What we’re up to this summer
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Lucy Adams Lucy is going to do her first year field course at Castleton, in the Hope Valley. This project, directed by our own Colin Merrony, will explore the suggested site of the Medieval hospital at Castleton, and Lucy will hone her excavation skills and participate in geophysical and topographic survey in order to help understand the hospital more fully and to investigate other sites in the area. Like many of our students, Lucy isn’t content with just one field project in the summer: she will also be volunteering at the excavations at Binchester Roman Fort. |
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Otis Gilbert Otis is particularly interested in classical archaeology so, in addition to undertaking his departmental field course at the Brodsworth Landscape Archaeology project near Doncaster, this summer Otis will be joining Professor Maureen Carroll on her project at Vagnari in Puglia, southern Italy. Vagnari is a Roman agricultural estate owned by the Roman emperor since the early 1st century AD and this year’s excavations will focus on the central village of the estate. Otis is also volunteering some of his time helping Krissy Moore, an MA Landscape Archaeology student, with her geophysics at Caistor in Lincolnshire. |
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Nicholas Groat Last year the Castleton Medieval Hospital Project got some of the worst of our summer weather - it was so wet that even field stalwart Colin Merrony decided to give his team a day inside! So Nick is hoping for a drier time on his first year field course at Castleton this summer. One of this year's aims is to investigate the development of the two villages of Castleton and Hope in this Peak District landscape, so Nick will have the opportunity to take part in geophysical and topographic survey as well as the excavations. |
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Sara Farey Sara's summer plans combine archaeology, volunteer work and travel! She will spend some time working with a school in Rotherham, helping them to undertake a mock Viking dig and will also serve as a volunteer blog manager with Warwickshire County Council. In addition, she has planned a trip to Rome where she will be visiting some of the great monuments of Rome, including the Colosseum and Trevi fountain. |
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Megan Fletcher-Cutts For her final year dissertation, Megan will be investigating the production of ancient Egyptian bread using an experimental approach - a topic supervised by Professor Glynis Jones. Over the summer Megan will be doing some grinding and baking experiments and she is working with a local living history circle in order to source grains and re-create the appropriate type of oven. |
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Becky Foster Becky is interested in teaching and classical archaeology. She is part of the department's Archaeology in the City mentoring programme and has chosen to focus her final year dissertation on a study of female priests in ancient Athens. This summer she is also going to take part in our Greek and Roman Cities study day, where she will assist in leading seminars for local GCSE students - and next year she lead a seminar herself. |
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Anna Kay Like all of our level 2 students, Anna is thinking about her dissertation topic and she has chosen to work with Dr Pia Nystrom to study the morphological adaptations of primates and how this is linked to their behaviour. Anna will be collecting her own data over summer by observing and comparing the hand morphology of macaques and baboons in Chester Zoo in order to determine what traits are adaptive for certain types of social or locomotive behaviour. |
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Jonathan Moulton This summer Jonathan will be spending time in both the lab and the field! In July he will be returning to Vagnari, southern Italy, where he will be Professor Maureen Carroll’s assistant site supervisor. He will also be spending some time working with Dr Umberto Albarella in our departmental labs where he will be working with the fine sieved samples from the recent excavations at Durrington Walls, which is a Neolithic site near Stonehenge. This will involve looking a variety of materials, but Jonathan will focus on the faunal remains in preparation for his dissertation project next year. |
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Chris Booth In addition to graduating this summer, Chris will be returning to Thornton Abbey in July as part of the field team. The Thornton Abbey project, directed by our very own Dr Hugh Willmott, is the site of an Augustinian monastery as well as 16th and 17th century manor houses. Although Chris has finished his degree, he will be returning to the department in September as a postgraduate student on our MA Medieval Archaeology, for which he has received funding from the University. |
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Courtenay Crichton-Turley Courtenay is undertaking her MA programme part-time and has just completed her first year. This summer she will be taking part in the excavations at a Roman agricultural estate in Vagnari, southern Italy, directed by Maureen Carroll. Courtenay was awarded a Petrie Watson Exhibition from the University in order to help her fund her trip. For the rest of the summer she will be working in various locations in the UK in commercial archaeology and helping to curate a small exhibition in the University’s Western Bank Library. |
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Lucy Lawrence Lucy completed her BA Archaeology in the department last year and is currently a student on our MSc Environmental Archaeology programme. This summer she will be working on her dissertation, which will be testing a new method for analyzing the dental microwear of sheep using a low resolution stereo-microscope. This will involve a short trip to Orkney to learn techniques from microwear expert Dr Ingrid Mainland. Lucy will submit her dissertation in September, but we are not going to let her go: she has received full funding from the University for her PhD studies, which will focus on the diet and management of ancient cattle from Makriyalos, Greece using dental microwear analysis. |
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Lindsay Mitchell This summer Lindsay will be a member of Maureen Carroll's team at Vagnari in Puglia, southern Italy. Vagnari is a Roman agricultural estate owned by the Roman emperor since the early 1st century AD and this year’s excavations will focus on the central village of the estate. Lindsay will be undertaking part of her final placement at Vagnari and, in addition to participating in the excavations, she will be doing an in-depth analysis of theoretical frameworks implemented in the field. She will look at how and when the current archaeological paradigm guides the methodology and focus of the excavation. And finally, she will investigate how the research and data collected are manifested in post-excavation reporting. |
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