Category / Archaeology

GeoNet cultural heritage landscapes and deathscapes

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Knowledge Exchange, REF Subjects, Research themes

In our last GeoNet seminar Craig Young and Tim Darville discussed cultural heritage landscapes and deathscapes, followed by Anne Luce who examined the presentation of suicide in the media.

Craig Young introduced the seminar discussing the evolving patterns of death and the changing social attitudes towards death. The physical absence of the dead body is becoming significantly apparent when illustrating the changes in the memorialisation of the dead. For example, new ways of scattering ashes such as sending in to space, converting it in to diamonds as a permanent keepsake and using social media to contact others to help spread ashes to different continents. An increase in the memorialisation at the site of death in the form of roadside shrines indicates a shift away from official ceremonies to more informal and open displays of grief.

Tim Darville, who has recently published on life, death, ritual and regional identity in Britain c. 1600 BC, discussed the relationship and practices between the living and dead. He used Stonehenge as an example. I found it interesting to discover that Stonehenge originated as a burial ground, and as a monument to the dead. Darville went on to explain links between the spatial orientations of the stone structures with the celestial calendar.  The landscape changes from contained to dispersed, each holding its own celestial meaning as a burial site.

Anne Luce carried on the discussion talking about suicide in the media. Changes in attitude towards suicides have resulted in more high profile suicides reported in the media. For example, the Bridgend suicides in Wales 2008 were presented by the media as a suicide cult, therefore being picked up by the international press. The growth in social media sites, such as Facebook, has led to personal and public displays of remembrance in the form of memorial pages, which in some instances has led to an increased awareness of online bullying as a main cause of suicide.

Charlotte Unwin, GeoNet Intern

The virtual and the field: enhancing visualisation in archaeology using serious game technologies

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

The FIF funded collaborative project between the Creative Technology and Archaeology Frameworks has produced another output.

Virtual&Field

A visualisation of the Iron Age banjo enclosure discovered in the Bournemouth University Durotriges Big Dig at Winterborne Kingston has been produced using Unreal Engine 4. The system allows users to explore the environment as it may have appeared in the Iron Age at a human scale.

This was a pilot study that was produced as part of a Fusion Investment Fund project at Bournemouth University in collaboration between staff and students on the Archaeology and Games Technology courses. It is anticipated that the environment will be further developed by Games Technology students as part of their final year project studies with enhancements made to the existing environment and with the addition of visualisations of the same site at different historical periods of habitation.

A fly through of the Iron Age environment can be seen at:

For more information about the visualisation please contact djohn@bournemouth.ac.uk.

The ceremonial landscapes and funerary monuments of southern Britain

Fusion

Following a successful application to the Fusion Investment Fund I have been awarded a period of Study Leave, to move on a body of research to publication. Under the umbrella title of ‘ The ceremonial landscapes and funerary monuments of southern Britain’ I will be bringing together material from seven seasons of archaeological field work focussed upon the later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age monuments found in the Allen Valley on Cranborne Chase in east Dorset. The cluster of henge monuments at Knowlton and a dense concentration of round barrows associated with them have been an important factor associated with my research interests since 1994. This grouping of broadly contemporary archaeological monuments has up until recently been under explored even though the importance of the group it can be argued is on a par with better known ceremonial complexes such as  those at Stonehenge, Avebury and Orkney.

Amongst the discoveries made during the fieldwork was the discovery of a late Neolithic house, one of the most complete examples thus far discovered in the UK and an unusual mortuary complex which offers important and exciting new insights into the burial ritual and practices at the beginning of the 2nd millennia BC.

The study leave period will be starting in the late summer and I am very much looking forward to the dedicated space and time so necessay to bring together this large body of work.

Excavations at High Lea Farm 2007 ( Early Bronze Age Barrow and later Saxon cemetery)

Scanning Brains, Bones, and Artefacts: Magnetic Resonance Imaging at Poole Hospital

For the past two years I have made very slow progress in attempting to convince Poole Hospital to open access to their MRI scanners for research purposes.  Whilst I had originally responded to an email from them it seems there were not at all ready to deal with my requests. More recently there has been some positive movement on the issue.  I am hoping that this technology might interest you.  Poole Hospital has three scanners of two field strengths: two at 1.5T and one at 3T, the latter being the standard for neuroimaging, but the former being of use for high-resolution structural scans of people and objects.  The applications for this type of technology are many; in psychological research it is used most commonly to get brain scans of patients or to measure brain activity as people perform tasks, but has been used effectively as an analytical tool in Archeology and Sports Science; you will know better than I how this technology has been used in your fields.  I am trying to gauge the level of interest in this technology at BU so as to make a better case  to BU and to the hospital.  Please contact me on bparris@bournemouth.ac.uk if there is utility in the use of this technology in your research or teaching or if there could be in the future.

Ideas in Conflict

Publishing

The question of why our species engages in war is one that goes to the heart of human nature, often generating starkly polarised views as to whether the peculiarly human propensity to engage in organized conflict between groups is something ‘hard wired’ in our species or is simply a product of particular social systems that promote such behaviour. In considering this question an aspect often debated is the extent to which war should be seen as a fairly recent development, absent before civilization, or whether it has been around much longer going deep into the human past. In relation to this latter the answers people generate may depend largely on the kind of data they focus on. Past conflict can generally be detected via four strands of evidence: written sources, artefacts (weapons, armour etc.), defensive structures and human remains. Of these four, the first three come with a range of problems; weapons and defences may simply be statements of prestige or status and reveal little about how much actual conflict there was in the past, meanwhile written sources are characteristically biased and incomplete and together represent only 1-2% of the time modern humans have existed.
Instead our new book The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflict (edited by Chris Knüsel, Exeter and Martin Smith, BU) focuses specifically on human remains in order to ask the question: ‘if human burials were our only window onto the past, what story would they tell?’ Skeletal injuries constitute the most direct and unambiguous evidence for violence in the past, and in fact offer clear and unequivocal evidence of physical hostilities reaching as far back as we have burials to examine.
Warfare is often dismissed as ‘senseless’ and as having no place in society. Consequently, its place in social relations and societal change remains obscure. The studies in this volume combine to present an overview of the nature and development of human conflict from prehistory to recent times as evidenced by the remains of past people themselves in order to explore the social contexts in which such injuries were inflicted. A broadly chronological approach is taken ranging from the Krapina Neanderthals, to Neolithic Asia, Precolumbian Peru, First World War France, and 1990’s Rwanda. However this book is not simply a catalogue of injuries illustrating changes in technology or a narrative detailing ‘progress’ in warfare but rather provides a framework in which to explore both continuity and change based on a range of important themes that hold continuing relevance throughout human development.
Taken together these studies demonstrate not only the antiquity of war but also the extent to which processes and mechanisms acting to promote or limit intergroup conflict in the context of prehistoric villages hold equal relevance for the global village today. We conclude that war may not be an evolutionary adaptation in itself but rather a by-product of other ‘hard-wired’ mechanisms that may be exploited as part of a social strategy by which individuals and groups attempt to advance their own interests. This is a heartening point as this means that rather than an inevitable human universal, war can be seen as something that might eventually be dispensed with altogether. The last word on human conflict is far from being written, but when it is it need not be a pessimistic one.

International Day of the Disappeared 2013

Dr Melanie Klinkner studies the use of forensic science for investigation and prosecution of atrocities such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Here she talks about the International Day of the Disappeared.

Today serves as a reminder of the number of people around the world who are missing as a result of armed conflicts. We remember the families who face a daily struggle to understand what has happened to their loved one.

Dr Melanie KlinknerEnforced disappearances have been and continue to be used by oppressive regimes in an attempt to dispose of political opponents secretly and to instil fear in the population. Article 2 of the Convention for the Protection for all Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2006) defines disappearances as ‘the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with authorisation, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law’.

The Red Cross work tirelessly to reunite families where possible and organisations such as the International Commission on Missing Person support identification of bodies.

In the aftermath of conflict and gross human rights violations, there is an overwhelming need of the families is to know the truth about the fate of their loved ones and, where the worst has happened, to receive their human remains as an absolute proof of death and to facilitate burial and commemoration rituals.

This need is mirrored in international human rights and international humanitarian law development, which has advanced the recognition of victim rights of national or international crimes and human rights abuses. The Basic Principles encompass the need for victims and their families to know the truth about what happened to their loved ones and demands that the bodies of those disappeared are recovered, identified and buried.

Melanie works alongside Ian Hanson and Paul Cheetham in the School of Applied Sciences, who have developed standard operating procedures for forensic investigation of mass graves. These have been used internationally in judicial and humanitarian contexts, bringing those responsible for atrocity crimes to justice and providing much needed answers to families.

Read more about the Red Cross

Dr Melanie Klinkner’s profile

International Commission on Missing Persons

BU Research Blog Exclusive: Design & Look of eBU leaked

PG research, Publishing, Research themes

The first screenshot of the eBU interface has been exclusively leaked to the BU Research Blog, and is expected to go viral across the BU community over the next week.

eBU will provide both an internal and external forum for the development of research papers by undergraduate to Professor around the eight BU research themes:

–          Creative & Digital Economies

–          Culture & Society

–          Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth

–          Environmental Change & Biodiversity

–          Green Economy & Sustainability  

–          Health, Wellbeing & Ageing 

–          Leisure & Recreation

–          Technology & Design

Submissions will be open to immediate publication (in a safe internal environment) and open peer review by 2 appropriate BU academics. Authors will be encouraged to act upon these reviews by either reworking papers for submission to an external journal or by opting for publication on the external eBU site.

For BU academics this is a great opportunity to get critical appraisal on your research papers or ideas from colleagues. For academics it also an opportunity to encourage the submission of high quality student output, and possibly to facilitate the co-creation and co-production of publishable material to an external journal or to publish externally with eBU. For students, this is a fantastic opportunity to turn high quality essays or dissertations into scholarly outputs, which will be attractive to employers across many sectors and industries.

If you have any questions or would like to become involved in this exciting venture, please get in touch with me via email aharding@bournemouth.ac.uk or by telephone 01202 963025.

Bridging the Gap: Addressing new-graduate employability within the archaeological profession

Fusion, Post-award

The ‘Bridging the Gap’ project was funded by the Staff Mobility and Networking Stream. We were aware that the archaeology profession had concerns over skills gaps, and before attempting to bridge that gap we wanted to find out more…

‘Bridging the Gap’ has been a highly successful networking and information gathering exercise, which will inform and drive actions to better prepare students for careers within archaeology, to better meet the needs of the profession and to enhance both subject-specific employability and transferable skills.
‘For me the most positive aspect of the day was the HE sector engaging with the commercial sector… I was also cheered in that there seems to be an interest, willingness even, for the two sectors to interact more fully in the future’ Gary Brown, Managing Director Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd. FAME Representative (Federation of Archaeological Managers and Employers).
Links with professional practitioners, employers and BU have been strengthened and renewed through the Archaeological Professional Practice Forum and targeted visits. The response to this event from the archaeological profession has been extremely positive, and will facilitate improved participation of employers within the curriculum, at BU career events and as placement and volunteer hosts.
‘Get as much practical experience as possible. All experience is good experience!’ Angus Forshaw, Community Archaeologist, Wessex Archaeology.
First hand advice directly for students on improving employability has been collected from archaeology and heritage industry professionals.
‘I found it useful to hear that students who have made the most of their university experience by spending extra time volunteering, are far more likely to find work within their field after graduation. I believe that it is very important for students to fully understand this, and also the wide variety of opportunities for volunteering available to them.’ Amy LoGalbo, Level I Archaeology student.
Student participation in this project has been highly informative of student experience, attitudes and activities relevant to enhancing employability and career development within the archaeological profession. The individual students directly involved with the project clearly benefitted from experience of hearing from employers first hand and valued the opportunity to engage in debate and to feedback into actions.
‘I can think of no better development than a triad of student, university & employer working towards students exiting with a focus/direction and improved and evidential set of skills’. John Gale, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, BU.
There has been positive engagement by academic and support staff, external practitioners and the students themselves. The information gathered has enabled the development of an evidence-based action plan that identifies areas and mechanisms for improving extra-curricular engagement and ‘industry readiness’ of archaeology graduates.