How long is your word count?

So a little on the current project, and what I've been doing academically.

I like to think I've got wide interests in Archaeology, and I try to absorb all of the knowledge I can, but in the end you have to specialise. My favourite topics have been, by degrees, prospection (that which Time Team and NOBODY ELSE calls Geophys...), human bones, animal bones, and textiles. The one I've ended up with, however, is human palaeoecology, with a heavy concentration on palaeoethnobotany. That's essentially plants and how we use them, although I've spent lots of this year branching out to include animal bones as well. It's all about ecosystems and economics, stable environments, fringe environments, and just how we as a species have managed to cling onto existence for quite so very long. Quite a pressing issue actually in these days of environmental calamity.

For some reason the following appeared when I Google Image Searched environmentalism... guess it's sort of a self-sustaining environment...

Aaaanyway... Palaeoecology. It all started somewhere in the middle of my undergrad degree, when the panic that is "what the hell do I write my Dissertation on" was just starting to set in. An esteemed pig bone specialist (yes, such things do exist - it's interesting stuff. More later probably.) of our department was giving a seminar on the origins of agriculture, and happened to mention that there were a couple of charred peas in the environmental record, which no-one had done anything with but could produce a dissertation topic.

"Bandwagon!" thinks I... and like the keen student I am (sometimes...) I stayed behind afterwards, and we went to visit my now supervisor (a known pyromaniac), and an idea was born. Setting fire to things - For Science! Not only is this a recognised technique, but actually a very necessary part of environmental archaeology. Calibration preservation studies (Boardman and Jones 1990 on cereal grains if anyone is really that interested, or indeed reading this at all). Essentially I would be taking an area ("Why not Cyprus - I have a contact there, you could go on a dig!" says the supervisor), working out its most frequently found pulses and fruit (Figs, Peas, Chickpeas, Lentils, Olives, and Pistachios as it happens) and...well... setting them on fire. At first in a Kiln to observe changes at known temperatures and then just chucking them on some bonfires! Great fun! A trip to Cyprus and loads of fire! I was sold!

You see, most organic remains found in archaeology are charred - charred remains preserve well and don't get destroyed as easily by organic decay. The charring process is destructive in itself however, and so it is important to work out how much of an assemblage might have been destroyed in the very fire which preserved it. Needless to say the trip to Cyprus was fantastic fun and the excavation very interesting, and the experimental preservation study actually rather fun, as well as providing me with a pretty good final mark for my degree.

This sort of thing, while it may not be as thrilling as being chased by Nazis or dodging rolling rocks, certainly gives me something to do. Which is why for my guided study (essentially a practice research paper) this year, I performed follow-up experiments focusing more on the hearth based burnings. If all goes to plan these might end up getting published at some point next year, so wish me luck and watch this space!

 It just so happened that the aforementioned pyromaniac supervisor also helps run the department's MSc in Human Palaeoecology, which is how I ended up doing it, and why I'm here in the middle of August, three days before my birthday, writing about castles (I know...world's smallest violin!). At some point along the way as the undergrad was wrapping up another member of the department got in touch, and asked me to come and help with his castle. It's a new excavation, and very exciting, and we found stone remains, and gosh its wonderful. Anyway as part of this process I've ended up floating around 60 soil samples to find (as one of my colleagues put it) about six bits of charcoal. OK not literally, but it certainly feels like it. The preservation at the site is...odd, and the sampling has been very much as and when the excavator could manage it and within the constraints of bringing them all back on a 9 hour drive in a minibus.

So since the second four week excavation in April that's been me, surrounded by mud and muddy charcoal, and latterly by excel spreadsheets. No wonder the research fatigue is setting in. It's finally looking like it's getting there though, and as hand in is September 10th this is no bad thing.

One thing which never fails to cheer me up is the bunker mentality of my fellow inmates... sorry classmates.  There's an air of competition around sometimes, particularly when it comes to in class debates of finding funding, but when it comes to the long grind that is the write up nothing helps more than hearing your fellow sufferers groaning under the weight of word counts which sound even more astronomical. Even those who have fled to far flung quarters of the world (a couple of undergrad classmates have switched university for masters, at least one who is still here at Durham has fled the country to ahem "find solitude in writing" or some such). check in from time to time to share the pain, and that feeling of celebration when another thousand word marker point is reached. So good luck and keep going all you thesis-ers out there. First the undergrads left, then the school exam results came out, and now it's just us, still here, plodding along as ever in our caves. We can do this! Motivational SPEEEEECH!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wRkzCW5qI

Once it's over? Well that's when real life hits. Nobody wants that...

Stay ancient everyone, and enjoy the summer!