In 2024, the laboratory had the pleasure of hosting Thenigha Suriyakumaran for a 6 month internship. Thenigha was able to develop skills in many different techniques, including chromatography, mass spectrometry, pxrf and elemental analysis, enhancing her CV, however, the most important learning aspect was seeing how an active and busy research laboratory operates.

If you are unsure about where you want to go, have a look at: https://www.tees.ac.uk/sections/stud/   There is loads of support available.

Bone Diagenesis and Extremes of Preservation in Forensic Science

It is with great pleasure to announce the publication of a book chapter in:

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Experimental Approaches to Roman Archaeology

At the AIA I was able to finally to get my hands on it, as the first print run sold out..
the volume has some amazing chapters, including ‘Chapter 11: Roman Leather Manufacture and the Archaeological Record: An Experimental Approach
Hrafnhildur Helga Halldórsdóttir and Gillian Taylor (Teesside University, UK)’

For two weeks only in January, the Vindolanda museum closes to allow cleaning and scheduled maintenance, but which also allows is in to take a closer look at items on display..

It was an absolute privilege to get a closer look at lepidina  slipper:  Here is a link to more shoes and information: This lady’s slipper was also found in the Cerialis’ house and is sometime affectionally called Lepidina’s slipper. It is the equivalent of a flip flop in design but a very expensive one at that. It was made in Gaul (modern France) by Lucius Aebutius Thales, we know this because he stamped the shoe with a maker’s mark. The shoe is further stamped with vine leaves and two cornucopiea interlocked across an ear of corn. Whether it was Lepindia’s or not it was definitely owned by a women who had money to spend on nice shoes. A simple breakage of the toe thong and she has thrown it away. Many other shoes from the site show evidence of repair but this one was discarded.

It was an absolute please to present at the Archaeological Institute of America annual meeting in Philadelphia.

I was presenting in the climate impact session, showcasing our latest work on climate change upon leather artefacts, entitled ‘The impact of climate change on oxygen-reduced archaeological contexts at Vindolanda, UK’ lead author Elizabeth Greene, Western Onatrio and discussing our ‘ Use of continuous monitoring as a strategy to assess climate change at Magna Roman Fort, UK. 

We are busy working on the publications on both of these topics, so watch this space

LIMES  – Congress on Roman frontier Studies, held every 3 years since 1949. In 2024 this was at Batumi State University Georgia

The opening ceremony was fun and welcomed everyone to the beautiful culture of Georgia

This week long event allows delegates to attend sessions, but also has two excursions across georgia. Batumi is a lively city on the edge of the blacksea, with an abundance of casino’s! Our accommodation was in the old town, with a great mix of shops, bars and culture.

Monday was my day of presenting.. first up was data from our ‘grassroots’ projects, looking at understanding Turf. We have used a combination of analytical techniques, such as total carbon, total nitrogen, pH, EC, pXRF and GCMS. To keep to the 15 minutes, we  only presented on the total carbon, showing that total carbon could possibly discriminate against different occupation periods, due to obtaining turf from different areas, canopy covered, grassland. Much more to be done but slowing building up a turf toolkit.. watch this space

Monday afternoon, I was co-chairing a session  with Dr Andrew Birley, Vindolanda Trust. The session was climate change on the roman frontiers, we had a packed room and a lively session. Dr Rebecca Jones from the National History Museum Scotland, gave a fascinating talk on Climate Vulnerability Index and a call for more sites to create and share data.

Elizabeth Greene presented on changes in leather artefacts degradation from 1970-2020’s  at Vindolanda. This was a project which developed from questions regarding degradation, shows clearly that through the use of analytical instrumentation, fundamental visual differences between leather excavated in the 70/80’s to the leather excavated in the 90-2020’s can be shown. Although, alot more work has to be undertaken, this is exciting and new area.

SEM image of leather

The last talk was the most recent environmental monitoring data from Magna Roman Fort, this is the first environmental monitoring system on Hadrians wall addressing the impact of climate change. Over the last 3 years we have been monitoring the chemical changes and impact of our changing seasons.. especially our very wet 2024 summer!

It was an absolute pleasure to co-chair and organise this impactful session, which I am sure will become a main theme for many conferences in the future

One last thing.. if you like bread and cheese.. batumi is the place to visit

and the public art works..

The EAA is the great conference to experience a vast range of archaeological subjects over 3 days.. Rome is one of my favourite cities, but in august with high humidity.. often feels like your in a continuous steam room!

Sapienza University – EAA host

My pXRF talk was one of the very first talks on thursday, the talk was entitled ‘is laboratory preparation worth it? use of pXRF for field mapping, at Magna Roman Fort’. The talk emphasised the need for laboratory verification of results, but also presented out first work on soil mapping before and during excavation at the Roman site of Magna, on Hadrian’s wall.

There was no rest on friday, I co-chaired a session ‘ Paris or Pardigm shift’, what a great series of talks, covering aspects of policy and case studies from USA, Ireland and the UK

With so many talks on saturday, I opted to stay in the goat/sheep session, Elizabeth Greene was presenting our recent work on species determination using ZooMS from the Vindolanda leather collection. Although, Elizabeth was still in canada we were hoping the zoom link would work!! we were wrong.. and I ended up giving an impromptu talk. The session was amazing, the use of ZooMS and different proteomic and genomic applications, from samples under different environmental conditions was fascinating, congratulations to the session organisers.

Well this is a new aspect of my work… The GCMS has a staring role in a film!!  and not just any film.. a film that will go tot he BFI film festival in london this october.

It was a fabulous to be involved in this project and get a chance to  explore a different side of the GCMS

Researchers’ short film selected for BFI London Film Festival | Media centre | Teesside University