Analytical Adventures

At the annual general meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), which is the largest and oldest nonprofit organization dedicated to archaeology. The Institute advances awareness, education, fieldwork, preservation, publication, and research of archaeological sites and cultural heritage throughout the world.

We had a the pleasure of presenting some recent research work as a poster, the team comprised of Dr Elizabeth Green, University of Western Ontario, Dr Rhiannon Stevens, University College London, Barbara Birley, Vindolanda Trust and Dr Gillian Taylor, Teesside university.

The poster title was Species analysis of leather objects and manufacturing offcuts from Vindolanda, UK. the poster was awarded ‘best poster’ which the team are delighted about, they are currently working on more results, using proteomics and looking forward to sharing more data soon..

Dr Caroline Orr and Dr Gillian Taylor both attended ISBA10 in Tartu – 13-16th September 2023. This three day meeting was attended by over 400 researchers, presenting genomic and proteomic work and gave us the opportunity to explore Estonian peat bogs.

Dr Orr presented ‘Reconstructing Microbial Communities Within Roman Turf Ramparts: A Proof-of-Concept Study’ show casing our latest work combining techniques to aid our understanding of processes such as nutrient cycling. Our collaborators were Ben Russell (University of Edinburgh), Tom Gardner (Historic Environment Scotland), Andrew Birley (Vindolanda Trust) and Tanja Romankiewicz (University of Edinburgh).

Dr Taylor presented ‘Species Analysis of Roman Leather Tents from Vindolanda, UK’ the first results from an exciting new proteomics project, involving our collaborators Rhiannon Steven (UCL), Barbara Birley (Vindolanda Trust) and Elizabeth Greene (University of Western Ontario).

Before the start of the new academic term, the Earth and Environment team has a lovely get together, discussing the exciting plans for the year ahead.

left to right..

Dr Gillian Taylor (group lead), Dr Ernesto Saiz val, Dr Craig McBeth, Dr Haliza Hassan, Amy Burgess, Dr Rhys Williams, Dr Becki Scott, Dr Lisa Baldini, Dr Pablo Cubillas Gonzalez, Dr Ambroise Baker, Dr Caroline Orr, Dr Desire Dalton, Alison Reid, Dr Kerry Pettigrew, Dr Chris Ennis, Dr David Wright.

This week you will be able to see Dr Gillian Taylor in the first episode of ‘Secrets in the Peat’ will be broadcast on BBC ALBA on Wednesday the 20th of September at 9pm – Life on the Peat. Dr Taylor will be talking about peat cores from Magna, Roman Fort.  The series will continue each Wednesday thereafter with two further episodes: Our Peaty Past and The Power of Peat.

BBC ALBA – Miorbhail na Monach – Secrets in the Peat, Series 1, Beatha air a’ Mhòintich – Life on the Peat

#secretsinthepeat #bbcalba

Presenting my PhD research at the biggest Archaeological conference.

On September 1st and 2nd, I had the privilege of attending the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) conference in Belfast, UK which is one of the biggest archaeological conferences. During the conference, I had the opportunity to share my findings and engage with fellow scholars and researchers in the field. I presented my research on the Unravelling of textile production in the Roman frontier which was in collaboration with Gillian Taylor (Director of Studies), Marta Alberti (Deputy Director of Excavations at Vindolanda Trust, UK) and Heather Hopkins (Independent Research who provided the birch dyed wool for the experiments). Our research aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the textile production techniques employed by the Romans in their frontier regions as well as shed light on experimental archaeology like dyeing textiles with local dyes like Birch.

I was in the first session after lunch on 2nd September. I had expected a moderate turnout for my presentation since textile production in the Roman frontier might not be a topic of interest to everyone. However, to my surprise, the room was packed with attendees eager to learn about Roman textile production and dyeing. The interest and engagement of the audience during my presentation was truly inspiring. I saw everyone attentively listening to what I was trying to explain and actively taking notes. I saw some people taking pictures of all my slides as well as 3-4 people raising their hands to ask questions and seek clarification on certain aspects of my research. One of the questions raised during the Q&A session was regarding extraction of dyes such as birch and if the methods are applicable to other dyes as well. I personally thought it was the best time to ask me this particular question because it was only a few weeks before this conference that I worked in the lab trying to find an answer to this question, which is yes! It was wonderful to see that the audience was genuinely interested and engaged with my research. This also gave me an experience of understanding what questions I could be asked for my PhD viva soon.

The EAA conference in Belfast provided a valuable platform for scholars and researchers to exchange knowledge and ideas about several research topics from all around the world. It was a massive conference with at least 50 sessions being conducted simultaneously in different parts of the University. This conference provided a diverse range of perspectives and insights into the study of colours, dyes and textiles allowing me to broaden my understanding and refine my research further. The experience of presenting my research at the EAA conference in Belfast was both exciting and rewarding and I am immensely grateful that I was given this opportunity.

Pompeii is often described as a place frozen in time, when in October 79AD, Vesuvius  erupted and plunged the surrounding areas into darkness for three days, ash and pumice rained down on pompeii.

The site is vast and amazing, covering well over 60 hectares, and walking around today really feels as if you could be back in Roman times. The site has been under investigation for approx three hundred years, but is continually coming up with amazing finds, such as the pizza painting, and further information can be found here youtube clip.

This summer, has been one of the hottest on record, (and it was 35oC when I visited) and Pompeii is trialing modern technologies to help monitor and guard against possible damage from climate change.

The visit really helped develop thoughts and comparisons with other sites, and I am looking forward to using these images in my teaching sessions, where we explore monitoring techniques at different archaeological sites.

Dr Gillian Taylor

INQUA 2023 was held in Rome 13th-20th July, Sapienza University. The congress was opened by the President of Italy, in the most amazing lecture theater. The congress covers quaternary sciences, but includes human evolution, anthropocene, climate records, processes and models. The climate discussions were a very hot topic (!!) with rome reaching a record temperature of 41.8oC. Despite this, conference organizers did a superb job to help attendees, the lunch and coffee break sessions were fantastic.

We had two presentations, firstly by Dr Caroline Orr – Microbial and chemical characterisation from occupation contexts involved in the preservation of Roman writing tablets, and secondly Dr Gillian Taylor –  Monitoring peatlands changes at the Roman site of Magna, Northumberland, UK.

Talks and poster sessions were well attended (higher for those in airconditioned rooms!), the quality, expertise and diversity of the talks makes this the best conference I have been too in a long time.

One of the highlights of research is being able to share your enthusiasm with visitors, and this week Dr Jamie Bojko and Dr Gillian Taylor hosted a group of students from University of Florida at Vindolanda and Magna.

The students were from diverse subject areas, but were fascinated by the talk from CEO Vindolanda Excavations – Dr Andrew Birley showing wooden structure from the earliest roman fort and (after a small hill and hot walk!) the stunning views that Hadrians Wall has to offer. The weather was hot but apparently cool in comparison to florida! The group from Behringer lab were travelling around the UK, as part of the studies, seeing amazing locations and experiencing a wide range of activities, such as snorkelling, rock climbing, hiking stunning coastlines.

The pictures are taken from some of the activities on the wall and UK.. simply stunning..

It was a great pleasure to be invited to give a talk for the Teesside Archaeological Society. This is a great society to interact and get involved with, so take a look at there website of events over the summer.

The talk was called ‘What the Romans left behind: chemical signatures from occupation layers’  and focused on analytical chemistry, the talk was inspired and taken from our recent frontiers publication, which sounds rather more complicated and boring!! ‘Archaeological soil from Roman occupation layers can be differentiated by microbial and chemical signatures’.   Thankfully I focused on the chemistry and leave the microbial parts to Dr Caroline Orr. The chemistry part focused on faeces, how do we extract, what do we look for and why it is important to know about activity, the talk talked about horse stables, and showed recent pictures of the excavation, the cook house floor and how we can tentatively infer from the soil smell what was going on 2,000 years ago!

But any talk is not complete without discussing climate change and talking about our new lottery heritage funded project, Roman Magna, a site under threat and changing, and I presented some of the data we are recording and how we are using the data.. There is an amazing new dig diary to follow. I will be at the magna site and presenting work at conferences in the summer so also watch this space for updates..