I came to archaeology rather indirectly, starting my undergraduate degree in Anglo- Saxon, Norse and Celtic studies. I loved studying early medieval literature, but I eventually became disheartened with the historical focus on ‘bishops and kings’, gravitating towards archaeology as I felt it could provide more insight into the everyday lives of ordinary people. After graduating, I worked in developer-funded archaeology and began to develop more of an environmental interest, stemming partly from having volunteered in conservation and a growing love of gardening and horticulture. Around this time I started going out with field guides, teaching myself to identify wild flowers and foraging for edible plants. Eventually I applied for a master’s in Environmental Archaeology and was keen to specialise in archaeobotany.
2. Could you tell us more about the background/ context of the research featured in your award winning paper?
During my master’s degree I analysed charred plant remains spanning the late Roman and early Anglo-Saxon periods at a site in Oxfordshire and encountered some unusually shaped wheat grains, which both my supervisor and I found difficult to classify. Looking at the literature I noticed that similar morphological variation had varyingly been attributed to environmental stress, disease or different crop varieties. Having read papers on geometric morphometrics during my master’s degree I was excited about the potential of this methodology, and what it might be able to tell us about crop diversity and environmental conditions in the past.
We went into the first COVID lockdown just a few months into my PhD, and I found working mostly in isolation without the support of a lab community very difficult. Several months without lab access also meant that I had to reorganise my workflow, focusing on the material I had to hand already and seeing what I could do at home. This involved a lot of playing around with R, which was certainly useful in the long-run!
4. How do you think your research, or more generally archaeological research, can help address social issues nowadays, given your participation in the rewilding project?
I’m really excited to be working on the ‘Rewilding Later Prehistory’ project (https://rewilding.oxfordarchaeology.com/), as it combines an area of archaeological research for which is there is the potential for so much more insight – i.e. human interaction with wildlife in a period in which we tend to focus on the transition to farming and nucleated settlement – with contemporary environmental debates. I believe that by shifting our archaeological perspective from narratives in which humans ‘claim’ or impose order on landscapes to one in which humans co-inhabit and negotiate spaces with nature in diverse ways, can help to shape contemporary responses to environmental change.
5. What do you think are the challenges faced by early career researchers?
I don’t think I will be treading new ground by referring to short-term contracts, job insecurity, pay and significant competition for longer-term or permanent academic. There is also the pressure for publication, which can be challenging in the context of certain projects, as well as at a time when it seems to be increasingly difficult for journals to find suitable reviewers who can spare time in their schedules. From a UK-perspective there is the added challenge of Brexit which adds considerable admin, cost and other barriers to taking up post-doctoral positions elsewhere in Europe, particularly if they are short-term ones.
6. What is your next research plan? I will be working on the Rewilding project for the next 3+ years and I would love to keep working at the interface between archaeology and the promotion of biodiversity and nature regeneration. We are currently working to collate plant and vertebrate remains data from Bronze and Iron Age Britain and this should lead to some interesting studies combining these categories of evidence in different archaeological contexts, whether these be ritualised or everyday interactions with wildlife. Working on the Rewilding project database, as well as a related initiative to improve routine logging, and access to, the substantial volumes of zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical data recovered by archaeological ‘rescue’ excavations in Britain, I am increasingly becoming interested in the principles of good data management and the openness, accessibility and interoperability of archaeological data. |
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