McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research annual report 2018-19

Research
Marta Mirazon Lahr
A practical session for biological anthropology students.
The physical proximity of our laboratories with those in
other departments also means that we can continue to
develop synergies as our range of activities expands. The
well-established collaboration between our Dorothy
Garrod Laboratory for Isotopic Analysis and the Godwin
Laboratory at the Earth Sciences Department continues
to deliver notable results on carbon, nitrogen, oxygen,
and strontium isotopes, including the recently published
results on the Portus Project. In addition, we are accessing
various ICP-MS for the analysis of inorganic materials in
Earth Sciences and Geography, as well as the Qemscan and
other microanalysis facilities in Earth Sciences and Materials
Science and Metallurgy. In due course we will report
on further archaeological science collaborations under
development, for example with the Fitzwilliam Museum,
the British Museum and the Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology.
A few research highlights
It is impossible to list here all the successful grants and
research achievements of the past year, and readers are
encouraged to browse through the Research Highlights
and Publications sections of this Annual Report to get a
flavour of some of them. We can only report a few selected
examples:
• Encounter, the ERC Starting Grant Project led by Enrico
Crema, was launched in April. The project will investigate
the transition to farming in Japan, reconstructing
demographic changes and modelling the spread of rice
and millet in the Japanese archipelago.
• Beasts to Craft (B2C), the ERC Advanced Grant led by
Matthew Collins, is pioneering an approach to the
materiality of parchment from the standpoint of the
preparation and use of animal skins.
• Charly French, Tonko Rajkovača and three PhD students
(Petros Chatzimpaloglou, Mike Lewis, Ian Ostericher)
undertook the first geoarchaeological assessment of
the Drenovački valley. This revealed a re-modelled valley
filled with hillwash burying a substantial early Neolithic
settlement as a consequence of clearance for agriculture.
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