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 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94853-7/metrics
The paper is open access and free to read, from scientific reports and here are five reasons why you should:-
- Microbes are fascinating and we understand so little about how they impact on preservation on artefacts
- Inorganic analysis – such as metals, play a huge part in the activity of microbes and thus preservation
- The diversity of microbes change depending on archaeological context.. and guess what this will impact on preservation
- The graphs are really cool
- It shows we need to understand the chemical and microbiological environment to understand our management practices for the future..
sample locations.