Postcards from the field: Archaeology.

Greetings from Tenerife!

And yes, it is as hot as it looks!

Most people come here for the beaches, but we are more interested in volcanic ash than sand. In the photo, myself and Dr Emma Horn are taking samples of ash and pumice fragments from a deposit created when Tenerife volcano erupted around 280,000 years ago.

It was massive – more than 15 times larger than the 2011 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland, which closed European air space. 

These samples are an important part of our CAVES Africa Project.

This is examining the potential impact of past climate changes on early modern humans over the last 300,000 years. A core question is whether periods of increased environmental variability can be linked to known phases of behavioural innovation in Middle Stone Age humans.

To answer this question, we need detailed reconstructions of past environments and accurate dates for these. We use a multidisciplinary approach that includes isotopic analyses of small mammal teeth from caves, marine cores, and archaeological archives.

But we need a way to tie all these different records together – which is where the volcanic ash layers come in. 

During a volcanic eruption, ash and pumice can be dispersed hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away from the volcano. If we know the date of when a volcanic eruption occurred, we can then use these ash layers to accurately date sites that are far from the volcano.

Back in our lab at Oxford, we chemically characterise these eruption samples to produce an ‘eruption fingerprint.’ We are building large databases of these fingerprints so that we can accurately link any volcanic ash that we find in archaeological sites to a particular eruption – even if the eruption took place very far away.

The technical name for this is ‘tephrochronology.’ For instance, we have identified the deposits of other younger eruptions from Tenerife in marine cores off the coast of NW Africa, 450 km away. 

Ultimately, we are working to produce the first, high-precision interlinked record for understanding environmental conditions during the Middle Stone Age and how periods of increased climate instability may have impacted behavioural developments in human societies. 

Besides Tenerife, we have also taken samples from volcanoes across the Azores for this project.

Taking samples is quite straightforward; as you can see from the photo, you don’t need a great deal of specialist equipment. Which is just as well if things don’t go to plan!

For instance, on our field trip to the Azores, our checked luggage didn’t get loaded onto the plane so we had a day of sampling in the clothes that we had in our hand luggage using some cutlery from the Airbnb. 

I’d better sign off – we have a hike of several kilometres back to our accommodation, with several kilograms of ash and pumice to carry on our backs. Looking forward to a cool swim later. 

Best wishes,

Professor Victoria Smith, School of Archaeology.

Greetings from The Bahamas!

We have been working in The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands to understand how the islands' pre-Columbian population – known as the Lucayans – adapted to the challenging environment they present.  

The clear blue waters make a lovely backdrop, but there is very limited freshwater here, and no sources of hard stone that could be used to make tools.

Not to mention the frequent hurricanes (although we’ve managed to avoid those so far!).

So, our question is how did humans survive here for so long? And how were these fragile island ecosystems affected by the arrival of humans? 

To answer these, we have been collaborating with colleagues in The Bahamas to carry out radiocarbon dating and isotopic studies on Lucayan human skeletons from sites on the islands. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes can give us a broad picture of what people ate in the past, and so provide valuable insights into how the Lucayans adapted to their island home.

Many of these remains were found during mining of bat guano from caves in the Colonial period of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The bats are still here but they don’t bother us too much – unlike the mosquitoes! 

The first permanent inhabitants arrived here surprisingly late, around AD 800, from the neighbouring large islands of Hispaniola and Cuba. Despite arriving with a set of domesticated root crops and maize, our studies suggest that the early Lucayans were more interested in fishing on the surrounding reefs and hunting sea turtles.

But we can see from the isotopes and radiocarbon dates that diets changed after only a few hundred years, with a small but significant decline in the use of marine resources in favour of terrestrial crops. It may be that, despite their relatively small population, the Lucayans had an impact on the inshore fisheries that made them less attractive once the numbers of large fish and sea turtles dropped.

Preacher's Cave on Eleuthera is one of the sites in which Lucayan remains have been found. But the cave is better known for marking the landfall of the first English settlers (known as ‘the Eleutheran Adventurers’), who arrived in 1647 from an earlier colony on Bermuda.

By this time the islands were uninhabited, the Lucayans having been devastated by their encounter with the Spanish, through introduced diseases and slave raids. Living on the islands was equally challenging for the early English settlers. Another aspect of our research is to see how they adapted during the early years, compared to the Lucayans before them.  

It might look idyllic here, but this is far from a holiday!

The sharp exposed limestone constantly shreds our footwear, the bush is filled with irritant plants such as the (aptly-named!) poisonwood, the mozzies are fierce, the heat debilitating, and the absence of distinguishing features in the flat landscapes would leave us totally lost without our Bahamian colleagues, who make light of all these 'perks' and fill the working day with great banter and laughs.

Right after sending this, I’m going for a well-deserved Kalik beer! 

Best wishes from the islands,

Professor Rick Schulting, School of Archaeology.

Hello from the Konya province of Türkiye!

I am here at the site of Türkmen-Karahöyük, a, 35-metre-tall mound (höyük in Turkish) 30 hectares in area (roughly the same as 42 football pitches!).

This represents a large settlement that built up over three thousand years from the Bronze Age to the early Roman period. The sheer scale, plus the discovery of a Hieroglyphic Luwian inscription, suggests that Türkmen-Karahöyük was the regional capital during the Late Bronze and Iron Ages.

It is thought that the site was eventually destroyed by fire around the time of the Roman conquest.

I’m here as a Field Supervisor for the Türkmen-Karahöyük Archaeological Project (TKAP). This new international research collaboration aims to shed light on the socio-economic, cultural, and political dynamics of this region. TKAP is run by Bilkent University (Türkiye) and the University of Chicago, and includes partnerships with archaeologists and students from universities across Türkiye, the USA and Europe, including Oxford.  

We began our work in 2024 and are just finishing our second season in the field, where I am directing excavations at Field 1, on the top of the mound. This means I am excavating some of the latest evidence for occupation on the site: a large mudbrick house dating to the 2^nd and 1^st centuries BCE. 

Every couple of weeks the entire team - including the illustrators, photographers, and archaeological scientists who normally work in the lab - come out to the site for a tour. It’s a great chance for us all to learn what everyone is up to and to help each other with any tricky questions about the stratigraphy (layers of human occupation) and materials we are excavating in real-time.  

Here I am explaining the layout of the house and some of the ancient activities that took place there.

In addition to ancient plant and animal remains and ceramics that tell us about cooking and dining in the house, we have also found perfume bottles and jewellery which tells us about the inhabitants’ aesthetic tastes.

The house was destroyed by fire, possibly in an attack on the entire settlement, between 100 and 50 BCE. We have just started excavating down to the destruction level, finding the preserved burnt wooden beams that would have held up the roof.

We also found exciting objects such as a polished bone pen that would have been used by a scribe to write on a wax tablet, and an iron arrowhead. We are now studying the arrowhead for some clues into who attacked the settlement, and why and when this happened.  

One of the best things about being in the field is working with members of the local community who live in the Türkmenkarahüyük village. We start work at 6 am and finish at 2 pm to avoid the hottest part of the day.

The day is long and exhausting but we enjoy sharing jokes from our respective languages and learning about each other’s’ life experiences as we excavate.  

We also enjoy our breaks!  We have ‘second breakfast’ at 10 am, typically of cucumber, cheese and tomato sandwiches. Then we really look forward to our ‘cola mola’ (mola means ‘break’ in Turkish) at noon when we all receive a delivery of refreshing soda to power us through the rest of the afternoon! 

I will be sad to leave the site, our team, and our local colleagues until next summer, but am looking forward to getting back to Oxford and digging into researching all of our exciting finds from this season.  

Best wishes, 

Dr Nancy Highcock, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology.