Ossamenta

This week has been so busy: Monday started with two classes: a general research for masters students, and then the ancient biomolecules class that's my reason for being in York this term. Tuesday morning I was introduced to the BioArCh team at the main campus, and in the afternoon I left for the airport.

I'm part of the National School of Historical Research back home in Sweden and just to make things complicated for me, their big meeting for the first year PhD students took place when I was in the UK. So I had no choice but to fly back to Sweden for the meeting. It was very nice though: for three days we were wined and dined in a hotel/conference centre in a small town near Lund, where each of us had to present our research and got useful constructive criticism, and discuss some general historical themes related to the older PhD students' research in small groups.

I couldn't do the last day: I had to leave at a very early flight to London, and then onwards to Oxford for the Chickens and People conference, where the now-ending Chicken Project presented their very interesting research results. All talks were filmed and I would love to give you the link to the videos, but I just can't find any. Perhaps they're not up yet? I'll keep you posted.

Saturday was back to York, after a wander around Oxford on a beautiful sunny day - I really wish I had had more time there. I had barely come through the door when I was whisked away to a late Burn's Night dinner party, so my plans for an early night was scuppered. But sometimes you just have to prioritize fun in good company before proper sleep.

Sunday was the last day of the York Resident's Festival weekend, where lots of places were open out of season with free entry for York residents and students. Luckily for me most events were both Saturday and Sunday, so I wasn't too limited by only being in town for the Sunday. I managed to see all the things on my list and a few more besides, but oh what a busy day. Not helped by the lack of map in the broschure - they really could learn from the Oxford Open Doors event - I doubled back several times. I particularly liked the 18th townhouse Fairfax House, and it's on my list to visit when it's open regularly. This weekend much furniture were under winter wraps and the dining room was closed.

I wish I could have a long lie-in tomorrow, but as it's Monday, it's a full day's worth of lectures...

Despite the general view of 2016 as a shit year, with lots of beloved celebrities dying, it was quite a good year for me. I got accepted as a fully funded PhD student in Sweden, and in the middle of summer I packed (almost all) my belongings in a van and did an international move. Workwise I primarily assessed one big multi-period rural site and two medieval/post-medieval Oxford College kitchen assemblages that my successor in Oxford will do the reports for. I hope he does them well - I really love the college assemblages. Definitely an idea for a post-doc there, if I can get a good angle that will appeal to the buzzwords of 2020.

After the move I had hoped to be fully moved in by mid-autumn, but no. Still stuff everywhere, and will probably be so for the next year too. It's hard to get going with proper organizing when you have a full work week to, so to say, work around. I still haven't used my new sofa, as it's been full of various paperwork. (Look: a flat surface - quick, put something on it!)

The PhD-ing seems to go well. The expected first term flailing around and getting one's bearings, two obligatory courses that interfered with research, but better do them now than later on, when it's more stressful.

All the money got spent in the move, so there were no conferences or long holidays this time, not even a PZG meeting. Next year I have a 10-week course in York to look forward to, and I hope to be able to take some time for mini-breaks in the north of England (and Scotland?) then.

Two weeks in and I've already had a glimpse of my (potential) future: yesterday the woman I'm sharing the office with had her disputation. This is the final part of the long years towards a PhD. It's a public defense of your thesis, with where an "opponent" (usually an expert in your field from a different university) asks you questions about your thesis - about methodology decisions and your results - and you have to answer them. Hopefully it'll be an interesting discussion. The room also includes a grading "jury" (higher-ups from other departments) who also asks you questions and will be the ones who decide whether you could give satisfactorily answers and if you should be accepted as a doctor. Of course once you reach the disputation defence it's 99% certain the answer will be yes, but still...

It was a good disputation: relevant questions leading to a discussion, and quite short, only 1.5 hours (worst case scenario they go on for many hours). The room was packed - people sitting in the aisles - and I could feel the oxygen slowly slipping out. I hope I managed to yawn discreetly. Then we all headed off to the department for snacks and drinks while grading jury discussed for an hour (!). But finally they emerged and pronounced Lovisa a Doctor of Philosophy!

In the evening there was the traditional post-disputation dinner which I had been invited to. A three course meal in - again - a packed room (we were four people below the official limit), with lots of speeches, toasts and songs. My brain was running forward in time thinking about which people I would invite for my dinner, who would give speeches and what would they say. I had a really good time, but with plans for Saturday I decided to leave "early" before the trains became infrequent. (and my body still decided to wake up at 8am even though I could sleep in...)

I've had so much to tell, but been too busy to sit down and actually post.

In April, I was given a grant to continue and finalize my sheep sexing study. The trip to Historic England's skeleton reference collection would merit a post on its own, and that was indeed the plan. But, life happened. To cut a long story short, all sheep pelves from the Medieval Wool Project has been recorded and while I still need to properly analyse the results, there seem to be a pattern in sex-related morphology. I should be able to show ways of identifying castrated sheep, provided I can clearly explain morphological changes in a 3D object in words and pictures. Somehow a video might be easier, but that's not so easy to publish in journals.

As long-time readers of this blog know, I've been trying to get a PhD for several years now. The application to an osteology PhD at Uppsala University this January got me to the interview stage, but they chose someone else in the end. But I'm not been one to give up easily, so I kept an eye out for other options and kept applying. And finally, Lund University liked my research proposal and offered me a PhD position! So for the next four years I will bury myself in parchment production (look - new icon!), literacy, medieval animal husbandry strategies, craft organization etc. It will be so much fun!

It's already July, and my deadline clock is ticking. I'm moving at the end of the month, so I have to pack everything - and after eleven years working here, I have a lot of articles and books. Knowledge is a light burden, books and articles less so. I will miss Oxford and my colleagues so much. It's been really fun working here, with such a variety of projects, both in time period and site type. And despite my best intentions earlier, I will unfortunately miss both the IMC in Leeds and the EAA conference in Vilnius; there is simply not enough money or time right now.

But it's a beautiful sunny Sunday out there, and I should go out and enjoy the day. Perhaps the new exhibition at the Ashmolean, or tea and cake at a café?

The Oxford university library is good, but it doesn't have everything I need for my reports and for my research. Luckily on Copac you can search for books and journals in several university and institute libraries all over UK and Ireland. So this week I took a trip to London, to the Natural History Museum's library. Normally, say if I need a book at the British Library, I'd go on a Saturday, so I can combine work with meeting up with friends, but the NHM (and many other libraries) is only open weekdays... On the other hand, it was quite nice to be able to walk straight in, no queues and no hordes of screaming small children all over the place.

I did go for a wander around the museum afterwards, seeing the stone pillars with carved fish in the minerals section (I assume that's where the old fish collection was), and one of the Tower lions in the treasures room. I had seen that skull before, when it was included in the royal manuscripts exhibition at the British Library a few years back. I even bought a little badge with it as a souvenir (which is how I could see it was the same skull).

I also nipped in to the Victoria and Albert Museum across the street, to see the Europe 1600-1815 galleries that had been closed for a long time. There were lots of very pretty things (as you would expect from the V&A). I think my favourite was this glass goblet: a trick goblet, where you have to know exactly how to drink in order to not pour the wine all over yourself.

A little tip: if you're going to visit either museum (or, for that matter the neighbouring Science Museum) on a weekday, go on Tuesdays. That's when they have a farmers' market on Queen's Lawn (off Imperial College Road) and because it's in the middle of the university, around lunch hour, there was one man selling bread, one man selling vegetables, and about fifteen stalls selling hot food and about five stalls selling cake. Lots of queues to all food stalls so I was pretty certain that whatever I chose would be tasty.

Today has been a day of cold. After a short break, it seems as if the English winter is back, and while the temperature is on the right side of minus, the windchill probably drove it down below. I've been slightly chilled the whole day, from the office to the library to the café, so right now I'm bundled up in bed and intend to stay there until tomorrow morning.

But apart from that it's been a good day. I'm writing up a report on a big Iron Age and Roman site which will keep me busy for several more days and I had a meeting with Angela about the course on animal bones and zooarchaeology at the Natural History Museum that I will be part of. So this weekend I will have to sit down and write the case study I'll be presenting at the course. I have a feeling that the majority of the time will be spent on either hunting up cool photos or making graphs...

I looked at last year's End of the Year review, and had a bit of deja vu. This has been another Christmas spent writing PhD applications. Hopefully I'll have better luck with these ones.

Otherwise, 2015 has been quite a good year for me. Workwise I've been occupied with one Roman semi-urban site with a huge bone working deposit and one Iron Age - Roman rural site with lots of Iron Age ritual deposits, i.e. weird semi-articulated or whole animal burials often in pits. All the recording has been done for the last one, and in January I'll write the report. I'd like to find time to write an article on the bone working deposit - they are not that common from Roman sites, and this one is quite odd compared to other published ones.

I went to the PZG meeting in August, where we discussed interesting new research and methods of dog/fox/wolf identification. Then in the beginning of September I went to Glasgow for the EAA conference and had a great time! It was followed up with a short holiday in Edinburgh (it's only an hour away from Glasgow, so whyever not?). I apologise for not having written up the conference report yet. I tried to do some tweeting, but I fear this tweet summarizes my conference-tweeting experience. On the other hand, I like twitter as a snapshot commentary and I will definitely keep using it. On the third hand, I'm enough old-school not to have notification of incoming tweets/emails, so it's more an intermittent use than ongoing tweeting for me.

Research-wise, I did some recording of sheep pelves for a sheep sexing study, but I've realised that I need more data (of course...) so my research continues next year. I'm also looking forward to doing the assessment (i.e. preliminary recording and analysis of potential in a bone assemblage) for an Oxford college kitchen assemblage.

In the current bone assemblage I'm recording I came across a sheep burial (probably remains from a feast - deposited in a pit right at the entrance to a big enclosure and with chop marks on the ribs) that made me raise both my eyebrows in a 'you got to be kidding me'- way.

The pelvis looked like the castrated sheep in English Heritage's collection, but the horn cores looked like typical ram horn cores... I'm working on the theory that this is a relatively late* castrated sheep, and that pelvis shape will override horn core shape in the complicated way hormones can shape the body. Definitely a case of more information needed, damnit! I can see myself trying to get hold of records of other sheep burials just to build up a dataset. This would be particularly relevant if late castration will have a difference in how horn cores and pelves develop.

It's unfortunate that most animal bone assemblages come from food and butchery waste, where the bones are only individual fragments, entirely disassociated with the animal they came from. Such a difference from research on human remains, where we (mostly) deal with the entire person and can see how diseases/traumas could affect the whole body, not just single body parts.


*: The flocks from EH's collection had to follow modern day animal welfare regulations, which state that castration of livestock must occur within the first few days after birth.

Spotted on the New Book Display shelves in the fabulous* Sackler library in Oxford (dealing with archaeology, classics and art history):

Gitte Hansen, Steven P. Ashby and Irene Baug (eds) (2015) Everyday products in the Middle Ages. Crafts, consumption and the individual in northern Europe c. AD 800-1600. Oxbow Books.

I’ve heard about this book for a while now, but was waiting to see it in the flesh, as it were, before deciding to buy or not. And it seems like a highly useful book if you are interested in basic consumer goods, its production, the craftspeople and the consumers in Medieval northern Europe.

The list of contents is up at the publisher, and it has quite a variety in its topics, from general articles on craftspeople, to pottery and glass imports, leather working, bone and antler working, textiles, stone working, iron production and blacksmithing.


*: not because it’s particularly fancy – it’s not – but because they have so much useful and interesting stuff.

It's the end of the first conference day and I'm knackered. Talks from 8am to 6pm - I filled nine A4 pages in my notebook. But it was interesting talks, on topics as shattered as scientific analyses of Roman eggshells, written records on 14th century sheep houses, and medieval urban waste managements. And then there was a party afterwards in the greenhouses in the botanical gardens. I was too busy taking notes to tweet someting - hope you weren't too disappointed. Tomorrow will be a bit easier: the talks only lasts until half past three. Hopefully I can find some time to see the Hunterian museum.