Category: Conferences

AIA Philadelphia

Published on by Gillian

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: Batumi Georgia

Published on by Gillian

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

Video Player

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..

EAA Rome Sep 2024

Published on by Gillian

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.

Archaeological Institute of America – Best Poster Award

Published on by Gillian

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..

 

 

ISBA – New Horizons in Biomolecular Archaeology

Published on by Gillian

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).

EAA Conference report – PhD student Aboli Vavle

Published on by Gillian

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.

INQUA 2023 – Roma, Italy

Published on by Gillian

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.