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SCIENCE AND ARCHAEOLOGY: NEW APPLICATIONS

Report of a conference organised by the Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology
held at University of Lincoln, Riseholme Campus: 15 October 2011

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1 Lidar Survey in the Fenland: New approaches to a vanished landscape – Dr Steve Malone

The use of airborne laser altimetry (Lidar) as an archaeological tool has become increasingly established, both for prospection and mapping of archaeological earthwork features and for placing those features in a wider landscape context. Within the marginal landscapes of the Lincolnshire fenland this landscape context is crucial and lidar survey is providing new insights into past human use of the landscape representing a significant advance in the understanding of the relationships of past human activity to the micro-topography of the fenland.

Dr Steve Malone is a Project Manager at Archaeological Project Services, the contract side of the Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire. Amongst other specialisms, he deals with geophysical and topographic surveys and has developed a research interest in the uses of Lidar data in archaeology and within the fenland particularly.

2 Recent Advances in Radiocarbon Dating - Peter Marshall

The arrival of radiocarbon dating 60 years ago rewrote archaeological chronologies around the world. Since then further scientific developments such as calibration and expansion of the range of materials that can be dated has resulted in new revolutions in our understanding of chronologies. Highlights from some recent scientific dating programmes illustrate how chronology is fundamentally changing archaeological thinking.

Dr Peter Marshall has 20 years' experience as an archaeologist during which time he has turned his hand to survey and excavation, post-excavation management, geoarchaeology, palynology and scientific dating. He has recently provide analysis of scientific dating for the following: Silbury Hill, Stonehenge Riverside and Beaker People Projects, Skara Brae, and the Amesbury archer.

3 Tree-Ring Dating: Recent work of the Nottingham Laboratory - Robert Howard

Since its first tentative, and almost experimental, application in the East Midlands nearly 40 years ago, tree-ring dating has become a well established and widely used method of dating timber-framed buildings and other wooden structures in all parts of the British Isles. As a result the supposed dates of many buildings have had to be revised, both forward as well as backward in time. This talk outlined the basic principles behind the method, and used some regional examples to illustrate results.

Robert Howard is co-Director of the Nottingham tree-Ring dating laboratory, and has worked on dating many important structures in the East Midlands and beyond, including Lincoln Cathedral, Halstead Manor and Brocklesby Hall.

4 Shedding new light on the use of brick by medieval builders - Ian Bailiff

In unravelling the history of medieval buildings, the use of scientific dating methods can provide key chronological data related to their original construction and subsequent alteration. Luminescence dating is a scientific method that was originally developed for application to pottery, but until recently rarely applied to the study of ceramic building materials such as brick. During the last few years we have been examining its performance by testing ceramic bricks from English ecclesiastical and secular buildings in Essex, Kent and Lincolnshire, ranging in age from the fourth to the late sixteenth centuries AD, and also bricks from buildings and structures further afield, including a Carolingian church in France and brick monuments in S Asia.

Professor Ian Bailiff teaches aspects of chronometry at Durham University and is an experimental scientist, leading the work of the Luminescence Dating Laboratory. In addition to dating bricks, his work also includes the dating of sediments from archaeological contexts, a potentially powerful method for dating early prehistoric sites.

5 The Roman Diaspora Project: Population Diversity - Gundula Muldner

This paper introduced a recent Reading University project, which employed osteological and multi-isotopic techniques to explore population diversity at several Romano-British towns. Focusing particularly on York and Winchester, the speaker demonstrated how analysis of both antiquarian (e.g. the 'Ivory Bangle Lady', a rich female burial discovered in York in 1901) and recent finds (e.g. the 'Headless Romans' of Driffield Terrace, excavated in 2004/5) can provide significant new insights into the make-up of Romano-British urban societies. Following this, the paper also briefly explored the pitfalls of the scientific techniques employed, as well as their potential for future investigations.

Dr Gundula Muldner is a lecturer in the Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, where she specialises in bone chemistry analysis for the reconstruction of diet and mobility of humans and animals in the past.

6 Animal Bones and Archaeology: recent advances - Naomi Sykes

This presentation introduced some recent methods and case-studies demonstrating the relationship of animals to other forms of archaeological evidence and to past societies. Naomi has worked on plants and animals, on fish, and most recently on deer, and has studied examples across various periods.

Dr Naomi Sykes is a Lecturer in Zooarchaeology in the Department of Archaeology at Nottingham University, and author of various books and articles on animal- human relationships. She recently organised an international conference, held at the Riseholme campus, on 'Deer and People'.

7 Forensic Science and Lincolnshire's archaeological collections - Ron Dixon

A number of projects involving forensic science students at the University of Lincoln that have depended on the resources of the local museum were described. The presentation focused on a number of organic materials from the collections which have been excavated in the past, curated and stored by the museum, including leather, animal bone and ceramic ware. Dr Dixon's students have applied low and high technology platforms to these materials with the aim of answering archaeological questions. They have attempted to extract DNA from medieval leather shoes in order to identify the animal source involved and improve the understanding of ancient tanning processes; investigated food animal bones from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century to discover whether medieval farmers 'genetically engineered' their animals and have also investigated suspected organic residues on ceramic pots to determine their previous uses. Some ideas for future projects were discussed.

Dr Ron Dixon is a Microbiologist and Molecular Biologist who has spent his career in the NHS, the pharmaceutical industry and academia. His interest in pathogens that cause modern diseases drew him into a thirty-five year interest in pathogen detection and analysis in clinical, archaeological and forensic contexts. The focus of research at Bradford and later at Lincoln has been the analysis of DNA from tuberculosis in ancient human remains, and Ron was part of the first group to show that the molecular diagnosis of tuberculosis in ancient skeletons was feasible. On taking up an academic post at the University of Lincoln, Ron has forged links with local archaeologists, embedded forensic archaeology in the well established forensic degree course at the University and developed projects where a forensic approach has been taken to analyse and understand organic materials from Lincolnshire museum collections. More recently Ron has been involved in the Wellcome Trust-funded 'Peoples of the British Isles' project (with the University of Oxford).