Profile

Richard is the Departmental Research Technician.  He has a BSc in Ecology from the University of Durham and an MSc in Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies from the University of East London and the CAT Graduate School of the Environment. 

Richard's masters research investigated the structural effects of combining industrially produced charcoal with Pise de Terre, an environmentally responsive and sensitive vernacular building material.

Before joining the Archaeology Department at York, Richard worked for two years as a operations and geotechnical technician at Lincs Lab, a UKAS accredited civil engineering laboratory run by Lincolnshire County Council.

Departmental roles

Richard's core role is the management of the BioArCh laboratories in Biology and Chemistry and to assist the laboratory based research activities taking place at the King's Manor. 

Richard also helps to run the amino acid racemization facility NEAAR with Dr Kirsty Penkman, and provides technical and administrative support to the research activities and students of Professor Matthew Collins and Dr Oliver Craig. 

Richard's areas of speciality include:

• Advanced Access and Excel use
• Amino acid racemisation
• Classification of soils
• Laboratory Health and Safety
• Light microscopy
  
• Pisé and cob construction
• Shell and bone thin sectioning
• VBA/VB.Net applications.
  

Publications

2010

• Wilson, J., Hardy, K., Allen, R. Copeland L., Wrangham R, Collins M. 2010 Automated classification of starch granules using supervised pattern recognition of morphological properties Journal of Archaeological Science, 37, 594-604.

Research

Richard's areas of interest include:

• Analytical chemistry
• Ancient starch
  
• Biochar
  
• Earth construction techniques
• Palaeoecology
• Software engineering
• Soil science