Science-based archaeology > Collaborative grants

Collaborative grants

AHRC funded, Feeding Stonehenge

Prof M. Parker Pearson, Sheffield University
Post graduate student working at NIGL: Sarah Viner

The great henge complexes of southern Britain have long been recognised as ceremonial sites for large-scale feasting by gatherings of people who probably came from far and wide.  Yet we have little indication of the catchment or hinterland of Stonehenge and its close neighbours Woodhenge and Durrington Walls, or of the other 3rd millennium BC Wessex henge complexes where feasting debris is prolific.  Were these henges the foci of competing polities within the Wessex chalklands or were they destinations for celebration at specific moments in a calendrical round?  Nor do we know much about the rearing and movement of livestock slaughtered at these sites, or the details of henge-builders’ provision and consumption.  The 2003-2007 excavations at Durrington Walls, largely funded by AHRC, have uncovered an unexpectedly well-preserved and artefact-rich Neolithic settlement with surviving house floors and their debris, yard compounds with middens identifiable to particular houses, and distinct zoning between public and private spaces.

These present a unique opportunity for a detailed economic study of the Stonehenge people at nested scales from household to henge community.

Progress: Starts 2010.

Leverhulme funded: Evaluating Hunter-Gatherer Subsistence Strategies in Late-Glacial Central Italy

Dr R. Donahue, University of Bradford
Post graduate student: Dr Maura Pellegrini

This 3-year interdisciplinary research programme will evaluate two competing models of dietary and mobility strategies of hunter-gatherers in Mediterranean Europe during the Late-glacial and early Holocene (~20,000--~8,000 BP). Research by Mary Stiner has led to the hypothesis that the Broad Spectrum Revolution, characterized by the diversification of food resources prior to the origins of agriculture in the Middle East, began during the Last Glacial Maximum throughout the Mediterranean region. The Seasonal Mobility hypothesis, proposed by Eric Higgs, presents foragers in Mediterranean Europe as highly specialised hunters of herd species, primarily the steppe horse and red deer, which they followed between their seasonal grazing in the highland meadows during summer and the coastal plains during winter.

Progress: started 2009

• University of Bradford website

AHRC funded: Diaspora Communities in Roman Britain

Dr. H. Eckhardt, Reading University
Post graduate based at NIGL: Carolyn Chenery

Britain under Rome was truly multi-cultural, with historical and epigraphic evidence recording the voluntary and forced migration of Gaulish, Germanic, and North African individuals. How did these diaspora communities create identities that were distinct from the host society, and maintain ideological links with their homeland? Can we identify incomers, and do they differ from the host population in their health and diet? Evidence for diaspora communities will be analysed through a combination of material culture, skeletal and isotope research. This project selected three Romano-British cemeteries, focusing on inhumation burials from North Yorkshire and Dorset. Sites were selected from settlements of differing status and function including military, civil, and urbanised. The skeletons selected date from the 2nd - 4th century AD.

S. Leach, M. Lewis, C. Chenery, G. Müldner, H. Eckardt. Migration and diversity in Roman Britain: A multidisciplinary approach to the identification of immigrants in Roman York, England American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 40, 546-561.

Eckardt, H., Chenery, C., Booth, P., Müldner, G., Evans, J.A. & Lamb, A (in press). Oxygen and strontium Isotope Evidence for Mobility in Roman Winchester. Journal of Archaeological Science.

Carolyn Chenery, Gundula Müldner, Jane Evans, Hella Eckardt Stephany Leach, Mary Lewis (in press). Strontium and stable isotope evidence for diet and mobility in Roman Gloucester, UK. Journal of Archaeological Sciences.

• NERC Planet Earth
• Reading website

Progress: project completed.

BGS/Bradford Systematic biosphere mapping of ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios across major lithological boundaries

Drs J. Montgomery, University of Bradford
PhD student: Joseph Warham

Strontium isotopes provide a powerful tool for studying the movement of humans and animals across isotopically different terrains because strontium is absorbed by the body and deposited, with calcium, in teeth and bones. However, the use of ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr signature as a tracing tool currently has a major drawback which is stopping it being fully utilized: there is virtually no data available from the biosphere against which to compare measured sample values. Apart from a few sporadic published samples of soil leaches, plants, water and archaeological studies, the isotope composition of the UK biosphere currently has to be extrapolated from a basic understanding of the geology. This is severely hampering the progress and development of Sr based migration and tracking studies.

The aim of this project is to develop a method of mapping biosphere ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr and presenting it using GIS systems for the use of archaeological, forensic and environmental applications.

“Mapping Sr-Isotope Ratios for Archaeological Applications” talk presented at UKAS 2009 meeting.

Progress: project 60% complete

AHRC funded: The Beaker Isotope Project

NIGL is involved in a collaborative, AHRC funded, project entitled 'The Beaker Isotope Project' collaborating with Prof M. Parker Pearson & Dr Andrew Chamberlain at University of Sheffield, and Prof. Mike Richards of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

This project is currently in its final year of funding.

• Further details from the Beaker project website at Sheffield

AHRC funded: Pb isotope fingerprinting of Roman coins

Dr. M. Ponting, University of Liverpool

Following on from Ponting et al (2003), this project aims to characterise the Pb isotope composition of Roman silver coins from known times and places across the Roman empire.

• Liverpool website

M. Ponting, J. A. Evans and V. Pashley. 2003. ‘Fingerprinting of Roman Mints using Laser Ablation MC-ICP-MS lead isotope analysis’, Archaeometry 45.4, 591-597.

Progress: analytical phase completed