Hello everyone,
We are finally back after the summer. Which was ages ago I know, and it has been quite the summer/early autumn. As mentioned previously, I did manage to get all my enamel and rib ready to be sent away and suck out all my data. Which was great. I was then meant to go to the Lake district for a week and just write before my summer holiday in Spain. However, I got very ill when I was in the Lake district and only managed to write for two days before I had to head home. I did walk Scafell pike when I was sick, which, after thought, was not a great idea but I really wanted to do it. Ended up in A & E before heading to Spain and just spending the time in a hammock really.
Since coming back I have been much better and have been full out. I have presented my project at a interdisciplinary research network conference at Canterbury Christ Church University, which was a fun place to share my project with people not in the field. I have also hosted BABAO (British association for biological anthropology and osteoarchaeology) with my supervisor and friend. It was such an amazing experience with so many people from all around presenting incredible research. I was very lucky to be able to present at the conference as well, not my project, but something I did in 2019. Which received great feedback. On Monday until Wednesday, I was completely flat out. All my energy drained. But very happy.
Not only that, but I was part of a Time Team dig in Lincoln first weekend of October. I was there as a part of my supervisors project, Hidden Histories Unearthed. We started last year but this year it has entered its own project phase which will be great.
Me and Laura in our gear ready for a weekend of supervising test pits
Teaching has started as well. Twice a week I will be in to help out in the lab sessions and I run my own bone club for the students to get some extra learning in their ever so hectic time schedule.
Since end of July I haven’t had time to rest or reflect on what I need to do next to be fair. So this will be it.
I now feel really ready to start back up again. Waiting for my data to come back to me and figure out what our next move is. I had to re-run one of my enamel runs as I had some dodgy readings come back so that has been fun. Now I am constantly thinking I have done something wrong and my next run will also be off.
I would also like to present a very initial osteobiography (just what we found so far) on the people from Newark. I think it would be nice if you all got to see what we have so far. I’ll add a little graph with our age and sex distribution. We do also have stature and pathology, but I have not made it look nice in a graph just yet and there might be some adjustments on that.
The distribution of sex amongst the people of late Anglo-Saxon Newark
Age distribution amongst the late Anglo-Saxon people from Newark
The project is definitely moving forwards and it feels like we are getting somewhere. It is exciting to see it taking shape and results starting to come out of it. The next update will probably be some initial data results from my isotopes. Follow my Insta handle for more frequent updates on what is going on.
See you all soon
Tanja
