Department of Archaeology

Laboratories

The Charles McBurney Laboratory for Geoarchaeology

The laboratory is involved in 4 major strands of geoarchaeological research:

1. the decipherment of past landscapes, especially the nature of human impact on soils and landscape systems;
2. the study of anthrosols resulting from different forms of land use, including agricultural fields and settlement practices;
3. the interpretation of intra-setlement use of space and the recognition of human activities in constructed space; and,
4. the geoarchaeological study of stratigraphy, including caves and open-air sites

Researchers at the lab use a combination between survey, soil analytical and modeling techniques, and micromorphological, physical, geo-chemical and isotopic analyses.

Fieldwork and/or analyses associated with existing and new geoarchaeological projects are being underaken in different parts of the planet. A global map of projects can be seen here.

Yearly reports of the McBurney Lab to the McDonald Institute ( 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007 ) provide a good outline of our research profile.

New contracts for micromorphogical studies have recently been obtained from a variety of different projects, including Perry Oaks (Heathrow), Over with the Cambridge Archaeological Unit and for the Departmental training excavation, and at a variety of other sites for contracting units such as the CAU, Norfolk Archaeological Unit, Heritage Lincolnshire, Wessex Archaeology, Hertfordshire Archaeological Trust and English Heritage.

Facilities

The laboratory has an important number of transmitted light microscopes, two digital cameras, and one of the largest reference collections of thin sections from archaeological soils and sediments. It also houses its own thin section production workshop, which specialises in the manufacture of mammoth sized thin section for geoarchaeological investigations. For various physical and chemical analyses, our researchers use existing facilities from the Physical Geography Laboratories, Department of Geography. and external laboratories

Events/News

• Lookout for the September 2009 special issue of CATENA, edited by Dr Charles French, and with contributions of many past and current lab members
• Dr Charles French has been awared the Pilkington Prize.
• At the World Archaeological Congress, Dublin, current and/or past lab members organised themes such as Developing International Geoarchaeology and sessions such as Geoarchaeology and Dark Earths, Landscape Legacies, Landuse and landscape, and the Geoarchaeology of houses. Papers were presented by lab members Manuel Arroyo-Kalin (a, b, c), Federica Sulas (a) and Heejin Lee (a). In addition, Julie Boreham from Earthslides.com delighted WAC attendants with large-sized photographs of thin sections - many from McBurney researchers - at the Hidden Worlds exhibition.
• The Developing International Geoarchaeology Conference was held in Cambridge in April, 2007. The conference was attended by delegates from 17 different countries, and included talks on a very wide range of topics and regions. The conference was preceded by a 2-day workshop of the Archaeological Soil Micromorphology Working Group. The workshop mainly involved practical microscopy work, but it also included poster presentations and two short sessions of papers -- one on Micromorphological Studies of Occupation Deposits, and one on Micromorphological Studies of Landscapes, Land Use, and Resources.

• In 2000 the laboratory hosted the second International Soil Micromorphology in Archaeology Workshop and a day conference on soils research in archaeology