"Small performances": investigating the typographic punches of John Baskerville (1707-75) through heritage science and practice-based research
At the intersection among the arts, science, and technology, printing is widely recognised as the invention of the millennium. However, and in spite of a resurgence of traditional typographic methods among artists and craftspeople, letterpress equipment and technology face an uncertain future.
At the invitation of a local university and the island's Ministry of Culture's IPC, the CHRC - Chris Evans & Marie Louise Stig Sørensen - have been investigating its early Portuguese town of Cidade Velha since 2006. Founded in the middle decades of the 15th century, and then for some three centuries the Islands' capital, it became a major hub of the Atlantic Slave Trade, with thousands of Africans transhipped each year to the Americas.
Enhancing Fenland Farming: Applying Insights from Archaeology
The project will research how archaeological and palaeoecological narratives of past land management and climate change adaptation can shape sustainable farming, regenerative agriculture, and rewilding strategies in the Cambridgeshire Fenlands. The nationally important agricultural area is extremely vulnerable to climate change, and the mentioned strategies are considered key mitigation options.
Redressing Extinction: Using Environmental Archaeology to Trace the Mode and Tempo of Afro-Indigenous Creolization in the Caribbean
This project investigates when Afro-Indigenous societies emerged in the Caribbean and how the tempo and mode of Creolization varied across ecological and colonial contexts? This inquiry is grounded in environmental archaeology and focuses on the Caribbean—particularly Puerto Rico—as a space of Indigenous-African-European encounters and transformations. The project challenges prevailing narratives of Taíno extinction by investigating the material and ecological traces of Indigenous persistence and Afro-Indigenous ethnogenesis from 1450 to 1815 AD.