Collaborative projects

Collaborative projects between UoN and BGS related to geochemistry and archaeology.

AHRC Box Office Bears

Professor Hannah O'Regan is the principal investigator on this AHRC-funded project exploring the history of animal baiting in the early modern period. The Box Office Bears project will revolutionise our understanding of baiting, an entertainment form that, despite huge amounts of research on the early modern period, has been completely overlooked in current scholarship. The results will challenge current orthodoxy about the relationship between baiting and the playhouses, and provide a new medium for the examination of gender roles, entertainment and human-animal relationships in the early modern period.

Newton Advanced International Fellowship

Newton Advanced International Fellowship.

Dr Holly Miller who has been successful in securing a Newton Advanced International Fellowship with project partners: Jane Evans, Angela Lamb, Simon Chenery and Julian Henderson. The grant focuses on building capacity for sustainable archaeological science and heritage in Turkey. More information can be found on the following Blogs: Newton Advanced Fellowship: BGS Training Program Week One, and Building Capacity for Archaeological Science in Turkey.

Investigating the interactions between human societies and animals though time

The Easter E.G.

AHRC funded 'Exploring the Easter E.G. – Shifting Baselines and Changing Perceptions of Cultural and Biological Aliens' is a collaboration between PI Dr Naomi Sykes UoN, Dr Phillip Shaw (University of Leicester) and Prof Gregor Larson (University of Oxford). The project will focus on the animals associated with Easter – the brown hare, rabbit and chicken. These animals are all "alien" to Britain and the project seeks to understand their origins and domestication, including the application of stable isotope analysis in collaboration with Dr Angela Lamb (BGS/UoN) and Dr Holly Miller (UoN/BGS).

AHRC funded 'Going Places: Empowering Women, Enhancing Heritage and Increasing Chicken Production in Ethiopia' seeks to address the position of women in Ethiopia and the role that chicken production has within this. The project is led by Dr Naomi Sykes (UoN/BGS) and includes the application of stable isotope analysis in collaboration with Dr Angela Lamb (BGS/UoN) and Dr Holly Miller (UoN/BGS).

Primate Diets: Modern and fossil

Oyster mushroom

Research between Dr Hannah O'Regan UoN, Dr Angela Lamb BGS and Carolyn Chenery BGS in collaboration with Dr Sarah Elton (Durham) and Prof Lorenzo Rook (Firenze) has focussed on diets of modern and fossil primates. We have looked at the C, N and O isotope ratios in the modern rhesus macaque, as it is one of the few primate species with both a temperate and tropical range (O'Regan et al. 2008; Chenery et al., 2011). These data will be used as a proxy for studying diet in Plio-Pleistocene European macaques, which became extinct in the last glaciation. Most recently Hannah and Angela, in collaboration with Dr Dave Wilkinson (Liverpool John Moores University), have been investigating the possible contribution of mushrooms to the stable isotope values observed in archaeological human remains. Our pilot work examined fungi from three localities in North West England and is currently being written up for publication.

Investigating the interactions between human societies and animals though time

Fallow bones

The Fallow Deer Project is an AHRC funded collaboration between Dr Naomi Sykes UoN, Prof Jane Evans UoN/BGS and Prof Alan Hoezel (Durham University) which seeks to understand the movement, migration and introduction of this species across Europe and its significance to Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman societies. Dr Angela Lamb BGS leads the stable isotope research on the project working with PDRAs Dr Holly Miller UoN/BGS VRA and Dr Richard Madgwick (Madgwick et al. 2013) now at Cardiff University.

Chickens have been associated with humans for the last 8000 years. The AHRC large grant Changing Cultural and Scientific Perspectives of Human-Chicken Interactions was awarded to Dr Mark Maltby of Bournemouth University in collaboration with Dr Naomi Sykes UoN and researchers from the Universities of York, Durham, Leicester, and Roehampton. Dr Angela Lamb BGS and Prof Jane Evans UoN/BGS will be working with Dr Naomi Sykes using stable isotope analysis to focus on the dietary relationship between the birds and their keepers.

Production and trade

Example of glasses and glazed ceramics along the Silk Road

Tracing production, exchange and trade of glasses and glazed ceramics along the Silk Road forms the basis for a discipline-bridging collaborative project (the Silk Road Project) between Prof Julian Henderson UoN, Dr Simon Chenery BGS and Prof Jane Evans BGS/UoN with 5 associated research students along with researchers at the Museum for Islamische Kunst (Berlin), the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library (International Dunhuang Project) and Northwestern University (China). The project is funded by the Centre for Advanced Studies. In addition there is also ongoing a British Academy funded project on origin and spread of the earliest (Hittite) elite use of glass in Turkey between Prof Julian Henderson UoN, Dr Simon Chenery BGS and Prof Jane Evans BGS/UoN, The Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology and Koç University in Istanbul.