h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Cat, I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping things are going well for you.

Ireland currently warmer than it was last weekend, but only marginally less rainy.

Best

dvcx

Hi Dean, as you may have gathered from ML/here things went better than we could really have expected. Thank goodness. We're going to see TomKitten again in 2 weeks time as we're downa that way for TC's granny's 90th. But sadly I won't be seeing TK because I have to hot-foot it to Portsmouth for an interview the only day we could see him!

Anyways, this brings me in a round-about way to a plea for help. Said interview is for a palaeoecologist/archaeobotanist position with English Heritage. Didn't think I'd get interviewed as I haven't got strictly enough experience/advertised skills, but am jumping for joy I've got this far, and I REALLY REALLY want the job! Thing is, I'm a palynologist, which is fine for the job, and I have a working knowledge of archaeobotany (I can tell the cereal caryopses apart to genus/species and identify chaff fragments to type of fragment but not genus/species) and I'm going to have to learn peat plant macro ID for a contract I'm doing this summer (yikes!). As for learning the other techniques specified (forams, diatoms, ostracods) well I'll say that my CV shows I can quickly pick up new techniques and am keen to do so.

I thought you may be able to help me a little with archaeobotany. I think you said you did macros on crannogs - yes? So was that more archaeobotany than environmental reconstruction?

The job involves advising EH and external partners, assessing and analysing environmental material on EH projects and externally funded research, contirbuting to training etc. Main duties are advising Inspectors of Ancient Monuments, Historic Environment Enabling Program staff (they give out grants I think), regional Archaeological Science advisers, etc. Develop and undertake methodological, academic and technical research in chosen field(s). Help set and maintain standards in environmental archaeology and promote these throughout discipline. Including involvement in producing guidelines in archaeobotany (the bit I thought you could help with - see below). Expert assessment, analysis, interpretation and research/development of scientific techniques. Also to develop close working relationships with maritime archaeology team and special interest in coastal and maritime aspects of environmental archaeology. A few others, but that's the main bit!

Sooo - do you have any recollection of existing guidelines for archaeobotany and/or any specific guidelines relating to coastal/maritime archaeology? I'm aware Irish guidelines may differ to English, but even if you have any random thoughts that may help me out I would be massively grateful.

Hope you and Corby are keeping well,

Cat x

Hi Cat,

firstly, as far as I know we have no guidelines for archaeobotany in Ireland - I've been out of the loop for the last few years, so someone may be working on some, but don't think so.
For UK stuff, have you checked out the Association for Environmental Archaeology website? There's a lot of information there.

In terms of archaeobotany, the things that occur to off the top of my head are:

The importance of understanding depositional processes and taphonomics, so that sampling strategies make sense.

Recognising the very different sorts of information that 'waterlogged' material will give you as opposed to charred stuff.

Recognising the huge potential of vegetative material.

The overwhelming importance of good reference material, good botanical skills, understanding of ecology.

For coastal and marine sediments you will presumably be looking for depositional and broad environmental data as well as economic stuff.

Will think some more - let me know in more detail what you need. - don't want to waffle over stuff you already know.

In the past I found the people at York enormously helpful if I went to them with questions. Whan you have clarified what you need a bit more, you could try talking to them.

best

dvcx

ps Corby says Cawww!

Morning! I've been thinking over your comments for a day or two and have a couple of follow-up questions. Most of my archaeobotanical knowledge comes from 1) honours course and 2) specialist reports in site reports - usually concerning charred material. Sooo...

Although I vaguely know why waterlogged material will give you different information from charred, I would probably have trouble succinctly explaining why. If I was asked now, I'd say:

different depositional environments & taphonomy
different kinds of contexts typically get preserved this way
often, different kinds of sites represented

And beyond that I'd have trouble. Have you any thoughts?
The AEA did indeed have useful stuff - I should have thought about them in the first place - d'oh! I'm off to read up on coastal archaeology this morning, and after that will need to search around a bit for maritime archaeology of which I know very little!

Thanks again, and any more suggestions very welcome

Cat x

okay, I've thought about it a bit, and cut and pasted some stuff from my thesis, some of which is blindingly obvious, but may give you a form of words to use..
general thoughts: english heritage will want an understanding of the scientific possibilities but will also be cost and practicalities driven. i suspect that sample storage and speed of information flow will be regarded as important.

the buzz word here now (Heritage in the broad sense rather than Archaeology) is communication - which I think is appropriate in any publicly funded area.

A recent Irish project which was developer funded but which achieved a high level of research was this one - not your typical archaeological site, but interesting: http://www.mglarc.com/projects/lisheen.htm

The most important and best preserved material I worked on was urban and that is reflected in the following - get back to me if you have further questions BUT I will be away on Monday and Tuesday and most of Wednesday. Will be around over the weekend though.

Hope there isn't a 500 word limit here:
Environmental archaeology is concerned with gaining information on past human activities from the examination of biological remains. It must, therefore, concern itself with the material available to it, and must exploit that material as fully as possible.

In an attempt to define 'what the archaeologist seeks to know (from an environmental study of excavated urban material) Addyman has listed a number of priorities(Addyman 1982 p. 4).

• the conditions of life in the locality of the site before building/settlement;
• the effects of the new activities on the (human) environment in the area;
• the nature of the activities carried out on the site; and the kind of people who carried out these activities


these need not be the limits of environmental archaeological enquiry. Addyman claims that 'the opportunity to extend natural history back into the past is not a prime concern to the archaeologist' (Addyman op cit) but for the environmental archaeologist the detailed recording of the response of plant and animal populations to changing and intensifying human behaviour is essential to the understanding of the relationship between people and their environment in the past. The study of the human past through the evidence of physical objects is archaeology, whether the scope of that study is as broad as a millennium of urban development and change, or as narrow as a single-event deposit.

TYPES OF MATERIAL
Carbonised cereals,
• large collections of grains are an important source of information on crop composition and cultivation and processing techniques.
• individual charred seeds in a largely unburned deposit need to be treated with caution, as they are very resistant to bacterial and chemical decay, and may be residual or intrusive

Anoxic, or 'water-logged' material, -comes from a range of damp conditions, including deposits actually underwater - sunken ships, lake structures etc.; deposits in peat bogs with large quantities of trapped water; and damp pockets such as ditch and pit fills in otherwise dry sites.

mineral replaced (or 'mineralised') seeds are found on some urban sites, especially in cesspits. This replacement of woody plant tissue by calcium phosphate occurs when plant material is deposited in wet conditions where calcium and phosphate salts are present (Green 1979(a) Greig n.d.)

Desiccated plant tissue desiccation as a primary cause of survival of plant tissue is rare in North-West Europe for obvious climatic reasons, although it can occur inside medieval buildings (Willerding cited in Körber-Grohne 1991, Letts pers. comm.). It has been suggested that desiccation of plant tissue during the period of use of medieval buidings played a part in its later survival in their post-demolition remains (Geraghty1997).


3.7 PROCESSING

Carbonised material
• physically very different from its surrounding soil matrix
• large quantities of sediments have to be processed in order to obtain statistically valid numbers of seeds.

In one 74 page review of Old and New World screening techniques all but four deal with flotation procedures based on the principle that if the sample is placed in water or another liquid, the plant material, which is less dense than the soil matrix, will float to the surface, where it may readily be collected. (Pearsall 1989, 9-95) This is appropriate for carbonised material but….

Although it was once thought that similar techniques could be applied to anaerobically preserved deposits practical experiment showed this not to be so (Lambrick & Robinson 1979, 80).

In some urban medieval contexts almost the whole deposit is plant tissue, all potentially identifiable.

Only suitable extarction/processing technique is wet sieving

The choice of subsample size is influenced by the need to produce sufficient seeds for analysis while minimising the bulk to be sorted. York paper recommends 0.5 - 1kg as usually adequate for their material, with 'bulk samples' of 15 - 150kg kept from special contexts such as pits in order to be sieved for larger (above 1mm diameter) items such as grains and fruit stones (Kenward et al. 1980, 4).

Stating the obvious: If the seed remains from a site are to be used as the basis for environmental reconstruction, a knowledge of plant biology and of ecology is necessary. Reconstruction of ancient ecosystems from seeds must be carried out with caution.
• Many plants grow in a range of habitats besides their optimal one.
• Some environmental conditions common in the past are no longer found - dung-heaps, flax fields, medieval towns.
• Apart from the environmental change, there are so many factors which can result in the seeds of a plant becoming incorporated in archaeological deposits that it is important to consider the whole cumulative data carefully.
phytosociology has not changed the world after all

INTERPRETING PLANT REMAINS
Many of the authors of discussions of the statistical analysis of archaeological plant remains are people whose main experience has been with carbonised material, particularly cereals, and who are exclusively or primarily concerned with the assessment of husbandry and processing practices (Dennell 1978, Green 1982, Jones 1991). Weeds, particularly urban or ruderal weeds, are regarded as 'background noise' to be eliminated from the equation if possible. Other authors argue that the study of weeds and 'background noise' is itself of potential interest, not least because they form the largest part of the archaeobotanical evidence from many urban deposits (Hall 1988).

This is likely to be a significant consideration when you are dealing with marine and coastal sediments

ARCHAEOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
Environmental archaeology has a vital contribution to make, by providing a body of scientific evidence over a far greater time scale than can be gained from written records.

a 'crucial part of it is in linking archaeology, not as a vaguely eccentric antiquarianism, but as a rigorously intellectual pursuit, with past and present environmental change and in presenting that package wrapped in ethics.' (Fowler 1992 p86)

Some issues in environmental archaeology, particularly those connected with changes through time, and the question of the extent to which these are indicative of anthropogenic or of 'natural' (particularly climatic) influences, are outside the concern of individual site directors, and can only be studied as part of a well thought out interdisciplinary exercise.

URBAN
In an urban archaeological situation there are questions specifically related to urbanism which can be asked.

Environmental material from contemporary rural sites provides comparanda, and the effects of urbanism on husbandry, human health and nutrition can be examined. It must also be asked what effect the town, as a town, had on its rural hinterland. A survey of the relative frequency of species (animals and plants) characteristic of a number of habitats (i.e. mountains; rivers and estuaries; and woodland) from contemporary horizons in all sites in the town might give a picture of an increase or decrease of resources and habitats. Specific questions, for instance, the extent to which the increasing demands for both farmland (needed to produce food) and fuel wood, caused changes in the extent and composition of woodland around the town, might need to be addressed by reference to samples from outside the urban area - regional pollen surveys for instance.

The comprehensive collection of large samples from all discrete contexts is the best way of treating archaeological sites. It has been pointed out that it is much easier to choose a sub-sample for analysis from a large population of samples than to predict what sorts of samples will be needed while excavation is proceeding (Pearsall 1989 p. 96).
Environmental analysis is labour intensive and time consuming and therefore expensive, with the result that the funding estimates are usually too low and site directors are reluctant to take more samples than they consider necessary.

Marvellous! A million thanks for all this - will read it later and chase up the references you suggest.

Spoke to a mate who works on Scottish crannogs last night and he's given me some good tips as well.

Cheers!

Cat x