Association for Environmental Archaeology
30th Anniversary Meeting

Environmental Archaeology in a Changing World

Provisional Programme

Thursday 3rd September

15.00-18.00 Registration

16.00-18.00 Visit to 'BioArCh' labs.

18.00-19.00 Wine Reception and Book Launch (Land and People) (if you have ordered a copy you will be able to pick it up here or buy it de novo at the discounted price)

19.00-20.00 Dinner

20.15 The AEA: 30 years on (Professor Terry O'Connor)


Friday 4th September

8.25-8.55 Registration

8.55-9.10 Welcome and notices

Session 1 (Chair: Sabine Karg)

9.10-9.35 Peter Murphy (Portsmouth) Climate change: adapting the coastal historic environment

9.35-10.00 Jörg Schibler and Thomas Doppler (Basel) Climatic deterioration and food supply - detailed insights into socio-economic strategies in the Neolithic lakeshore settlement of Arbon Bleiche 3, Switzerland

10.00-10.25 João Pedro Tereso (Porto) Social adaptive responses to environmental changes: what’s the use of palaeoethnobotanical investigation?

10.25-10.45 Coffee/Tea

Session 2 (Chair: Roel Lauwerier)

10.45-11.10 Marijke van der Veen (Leicester) Archaeobotany and the identification of foodways

11.10-11.35 James Rackham (Sleaford) Regional diets, a relatively straightforward archaeological approach for assessing differences between the diet of regions and rural versus urban populations

11.35-12.00 Alan K. Outram (Exeter), Natalie A. Stear (Bristol), Robin Bendrey (Paris and Winchester), Sandra Olsen (Pittsburgh), Alexei Kasparov (St Petersburg), Victor Zaibert (Kokshetau), Nick Thorpe (Winchester) and Richard P. Evershed (Bristol) New light on horse domestication: direct evidence for Eneolithic horse milking and harnessing

12.00-12.25 Stephanie Vann (Leicester) Recording animal palaeopathology: a new methodology

12.25-13.30 Lunch

Session 3 (Chair: Andy Howard)

13.30-13.55 Andy Hammon (York), Rachel Ballantyne (Cambridge), Helen Chappell (Cambridge), Jen Heathcote (Cambridge), Jacqui Huntley (Durham), Lisa Moffett (Liverpool), Dominique de Moulins (London), Sue Stallibrass (Liverpool), Vanessa Straker (Bristol) and Jim Williams (Northampton) Developer-funded research and environmental archaeology: The experiences of the English Heritage Regional Science Advisors

13.55-14.20 James Morris (London) Profiling commercial zooarchaeology in the UK

14.20-14.45 Roel Lauwerier (Amersfoort) Quality and specialist work in the Netherlands

14.45-15.10 Jørn Zeiler (ArchaeoBone) & Laura Kooistra (BIAX) (Netherlands) Companies and specialists - a happy marriage?

15.10-15.30 Coffee/Tea

Session 4 (Chair: Lisa Moffett)

15.30-15.55 Jane Bunting (Hull) Open landscape, wooded landscape? Reconstructing tree cover proportions from pollen records

15.55-16.20 Michael J. Allen (Bournemouth) Re-evaluation of the early post-glacial woodland history of the chalk and its archaeological implications

16.20-16.45 Matt Canti (Portsmouth) Geoarchaeological studies of the old ground surface beneath Silbury Hill, Wiltshire

16.45-17.25 Ashley Coutou (York) The 19th century East African ivory trade: a bioarchaeological study Matthias Heckmann and Daryl Stump (York) Examining soil erosion and deforestation narratives in pre-colonial Pare, Tanzania

18.00-19.15 Association for Environmental Archaeology Annual General Meeting

19.30 Conference Dinner


Saturday 5th September

8.55-9.10 Welcome and notices

Session 5 (Chair: Andy Hammon)

9.10-9.35 Rebecca Nicholson (Oxford) It’s the little things that matter: fishy tales from English commercial archaeology

9.35-10.00 Scott Timpany (Edinburgh) Environmental Archaeology - the commercial factor

10.00-10.25 Jane Wheeler, Tim Mighall and Scott Timpany (Aberdeen and Edinburgh) Cross-site palaeoenvironmental investigations along the A4/A5 corridor between Dungannon and Ballygawley, County Down, Northern Ireland: A case study for positive developer-funded environmental archaeology

10.25-10.45 Coffee/Tea

Session 6 (Chair: David Smith)

10.45-11.10 Andy Howard (Birmingham) Maximizing the potential for environmental research using developer funding

11.10-11.35 Kari Hjelle (Bergen) Development of agriculture in western Norway – constraints and opportunities in the developer-funded research

11.35-12.00 Patricia Wiltshire (Aberdeen, Gloucestershire and Bournemouth)In the light of evidence derived from large numbers of small-scale, modern taphonomic studies in Britain, should we reconsider some of our approaches and interpretations of palynology in archaeology?

12.00-12.25 Mark Maltby (Bournemouth) Environmental Archaeology in Novgorod: towards an integrated approach

12.25-13.30 Lunch

Session 7 (Chair: Ol Craig)

13.30-13.55 Sabine Karg and Robert Frei (Copenhagen) Stable isotopes in ancient plant finds from Denmark – a new method stimulating the discussion and interpretation of archaeological treasures

13.55-14.20 Joseph Warham (Bradford), Janet Montgomery (Bradford), Jane Evans (Keyworth), Louise Ander (Keyworth), David Cotton (Bradford) Mapping Sr-Isotope ratios for archaeological applications

14.20-14.45 Wright, D. (Bradford), Lee-Thorp, J.A. (Bradford), Stevens, R.E. (Cambridge) and Donahue, R.E. (Bradford) Building an independent terrestrial palaeoclimate sequence for Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 in Britain and northern Europe

14.45-15.10 Julie Hamilton, Robert E. M. Hedges and Mark Robinson (Oxford) Carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes in animal ecology

15.10-15.30 Tea/Coffee

Session 8 (Chair: Terry O'Connor)

15.30-15.55 Rachel Ballantyne (Cambridge) Human lives and small artefactual debris: a new approach to the interpretation of lifestyles and economy from charred plant remains

15.55-16.20 Michael Wallace and Mike Charles (Sheffield) Dung, a potent ingredient of the archaeobotanical record: an experimental contribution

16.20-16.45 David Smith (Birmingham) and Harry Kenward (York) Are analogues a useful tool for the environmental archaeologist or the conservation biologist?

16.45-17.10 Gill Campbell (Portsmouth) What next? The English Heritage regional reviews of Environmental Archaeology as a means of establishing research priorities

Posters (these should be available to view in the 'JCR' next to registration during all the breaks)

Heather Adams, Ralph Fyfe and Dan Charman (Plymouth) Sustainable management of the historic environment resource in Exmoor’s upland mires

Megan Brickley (Birmingham) Peri-mortem fractures: information obtained on a scapula fracture

M Jane Bunting and R. Middleton (Hull) Poster/Demonstration: CoPol: software for teaching microscope skills

Mike Cressey (Edinburgh) The Carpow Logboat: environmental analysis of waterlogged remains

Stephen Davis (Dublin) Environmental remains from the Drogheda Boat

Danielle de Carle & Hugues Pessin (Sheffield) Seeing the fields for the trees: preliminary analysis of charcoal samples from the South Cadbury Environs Project

Anne-Marie Faucher (Durham) Evolution of agriculture and wood procurement: a Middle Iron Age to Late Norse case study, Everley Broch, Caithness

Emily Forster, David Earle Robinson and Zoë Hazell (Portsmouth) Origins of the Cornish Heath: landscape studies in south-west Cornwall

Louisa Gidney (Durham) Salving, smitting and smorring

Matilda Holmes and Kate Parks (Leicester) Seeds and bones: how does developer funded data compare?

Naomi Holmes, Steve Davis and Graeme Warren (Dublin) Climate change and the adoption of agriculture in Ireland

Matthew Law Mapping bioarchaeology results from grey literature

Richard Madgwick and Jacqui Mulville (Cardiff) When animals get under your feet: histological analysis of animal burials from beneath Hebridean roundhouses

Anette Overland (Galway) Late Holocene woodland dynamics, landscape evolution and farming in Barrees, Beara peninsula, SW Ireland

Melanie Rousseau (York) Similarity of replicates and increase in the number of insect taxa recovered with the increase of sediment weight treated

Hayley Saul (York) The potential of starches and phytoliths to the study of cuisine at the transition to agriculture: evidence from charred ceramic deposits

Bettina Stefanini (Dublin), Rob Marchant (York) and Fraser Mitchell (Dublin) The Irish Pollen Database

Bettina Stefanini and Dr E. Reilly (Dublin) Announcement of IPEAN, the Irish Palaecology and Environmental Archaeology Network

Ingelise Stuijts and Lorna O’Donnell (Dublin) WODAN: Developing databases, developing standards

Interred with their bones” - linking micromorphology (by M. Raimonda Usai) and chemistry (by Brendan Keely and Clare Wilson) to unlock the hidden archive of archaeological human burial (by Don Brothwell). [Acronym: InterArChive]. ( Funded by the European Research Council, advanced investigator grant.)

Kim Vickers (Edinburgh) The mystery of the missing beetle – a palaeoecological whodunit?: the role of climate change and human impact in the disappearance of Coleopteran species from the North Atlantic islands

Isabella von Holstein, Allan Hall, Oliver Craig and Matthew Collins (York) Assaying white gold: Isotopic analysis of medieval wool

Michael Wallace, Glynis Jones and Mike Charles (Sheffield) Assessing the potential of stable carbon isotopes to ascertain the water status and irrigation of ancient crops


An Oxbow bookstall will be available through the meeting.

Details of the site visit to the Hungate Excavations on Sunday 6th September will be posted in due course; we are likely to meet at the York Archaeological Trust's 'Dig' Centre (about 30 minutes' walk from the University campus) at 10.30 and walk to the excavation (2 minutes).