate and fragile museum objects!

So where does this lead us? Well, over the years, we’ve been partaking in several exhibits on the 3D scanning, chemical and microbial work we’ve been undertaking at Vindolanda. Following the success of these, we were invited to Vindolanda over the summer to explore the suitability of 3D scanning a wide range of wooden objects. To say we were excited and proud of this opportunity is an understatement!

Working our way through wonderful wooden artefacts

So many precious wooden artefacts to choose from!

There is such a fabulous range of wooden artefacts available for your viewing from the comfort of your sofa, so please do look at these either on Sketchfab or better yet, on the Digging up Memories exhibit on the Vindolanda website! Here, you can find more information, videos and commentary on each object plus the 3D models. Some of these are incredibly rare, such as the only conserved wooden toilet seat in Britain, the cherry wood saddle stiffener, or the wooden trowel with mortar still stuck to it!

We do have a couple personal favourite objects, of course. The wooden toy sword is an excellent artefact because it really demonstrates that the military took their families with them to Vindolanda, rather than the typical focus on conflict and fighting. The pepper pot is also great because of how well the 3D scanning came out – we had anticipated this to be poor because it’s a very cylindrical object that normally doesn’t facilitate 3D scanning but there was just enough of an irregular morphology to stitch together and texture beautifully. Atto’s Workbench is also a fantastic object but the sheer size and lack of thickness meant it took more scans and time than any other object we’ve scanned in order to fully capture and register together. This was well worthwhile because you can actually feel the hammer impressions on the 3D printed version!

And that brings us nicely to our final point – hopefully over the coming days, weeks and months, you’ll have the opportunity to visit Vindolanda and get hands-on with some highly accurate 3D printed versions of a wide selection of these wooden artefacts! We cannot recommend this enough; this evokes such a different set of emotions and leaves an experience that lingers for a long time. Who knew that something as banal as opening and closing a pepper pot lid could be so captivating!

How did all of this come about? Purely thanks to so many people involved, coming together for this collaborative effort, with Vindolanda Trust and Dr Anneke Hackenbroich driving this project forward. Our utmost thanks to them for inviting us to be part of this special exhibit, we’re all thrilled here to see it come together as I’m sure all are at home too!

Lastly, keep an eye out for updates to the Digging up Memories – Making Connections exhibit, with more objects being added at the start of November and December.

TUBA

One of the most amazing things I love about research is that you are constantly learning, constantly exploring and driving forward understanding. I am so pleased to share a recent publication entitled Unique chemical parameters and microbial activity lead to increased archaeological preservation at the Roman frontier site of Vindolanda UK.

The paper is open access and free to read, from scientific reports and here are five reasons why you should:-

1. Microbes are fascinating and we understand so little about how they impact on preservation on artefacts
2. Inorganic analysis – such as metals, play a huge part in the activity of microbes and thus preservation
3. The diversity of microbes change depending on archaeological context.. and guess what this will impact on preservation
4. The graphs are really cool
5. It shows we need to understand the chemical and microbiological environment to understand our management practices for the future..

Just this week, our new paper on “Mapping an archaeological site: Interpreting portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) soil analysis at Boroughgate, Skelton, UK” was published! And so, we thought it would be nice to share some of the work that went toward this with you all.

Boroughgate was a 12th Century medieval borough in Skelton, North Yorkshire UK, near the All Saint’s Old Church and Skelton Castle. It was placed in the perfect location to support trade and income for the castle via but unfortunately it was unsuccessful and abandoned around 1400 CE. The remnants of earthworks at the site and medieval documentation recording some of the tradespersons at Boroughgate gave some clues as to the history of the site. Tees Archaeology went through a series of surveys before excavating the site, inviting us out to complete some pXRF analysis and explore whether pXRF elemental analysis can enhance and support their interpretations of the site. This was also an excellent opportunity for us to show the value of our method development for pXRF soil analysis in archaeology! Admittedly, this also may have been a bit of an excuse to get out on such a glorious Summers day…

pXRF is often seen as a rapid point-and-shoot method  but for good quality data, we really need an appropriate methodology. The soil matrix can vary greatly over just short distances, and we need to make sure that all our soil is examined in the same way, otherwise our comparisons are inconsistent and not well validated. We extract soil samples, dry them in the lab (preferably oven dried), grind down and sieve the samples so they’re nice and homogenous, and prepare them into pXRF sample cups. This does of course mean that we end up with a fair bit of soil samples in the lab from just one small area of soil..!

Research into social organisation and the activities or use of space from archaeological excavations uncover hidden knowledge on past societal practices and the structuring of historic communities. This work explored whether we could map out the elemental distribution of soil to identify different activity areas. This is discussed in much more detail in the journal article but just briefly, the distribution of aluminium, phosphorus, potassium calcium and iron distinguished between the internal dwelling and external area of a longhouse. Aluminium, potassium and calcium also distinguished a likely clean or food preparation area against a refuse area. These areas also aligned closely with the locations of artefacts such as pottery fragments, daub, and domestic or charred waste, as well as structural remains such as building foundation pads, postholes and wall foundations.

This was a well worthwhile investigation into mapping pXRF of soil which we’re very excited to continue further. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you’re interested in surveying your site with pXRF, we’d love to see how much more we can learn about past communities with pXRF! Now before you go, don’t forget to say hi to the ridiculously sweet kitten which I’ve dubbed Sandy the Archaeology Cat because of its love for sitting in soil buckets and climbing over your shoulders judging your use of the Harris Matrix:

And finally, thanks to David Errickson at Cranfield University, and Tees Archaeology for inviting us out to your site!

TUBA

Recently, we worked with Naomi Kilburn, a Master’s student at Durham University, whose dissertation project titled ‘Assessing pathological conditions in archaeological bone using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF)’ was published just this month! Fab, right? We took a moment from our calendar of Teams calls to have a Zoom call with Naomi and catch up on her work, experience, and the research.

Hi Naomi! So first off, tell us about yourself – what’s your research passion?

My passion is for palaeopathology – I love looking at human skeletons to see what they can tell us about health, diseases, and life in the past.

Oh wow, fascinating! What area of palaepathology do you enjoy the most?

There are so many fascinating areas to explore, but… at the top are studying infant and childhood health and looking for ways to expand how we learn about health in the past.

What pathway did you take to get into palaeopathology?

I recently completed my master’s at Durham University and I’m currently working on securing some PhD funding so that I can keep asking (and maybe sometimes even answering) exciting questions about people and their bones.

So your paper, Assessing Pathological Conditions in Archaeological Bone using pXRF… how did that get started?

Well, this project came about through talking with Becky Gowland, my advisor at Durham, about possible dissertation projects.

Becky suggested portable X-ray fluorescence (generally called pXRF, as otherwise it’s quite a mouthful) as a way to combine studying children with a new palaeopathological technique.

My major research question was thus formed: Can pXRF be used to distinguish between different diseases in archaeological bone?

Mmm yes I can see how that idea was formed! Were you ready and raring to go or did you have a couple more hurdles to jump?

Ah yes, so, with the project idea settled, I then needed to figure out how to access a pXRF. Luckily, Becky knows many people and put me in contact with Tim Thompson at Teesside University.

After getting the go-ahead from Tim, I carefully packed some femora into boxes and headed to Teesside.

Excellent! How did you find coming to Teesside for a few days?

Rhys and Helga rolled out the welcome mat, showed me around the campus and gave me a crash course in using pXRF. And bingo, I was all set!.. until some unexpected hiccups…

Oh no! What happened?

The pXRF stopped working properly and had to be repaired, which muddles up all the project timelines. Disaster! (Okay, so it wasn’t that much of a disaster). But, with Helga’s supreme organisation and flexibility of everyone using the pXRF, things were quickly back on track better than ever!

Glad to hear it was sorted out! So… what did the pXRF do?

With pXRF, I could zap the bones with X-Rays and find out what kinds of elements are in the bones (and how much of them there is!).

What did this tell you?

I found that the real time-consuming part of pXRF was playing with all the numbers and figuring out what they might mean. My summer was spent making scatterplots and doing statistical tests to try and tease out patterns in the data that could be related to scurvy, or rickets, or any of the other diseases I was looking at.

Data, data, data! What did you find out?

The patterns remained elusive (science!), but the search was fun! I looked at elemental ratios potentially related to cribra orbitalia, neoplastic disease, rickets, scurvy, syphilis, and pathological new bone formation. Unfortunately, elemental ratios were more closely related to post-burial processes, but examining larger sample sizes of each pathology could shed light on new information.

I see! Did you find out anything else?

Actually, I found out how useful the pXRF is! This work couldn’t have been done without pXRF because it allows rapid and non-destructive analysis (can’t go chopping up and grinding down archaeological collections willy-nilly!).

Awesome, go Team pXRF!

It’s absolutely fantastic to see students get their work get published, it’s such a great boon for PhD application process. I’m sure you’ll join us in wishing Naomi all the best in her bright academic future, we look forward to seeing what comes next!

TUBA

It’s been some rather tubalent times and as we haven’t been posting much about our activities and exciting outings for a while (I’m sure you can guess why), we thought it would be good to give an update on the TUBA team and what’s happening with the TUBA blog over the coming months!

TUBA Blog

We’ll still be posting our longer updates and stories here every month or so. We especially plan to give some of the juicy behind-the-scenes details to our new research papers and conference visits. The fact is, behind every fantastic high-flying paper, there are several months of unsuccessful experiments and cute animals. But, we want to keep the TUBA blog as the fun and friendly blog that you’ve all come to know and unconditionally love for its occasional posts. We will instead be posting more regularly on our new Twitter page which you should definitely give a follow, no doubt about it!

TUBA Twitter

That’s right, we’re now on Twitter, at @TUBArch! We’ll all be posting smaller bits and fun stuff more regularly through Twitter.

Our full blog updates will still be linked on our Twitter and our Facebook page TU.BioArch so don’t worry if you can’t get the email updates via the blog site.

Project Updates

We have a couple projects in the pipeline which we’re very excited to bring to you. And so, we’ll soon start a “Project Update” series of posts where we will occasionally share some updates on the behind-the-scenes work. We’re sure you’ll find these interesting, even if just to confirm that the long-term projects are, in fact, still alive and in progress!

Guest Posts

We’re also looking into starting a series of occasional guest posts by other students and researchers at Teesside University and beyond that we work with. These may showcase a wide range of subjects, such as biomedicine, forensic science, digital technology, all sorts! We hope you’ll join us in reading their fascinating stories, and get in touch if you’d like to join in!

TUBA

Last week, we visited Vindolanda for a bit of a tester session of how effective 3D imaging strategies may be on some of their wooden collection. Yes – we actually  visited… in PERSON! Our first socially distanced visit and with the glorious company of two other researchers at Teesside University, Rebecca Strong and Matthew Crowther:

Vindolanda has a lot of wood in fantastic preservation. 3D imaging can normally capture wood beautifully, but we were interested to see whether we could capture the difficult things, such as little bits of graffiti carved into tools, woodworker’s stamps in the intricately designed combs, and the combination of wood, cob nails and vivianite in shoes. By and large, it was pretty successful! We’re still processing the scans, which will unfortunately take a while longer due to COVID-related access issues, but hopefully we can share them all with you soon. But for now, how about one of the shoes!

Now, the combs. We can say with pretty high confidence that these did not scan well. This was expected really, due to how intricate the geometry was and the stamp of interest being flush with the surface and visually unclear in the original object. But, we could maybe work a bit of photographic manipulation and extract some of the details to make a 3D relief of the comb instead, similar to some work we have done with the writing tablets. This certainly can’t be used for geometric analysis, and the colourful woody textures are lost, but it does offer a different approach to viewing the small and sometimes indiscernible evidence of individuals working away at Roman Vindolanda!

Pretty funky, right!? These visits are really important when planning a new 3D strategy within archaeological projects and museum displays because whilst we can offer some suggestions from afar, actually having a go scanning and engaging in detailed discussion really lays out what can, can’t, and could be done with the specific objects and their display! So, keep and eye open for some more of our wooden models, and who knows, maybe there will be some exciting developments soon..!

Anyway, happy to say that Vindolanda is even more picturesque than before 2020. If you’re sick of walking around the same old park for the past 8 months, commenting on the same old tree and the same old weather today, how about visiting the fabulous site and museum? As a bonus, they still serve great cakes in the café!

Now, at the start of the year, back when many people probably hadn’t heard of the place Wuhan before, we were gearing up for a couple research talks across Europe and planning our best-selling, No.1 hit blog posts to accompany them. Unfortunately, these were cancelled, as you can probably guess why. One of these, the Roman Finds Group, postponed the meeting to this weekend, to which we had the absolutely pleasure of being invited to showcase our 3D modelling work in a session dedicated to digital engagement at Vindolanda. Better yet, the normally modest audience bolstered to over 250 delegates across the two days! It was so good to see unanimous agreement on the importance of 3D in public engagement, exploring new and inclusive applications beyond focusing purely on a research viewpoint. There were even people that had held our 3D printed cranium many moons ago and still remember it fondly with every passing day! _{(Okay I may have embellished a little there)}. Maybe I’m bigging it up too much, but this was the first time I ever received a “hear hear” so I’m rolling with it.

If you’re interested in viewing some of the talks for yourself, keep an eye out on the Roman Finds Group because they should be available online soon! In the meantime, check out the new Vindolanda game Vindolanda: The Missing Dead, available on the Google Play Store now ready for your next visit. It looks super! The entire meeting was fantastic, great work being shown from across Roman Scotland, North England and Vindolanda, but of course y’all know we love our 3D – I mean… it’s in the title of this post!

Until next time!

TUBA

Hello, been a while! So, we were originally planning to give you an exciting blog post around now, all about lots of different research going on at Vindolanda, and other conferences that each of us were attending during Spring. Unfortunately, as we all know, plans have changed just a little tiddle bit. But of course, there are still plenty of things going on at TUBA!

Digital Models

The fantastic thing about digital modelling in archaeology is that people can view artefacts without needing to directly handle them and risk damage. This is not just within the museum environment, but from your home too! Have you seen our new 3D models? We’ve got a few!

Come on down and do the locomotion! This is a laser scan of the Locomotion No. 1 at the Head of Steam Museum, Darlington. This has also been 3D printed for the museum!

Explore part of Teesside University campus! This involved terrestrial laser scanning and a ton of compression to make small enough for online hosting.

If you’re interested in 3D imaging for your own research and museum collections, feel free to take a look at our reference collection of different colours and materials, and get in contact if you’d like more information or scanning done!

PhD, or not to be?

Although that-which-must-not-be-named has thrown a right spanner into all our work plans, we’re adjusting our plans accordingly and doing our best working from home. Luckily (?), we all had plenty of writing up to focus on whilst we can’t access the labs. Although, admittedly, working from the kitchen table on those precious IKEA dining chairs comes with a bit more backache than from our lovely office space at the NHC and Middlesbrough campus. And yet – style over substance, they say!

Even under those conditions, we have seen some major milestones, and what kind of update would this be without at least mentioning PhD progressions? Better yet, it’s all good news. Helga has passed her 3^rd annual review and is flying into her final write-up! Aboli has also passed her 2^nd annual review, and is raring to go with degradation experiments. Finally, Rhys has submitted his thesis (!!) and is nervously excitedly looking forward toward his viva in the coming weeks. Fortunately, TUBA can still virtually get together each to make sure we are all in good spirits which, admittedly, always ends up as teasing Helga about what stage her unborn baby is on the vegetable scale [edit from Helga: currently a cauliflower or acorn squash depending on your sources].

Papers

We’ve got a couple papers well in the peer-review process, covering our work with pXRF for leather and soil analysis, archaeological mapping, 3D imaging, and burial degradation. These will get their own behind-the-scenes blog post when they come out, so look out for those hopefully coming soon!

NHC

Finally, the National Horizons Centre will be reopening within the next 1-2 months, with enough social distancing measures in place to avoid needing an eyesight test. And oh boy, are we excited to get stuck in with using brand new, top-range equipment in a whole load of experiments we have planned! If you’re struggling to get some analysis done or can’t access your labs more than once a fortnight due to social distancing in the coming months, get in touch and see what we might be able to do together!

Until next time, when we shall have some brand-spanking, tip-top, exciting new things to share with you!

TUBA

It’s here!! We’ve had the absolute, utmost pleasure of officially opening the NHC to researchers from across the Tees Valley, the UK and the world. After several years of intense planning, building and procurement,  it almost feels like a dream that the NHC is now open. And what better way to unveil the building than with a day of celebration, inspirational speeches and demos of labwork our researchers and PhDs are already undertaking at the NHC? The day was a fantastic success, with over 100 partners, leaders and stakeholders visiting the NHC for the whole day, and some very inspirational talks about our innovations of research and university life.

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Photos courtesy of the NHC twitter page. Give them a follow at @TU_NHC!

So, what kind of equipment and techniques can we use at the NHC? LOTS! The four main areas of research focus include bioanalyticla science, bioinformatics, bioimaging and bioprocessing. Within these, we have a range of microscopic and histological techniques; bacterial, DNA and metabolomic analyses;  Raman spectroscopy; MALDI and DESI; a mass spectrometry suite; several bioreactors; and 3D imaging and radiography (a complete list can be found here). All of these are brand new, top-of-the-range models, setup in a fantastic workflow around the building, with high security. Gone are the days  of worry about someone contaminating or binning your samples! These facilities place the NHC right at the forefront of the ambitious bioscience industry, critical to the future of the UK. But hey, rather than listen to me reel off our amazing facilities, why not our video featured by the Royal Society of Biology show you!

We’ve already had numerous key institutions being involved with our work, including Fujifilm, THYME, NHS, Hart Biologicals, Absolute Biologicals, and each of the local councils… maybe we can add your fantastic work to this list! Get in touch and let’s see where we can take the future of biosciences!

TUBA