Category: Bioarchaeology

In 2021 we started a journey of environmental monitoring at Vindolanda. The journey started with questions on what was happening across the site many years earlier, but the decision taken by the Vindolanda Trust to fully engaged in continuous environmental monitoring was bold and forward thinking.

I joined the Trustee board  in 2022 and followed the journey as projects have developed, including around climate change and art, artefact degradation and how this has impacted and shaped the strategic plan for the trust 2024-2034.

It was an absolute pleasure to see the new west gate entrance, where the underpinning science is presented to the public, through the amazing design capabilities of the Vindolanda trust staff.

On the 11th May, had a fantastic time presenting climate change monitoring data with Dr Andrew Birley, Vindolanda Trust. It was a community event, considering Hadrian’s Wall in our time – safeguarding for the future.

The range of talks and conversation afterwards was fascinating, so many people passionate about protecting our heritage.

This recent paper was the accumulation of work by Helga Halldorsdottir, huge data sets and some really novel results. The experiment set up was amazing..

Non-destructive FTIR-ATR analysis was applied to experimentally buried vegetable-tanned leather and archaeological leather excavated at the Roman site of Vindolanda, UK. Analyses focused on observing and monitoring changes in functional groups related to leather tannin, collagen and lipid components following burial. FTIR spectra were also collected from the tannin material and untanned hide, capturing the major structural differences between four stages of the leather material life cycle: The raw material, the tanned leather, the decaying buried leather, and archaeological leather.

Results highlighted rapid changes following experimental burial in wet soil, tentatively associated with early onset microbial activity, targeting readily available lipids but not tightly bound collagen. Before burial, major differences were present in leather spectra based on manufacture, but early after burial in wet soil, FTIR-ATR spectra indicated de-tanning could occur rapidly, especially in waterlogged conditions, with archaeological leather becoming more uniform and similar to untanned leather. Thus, comparison of FTIR-ATR results from archaeological leather to experimentally buried leather samples of known pre-burial manufacture proved useful, while comparison to FTIR-ATR data from modern unburied leather did not. Despite de-tanning occurring soon after burial, the vegetable-tanning method does impact long-term preservation of leather in wet soil. The impact could not be directly associated with the proportion of condensed to hydrolysable tannin, suggesting alternate variables impacted the preservation. Furthermore, mineral components introduced into the leather through the animal skin, tannin material and/or tannin liquid are tentatively suggested to contribute to this impact. A high degree of heterogeneity in error results within the experimentally buried sample material underlined that any changes in collagen ratios cannot be overinterpreted and must be considered within the context of larger datasets.

The team are wonderfully proud of Dr Aboli Vavle this week, on passing her viva.. here is her story..

I can’t believe I am writing this blog post. It still hasn’t sunk in to be very honest, but it gives me great pleasure to finally say that I’ve passed my PhD viva with some great comments from my examiners.  On 8^th January 2023 at 1:30pm in the afternoon (not to forget in a freezing cold room), I was called in for my viva.  My examiners greeted me with a very warm smile and excitement. I walked in with confidence but was nervous at the same time. My external told me at the start of the viva that ‘Please relax and take your time to answer and if we’re asking follow up questions, we’re only asking them to understand a bit more from you’. That did calm me down a bit.

And so it began! I was asked so many chemistry questions regarding the structures and bonds and formulas. I tried to answer them to my best ability. Anything that I was not sure of, I was being 100% honest and was calmly letting them know and both my examiners were very kind and helpful in making me understand anything that I wasn’t sure of. By 3:30pm, we were only on 90/228 pages. I remember walking out to stretch my legs and thinking, we haven’t even got to my actual results yet and that got me a bit more nervous. But I calmed myself down and reassured myself that it is my work and all I need to do is answer to my best potential. I went back in and we started the viva again and this time I was a bit more confident in answering as the questions were more related to my actual samples. Funny thing is I didn’t get asked many questions about my actual work, because when reading the thesis the examiners said that they themselves could see how novel the work was. My external examiner asked me, ‘Do I like underselling my work?’. I nervously laughed and he continued ‘it’s done with such precision especially the chromatograms. You need to highlight it a bit more’ and that made me very happy. My internal examiner also said that they found the tables of all the case studies very helpful and that made me even happier. Around 5:20pm, the viva was concluded and I was asked to wait outside.

Those 10 minutes were the hardest 10 minutes of my entire life. I was called in by the chair and I sat down. The external examiner said ‘We have decided to pass you. Congratulations Doctor’. As soon as I heard that, I had tears rolling down my cheeks, I said ‘Thank you’ in a squeaky voice and I apologised and they said ‘you don’t need to because we understand what a PhD student goes through’. They said they enjoyed reading my work and that was the reason they kept asking me questions for 4 hours! They also said that my thesis was very easy to read and follow. I thanked them for taking time to read my thesis and their valuable feedback. We showed the examiners around the NHC labs and I thanked them once again for the day. Also, just want to take a moment here to thank Dr. Gillian Taylor, my Director of Studies and Dr. Caroline Orr, my supervisor because I don’t think I would have been able to do any of this without their help and support.

Back to Newcastle around 7:30pm, all I wanted to do was to hug my husband (who now has to call me Dr. Wife), have a glass of chilled Cuba Libre, eat some Poutine and go to bed. It was a very tiring but a wonderful day that I will remember for the rest of my life.

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