A documentary following the research of Dr Jon Henderson of the Department of Archaeology and Classics has been awarded the Gold Medal for best documentary in the History and Society section at the 2018 New York Festivals World’s Best TV and Film awards ceremony, which was held in Las Vegas this month.

The National Geographic documentary Drain the Sunken Pirate City follows Dr Henderson as he uses cutting edge digital techniques to record the remains the sunken 17^th century town of Port Royal in Kingston Harbour, Jamaica.

Port Royal was the English mercantile capital of the New World, and as such, an important and wealthy centre for trade and commerce for the entire West Indies. Known as the ‘Wickedest City on Earth’, it was famous for being a haven for pirates working under letters of marque for the English crown.

Dr Henderson originally pitched the idea for the film and was the main on-screen contributor and scientific advisor for the production. He has since worked on three further documentaries for National Geographic which are due to be shown on the channel later in the year.

Dr Henderson said: “We are delighted to get this award. The idea of a sunken pirate city is obviously evocative but the production company, MSP Productions, allowed us to tell the real story of the site without reverting to the usual Hollywood stereotypes and we were able to demonstrate the digital underwater survey work we were doing which was really refreshing.

“They knew the project was grounded in hard science and research and they made sure we worked very closely with the CGI company, 422 South, to produce an accurate reconstruction of how the site would have looked in the 17th century.

“The model we produced is based on the actual survey evidence we had gathered in the field and we can now use it for teaching and outreach. It was a brave decision by the company to let the science dominate the show but it is fantastic that this faith has been rewarded. The show has done really well around the world. Last time I was on a long haul flight it was on the in-flight entertainment which was a strange experience! “

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Dr Holly Miller briefly explores the history of elephants, and one animal in particular:

“The elephant is the largest of them all, and in intelligence approaches the nearest to man. It understands the language of its country… It is sensible alike of the pleasures of love and glory, and, to a degree that is rare among men even, possesses notions of honesty, prudence, and equity; it has a religious respect also for the stars, and a veneration for the sun and the moon.”
Pliny, Natural History (VIII.1)

The history and archaeology of human-elephant interactions is a long and varied one. Elephants are hard to ignore (!) and their role in the lives of humans has often been recorded: from the earliest evidence of elephant butchery in the Upper Palaeolithic[1] and in depictions from the earliest city states[2], to Hannibal’s journey over the Alps and historic big game hunting[3]. Their enormous size and power was harnessed on the battlefield, and elephant armies were used by ancient Greece, Carthage and Rome[4]. The Romans more regularly displayed them for spectacle: Pompey’s use of elephants in the animal hunts at the Circus was censured by none less than Plutarch (Life of Pompey, LII.4), Cicero (ad Familiares, VII.1), Pliny the Elder (Natural History VIII.7.20) and Seneca (De Brevitate Vitae XIII). Cassius Dio wrote the elephants:

“were pitied by the people when, after being wounded and ceasing to fight, they walked about with their trunks raised toward heaven, lamenting so bitterly as to give rise to the report that they… were calling upon Heaven to avenge them” (XXXIX.38).

As Pompey was stabbed to death seven years later, perhaps they were. Elephants never forget, after all. These lessons from the Classical writers are particularly poignant given the current plight of the elephant[5], and the archaeological story of our human-elephant interactions is not just about the ancient past, as I showed in “Attenborough and the Giant Elephant” on BBC One (now available on iPlayer).

Jumbo is perhaps the most famous elephant in the world. His name is now used as an adjective to describe everything from passenger planes to packs of toilet roll.

Jumbo giving rides to children at London Zoo

Born in Sudan in 1860 he was captured as a calf and transported to a zoo in Paris, before arriving at London Zoo in 1865 as their first African elephant. Whilst at London he became the pride of the Zoo, often giving rides around the city to children. Jumbo became increasingly aggressive as he reached sexual maturity and the zoo took the controversial decision of selling him to Barnum and Bailey’s travelling circus. Despite major public protests, a petition, and an outbreak of Jumbo-mania, Jumbo was eventually shipped across the Atlantic, arriving in New York to great fanfare in 1882. In America he became centrepiece of the Greatest Show on Earth, a travelling circus that traversed the length of the US and Canada. Unfortunately, Jumbo died in tragic circumstances: contemporary accounts describe that he was hit by a train while crossing the track to reach his carriage, possibly saving a younger elephant in the process; however, several stories emerged at the time suggesting that his death may not have been an accident. We investigate these events in the programme and, regardless of the results, his story is both captivating and tragic.

To film we spent a week working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a day at BGS in Keyworth. Working with presenters David Suzuki (CBC) and Sir David Attenborough (BBC) has unquestionably been a highlight of my career (and life), not to mention getting to work with Jumbo. Rest in peace, big guy.

[1] Clark and Haynes 1970 World Archaeology 1(3) pp. 390-411

[2] Possehl 2002. The Indus civilization: a contemporary perspective

[3] Coutu 2015 World Archaeology 47 (3) pp. 486-503

[4] Belozweskay 2006 The Medici Giraffe

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/elephant-conservation

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Recently I was invited to contribute to an Arts Council-funded dance project on human experience ‘Organic Entity’. It combined three choreographers (Anna Watkins, Neus Gil Cortés, Salah El Brogy) and three scientists (me, Julieta Galante and Amanda Williamson) to advise on a triple bill of individual pieces with the themes of Body, Mind and Transcendence. My initial reaction to Anna’s email seeking collaboration was ‘!!’ quickly followed by ‘do I have the right expertise for this?’. Anna was looking for someone to advise on human evolution, and that is my speciality, but I tend to work on older periods and not so much on our species, Homo sapiens.

We chatted on the phone and not only did we really get on, Anna was also interested in early hominins, their locomotion and sociality – questions that intrigue me too. So, I was in – an advisor on a contemporary dance project. Not only was this entirely new academic territory, as a complete dance ignoramus I had no idea what we were aiming for or how we’d get there.

Modern and fossil primates in the Human Osteology (Bones) Lab, University of Nottingham

Anna was choreographing the ‘body’, with a 15 minute piece called ‘Human-Animal’. We met in Nottingham in April and I gave Anna a crash course in great ape relationships and anatomy, as well as discussion on how hominins have been reconstructed through time, and how ideas have changed as new fossils are found. This was backed up with later emails containing links to films and powerpoints, giving more detail on specific aspects of evolution and movement.

The resulting pieces were performed in June in London, Norwich and Oxford, with a Q&A between the choreographers and scientists in Cambridge on June 22nd. This was live-streamed on facebook and has had over 300 views. At Cambridge I had the chance to meet the other choreographers and experts, and to discuss the process in more detail. What fascinated me was the wholly different vocabulary that is used to express the research. The dancer’s movements evoke emotions and feelings – two words that you don’t usually associate with science. It’s completely opened my eyes to new ways of looking at our work, showing that there are very different and equally successful ways of presenting what we do.

So will I be including dance in my work in future? I very much hope so, and that’s something I would never have said 6 months ago. Presenting our work ‘through the medium of dance’ is a standard joke in academia, and I think we’re missing out – our work doesn’t have to be papers, lectures and TV shows – the performing arts have a lot to offer (and it’s really fun too).

Watch excerpts from the performance and the Cambridge Q&A here.

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Searching for Hidden Spaces in Catholic Houses

A team of researchers from The University of Nottingham has recently been doing new work at one of the most important places associated with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Following the English Reformation, English Catholics were forced to make difficult choices between their loyalty to the crown and their faith. Catholic families across the England’s West Midlands have redesigned their country homes to include secret spaces known as ‘priest holes’. Ingeniously concealed in walls and under floors, these secreted chambers were built to hide Catholic priests to prevent them being found by Protestant Royal search parties and executed as traitors.

Coughton Court in Warwickshire sits at the heart of this group of Catholic country houses. Now in the care of The National Trust, since the fifteenth century it has been the home of the Throckmortons, one of England’s oldest Catholic families. First discovered in the 1850s, still with a rope ladder, some bedding and a portable altar, the Coughton priest-hole was hidden in a turret of the main gatehouse, concealed between the floor levels.

Laser scanning the gatehouse – Sean Ince and Lukasz Bonenberg.

And the Gunpowder Plot connection? Well, in 1605 the house was leased to Sir Everard Digby, one of the leading conspirators of the plot to blow up the House of Lords and kill King James I. Sir Everard’s wife was waiting anxiously for news at Coughton alongside Father Henry Garnet, the head of the Jesuit mission in England, and Nicholas Owen, the celebrated priest-hole maker. When news arrived that Guy Fawkes had been captured and the plot discovered, the conspirators fled in all directions, most coming to meet a bloody end.

We first visited the house in 2015 to make a laser scan of the double-level priest hole. This allowed us to visualise the location of the priest hole in three dimensions in a computer model. Just a few weeks ago we went back for the second stage of the work, with generous funding from The National Trust, to complete the scan of the entire mansion, inside and out. The aim is to create a digital model that will allow visitors to explore and understand the property and its famous ‘secret space’ in more detail, and to allow visitors to explore this hidden space online even if they cannot physically access it. Who knows – the scanning may even reveal more voids and hidden spaces that might conceal further undiscovered priest holes.

The building survey and laser scanning were completed by Dr Chris King (Department of Archaeology) and Dr Lukasz Bonenberg and Dr Sean Ince (Nottingham Geospatial Institute, School of Engineering) with the help of University of Nottingham students Jennifer Hatton and Joseph Critchley.

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Mushrooms are a common part of modern human diets, yet they are rarely considered from an archaeological perspective. As soft-bodied organisms they readily rot, so are very rarely found on archaeological sites. Search for academic papers on archaeology and fungi and you are most likely to find articles discussing how microscopic fungi eat wall paintings and artefacts, and there are very few examples of mushrooms in relation to diet. The most famous exception is Oetzi ‘the Iceman’ from the Copper Age of Italy who had two species of bracket fungi in his possession. Neither of these are terribly edible but one could have been consumed as a vermifuge (something to kill parasitic worms), and both can be used as tinder to light fires.

A new collaboration between Dr Hannah O’Regan from the Department of Archaeology (UoN), Dr Angela Lamb (CEG/BGS) and Dr David Wilkinson, (LJMU) set out to consider this lack of mushrooms from another angle –  as they are made of protein, can we see evidence of fungus consumption by looking at the stable isotope composition of people in the past?

The edible oyster mushrooms, Pleurotus ostreatus, in Mere Sands Wood Nature Reserve, Lancashire.

Examining their chemistry

Stable isotopes of a range of elements are widely used in archaeology and ecology to estimate the food source used by an organism – for example plants, herbivores and carnivores tend to show different stable isotope chemistries. We found that very few studies have been performed specifically on edible mushrooms, so we collected and analysed fungi from the wild in North West England. We combined our results with published data to see how variable isotopes of carbon and particularly nitrogen can be. It turned out to be that fungi are extremely variable, with nitrogen values ranging from those you might find in legumes up to those you’d see in a polar bear!! Edible mushrooms had a smaller range, but were still very varied. This means that a human – or other animal – feeding on lots of mushrooms could, depending on which species they are eating, have a bone chemistry that could lead people to think they were being carnivorous. But the main thing this work showed was how little we know about fungi and the archaeological record. There is still much to learn!

This work is published online in the Journal of Archaeological Science. It is free to access until December 20th 2016 at the following link: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Tzmc15SlTZQ2F

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It’s been an exciting summer in the Archaeology Department, not least because of our Isotope Investigators Summer School!

Report by UoN Archaeology students Tom Fox and Phil Rawlinson

The Summer School was a five-day programme of work which taught the theory, application and practical lab techniques of isotope analysis in archaeology. With funding from University of Nottingham’s CASCADE fund and the Department of Archaeology, 10 students from the UK, USA, Estonia, Israel and Australia were selected from more than 60 applications to participate in the residential course.

Taking samples and examining data at BGS

Having been selected, we weren’t allowed to rest on our laurels! The programme was certainly a busy one, with laboratory sessions beginning at 9am and finishing at 4pm, a lecture before dinner and then usually a social event in the evening. We spent time both in the Bioarchaeology laboratories at UoN and at the British Geological Survey (BGS) laboratories in Keyworth, as part of their official partnership with the Centre for Environmental Geochemistry (CEG).

Throughout the five days we focused on a study of material from the high profile site of Fishbourne Roman Palace. Learning through the analysis this of material, and with several case studies from the exciting research taking place at CEG, we took part in carbon, nitrogen and strontium dietary and provenance analyses. We were able to take samples all the way through the various methodologies from start to finish, thanks to some Blue-Peter-like preparation from our instructors!

By the end of the week we had not only learned the science behind the methods, but also had a go at correcting and interpreting raw data, and come up with conclusions which allowed us to test the understanding and knowledge we had gained. Ultimately we will participate in a joint publication of the results we produced from the Fishbourne Roman Palace material.

We now have a good working knowledge of isotope techniques, as well as new skills in interpreting isotope data and evaluating results in research publications. These are key skills, not only because archaeology frequently makes uses of isotope analysis and other scientific techniques to answer increasingly complex and detailed questions about our past and present, but because data interpretation, analysis, evaluation and report writing are essential in many fields.

This Summer School has been a wonderful experience, from the skills we have gained to meeting colleagues and experts who share our interests, building networks for the future. Our thanks go to Drs Holly Miller, Naomi Sykes, Hannah O’Regan and Angela Lamb and Professor Jane Evans for their instruction, support and organisation, and again to funders that allowed it to go ahead.

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Hi, my name is Leslie Bode, and I am a 3rd year PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham and am co-supervised between Archaeology (Dr Alexandra Livarda) and Geography (Dr Matthew Jones). I also receive a lot of extra isotope guidance from Dr Angela Lamb at the British Geological Survey.

Last month I presented a talk at the International Working Group for Palaeoethnobotany (IWGP) conference in Paris (July 3-10) and this is a brief summary of what I got up to over there. This trip was kindly funded in part by the UoN Graduate School Travel Prize and the Department of Archaeology.

Hosted by the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, this conference took place in one of the most amazing venues. Surrounded by the unbelievable botanical gardens, grand architecture, zoo, and other museums, most of the week was taken up with over 100 talks in a range of topics/foci from many geographical regions and time periods. This conference only happens every 3 years, and is one of the major gatherings of archaeobotanists in the world.

View of the Eiffel Tower from the welcome drinks reception at the Musee de l’Homme

I had the privilege of presenting some of my PhD research at the conference in the Isotope focused session. My talk focused on the Stable Carbon Isotopic work I have been doing thanks to a NERC Isotope Geosciences Facility grant. I presented a combination of archaeobotanical and stable carbon isotope (δ¹³C) analysis of charred (carbonized) seed remains from Kharaneh IV (a ca. 20,000 year old archaeological site in the Azraq Basin in Eastern Jordan) to test whether the plants living during this period and, by extension, the hunter-gatherers using this ancient site experienced water stress. I’m especially interested in whether water stress increased leading up to the site’s abandonment almost 20,000 years ago: did a lack of water contribute to collapse?

In between the long days of talks, we also managed to squeeze in a little fun in the evenings, with a lovely welcome reception hosted at the Musée de l’Homme which had unbelievable views of the Eiffel Tower. I also participated in a field trip to the King’s Kitchen Garden at the Palace of Versailles, where we had a private guided tour of the gardens.

It was a great conference and I had a wonderful time reconnecting with friends and colleagues.

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On the 31st of March Thomas Fowler, studying a Masters (by Research) in Zooarchaeology and Thomas Fox, a BSc Archaeology student went to Orkney to attend their first conference. In fact they went to two: the Association of Environmental Archaeology Conference and the Professional Zooarchaeology Group meeting.

This is their story, by Tom Fox.

AEA day one – first day of new things!

After arriving in Orkney the day before, we made our way to the St Magnus Cathedral Hall, signed in and waited nervously for the rest of the delegates to arrive. An interesting opening talk from our UHI hosts and then we were on to the lectures! The first day was mainly about the Mediterranean, with a great talk on introductions and colonisations in the Canary Islands, and another on the Iberian cod trade from the Roman Period onwards. After the talks we retired to the hostel to eat and chill out then back to the Hall for the evening’s wine reception. Terry O’Connor gave a lecture on Islands and Connectivity, an interesting talk, particularly as it branched into an area which the UoN Zooarchaeology Lab Group have been chatting about for a while now – interdisciplinary communication and co-operation. More widely he talked about international co-operation and its importance in understanding wider ranging questions about, for example, the Viking Conquests across Europe. Then came wine, whiskey and cheese, all good things that make you new friends. We met Masters students from Bradford, doing really cool stuff with fish and human remains from nearby Roundsay who were presenting posters the following day. After the reception it was off to the pub! I was pleased to catch-up with a friend and colleague on the Bamburgh Research Project, PhD student Tom Gardener. Then it was homeward bound to prep for tomorrow’s festivities.

Fun in the Northern Isles: Tom Fox (left), Tom Fowler (centre) and David Osborne (right, also UoN) with shiny badges to the fore.

AEA day two
There were varied topics today, including Iceland (much food for thought post-grad wise here!), whaling, the Baltic cod trade and chickens (Yay!). Had a great chat with Albina Pálsdottir, talking about ovids and their identification, amongst other cool stuff. We listened to talks on animal colonisations of Iceland and Britain, lots of stuff popping up using ZooMS, a method of identification using Mass Spectrometry to identify chemical fingerprints of particular animals from the proteins in their bones. Also there was a great discussion of gyrfalcon trading from Iceland to Germany in the 14th/15th century, having the laws and processes explained; bit of a shame they don’t seem to be identified often on archaeological sites. The end of the day was bliss! We retreated to the hostel to clean up then headed out to dinner at the Lynnfield Hotel. A very classy place, beautiful wood panelled interiors and more whiskey varieties than anyone could possibly ever drink. We stood and chatted in groups for a while and then were ushered in en-masse to the dining room, for possibly the nicest meal of my life! The meal started with neep and tattie soup with haggis croutons then onto mains of mutton for me and rib of beef for Tom, it was divine! We finished with clootie dumpling and sat back to chat over coffee and delicious chocolate orange truffles.

Day three – The PZG Meeting
The PZG meeting was brilliant! I sat in and listened to some really cool talks, on whaling, seals in the North Sea, more stuff on Cod and Iceland. It’s been a real eye opener and motivation to re-double my efforts in my own studies to try and one day be able to try and do something as cool and interesting as some of the topics here today. We also met our lovely Nottingham alumnus, Youri van den Hurk. Some more food for thought as to ZooMS and also on the identification of seals, particularly on inland sites where they are not expected, and re-stoking of my desire to learn to identify as many species as possible. I took minutes for the meeting and am charged to write them up. Unfortunately Tom did not get to present his poster (but it looked smashing). We both went back to the hostel tonight thoroughly exhausted (I thought they were kidding when they said three days of conference would be difficult!) We got an early night for the 07:45 flight on the morrow!

Thoughts on the meetings
This weekend was an amazing opportunity, not just to wear a shiny badge and listen to cool research but to learn, network and to find out what academic life in archaeology is all about. I have met some amazing people and learnt a lot about our discipline. The most important things I take away from this experience are my renewed curiosity and fire to learn and a deeper respect and understanding for those people who can hack it in academia.

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Isotope Investigators Summer School – News from our undergraduates

We have had an exciting few months in the BioArch Research Group as we planned, and received funding for, our Isotope Investigators Summer School!

The Summer School will be held from Monday the 27th June to Friday the 1st July. We will learn all about archaeological applications of isotope geochemistry from experts in the field at the University of Nottingham and the NERC Isotope Geoscience Facility, British Geological Survey. Afterwards, we hope to use our new skills in future research, particularly with our important 3rd year dissertations coming up.

The application of isotope geochemistry is a growing field in archaeological science but it is a difficult technique to fit into the constraints of the term-time timetable. By applying to The University of Nottingham’s Cascade Fund and the Department of Archaeology’s Next Generation Fund, we have been able to cover the cost of materials for the labs and fund 10 residential places on the Summer School.

Places on the Summer School are open to Undergraduate Archaeology students from any department. Through this, we hope to develop a community of diverse, international Researchers-in-Training. We will have the opportunity to work in a research-led teaching environment on samples from the high-profile site of Fishbourne Roman Palace and, by the end of the Summer School, we will have the chance to contribute to the publication of the results as authors on a resulting peer-reviewed article.

The Cascade grant has been instrumental in allowing our initiative to go ahead. Thanks to the funding we are looking forward to conducting the research, hosting students from different institutions and having the chance to learn something completely new. The Summer School will have a huge impact on our university experience. We relish the opportunity to work with experts in our field on exciting archaeological material, learning techniques and methods in a real world environment that will prepare us for future research and employment.
We can’t wait for the summer to meet our fellow students and get to grips with this exciting research opportunity.

Tom Fox and Philip Rawlinson (second year Archaeology Students)

Further information

To apply for the Isotope Investigators Summer School please visit our website: www.nottingham.ac.uk/go/summerschool

The closing date is for applications is April 25th, 2016. If you would like more information please contact: Holly.Miller@nottingham.ac.uk

If you would like to know more about Cascade: Student-led projects at the University of Nottingham please see: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/impactcampaign/projects/cascade-student-led-projects/cascade.aspx

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As the end of year deadline of the Christmas period approaches, teaching is finished and I am trying to catch up with imminent grant proposals, a commissioned book chapter and yet more teaching prep. Thinking purely in terms of putting these tasks off as long as possible, I’ve just realised that I haven’t yet written about my experience working as a science journalist last September.

As part of a British Science Association Media Fellowship I spent 3 weeks working in the offices of The Times and then one week covering the Bradford Science Festival for them. The idea of the fellowship is that, through working at the heart of a major media organisation, academics gain first hand insight into the ways science research becomes news. This is of course of central importance to universities these days as they strive to demonstrate that their research has an impact beyond the hallowed halls of academe.

Open plan offices in the News Building in London

A typical day at The Times began around 8am when the Times science journalists start to trade emails about the potential stories of the day that might be taken to the main pitching conference at 10.30am. Most journalists then arrive at the office around 10am and a final list to be taken to the conference is decided. If you have any exclusive stories you may want to do, you have to pitch them to the news editors before they head into the main conference. The news editors then head to a meeting to discuss the layout of the paper for the next day. Around 11.30am the stories that the paper editors are interested in covering are circulated to the science desk and you are given one or two stories by the Science Editor to write up that day.

One of the most interesting aspects of the job is that these stories can be on anything. I wrote stories on aspirin, breast feeding, nanotechnology, mind controlling parasites, fossil flowers, smoking rates, toddlers cognitive function, sending messages to contact alien life, shipwrecks, Stonehenge and how the choice of toys given to children ultimately affects gender balance figures in science.

The daily cut and thrust of science journalism!

Then it is entirely over to you and the real work begins. Working from the press releases and, if available, the journal paper, you begin to put your angle on the story together. You also try to contact the project leaders of the science work you are covering for an interview and, if necessary, contact people in the same field to comment on the work. This is an opportunity to talk directly to scientists at the cutting edge of their fields and ask them about their research. Ideally you get to talk to the people you need and your stories begin to take shape. You might have to liaise with the pictures editor to decide on some images to accompany your story.

Deadlines loom from 4pm to, at the latest, 6pm when you have to submit your story within the word limits asked for (generally from 400 to 700 words). Once submitted you breathe a sigh of relief and catch the tube home. However, you need to stay within contact by phone in case the copy editors have a question or need some further clarification about your story before it is published. At the copy editing stage your story can be cut down and you will not see the results until it appears in the paper the next day.

I pitched an exclusive story on the Kythera project in Greece which was used as an 800 word page lead in the Times Saturday edition (29th Aug).

The next morning prior to the email exchanges from 8am you check the online edition of the paper to see if your story made the cut. There are no guarantees and you only know the next day if all the work you have put in was worthwhile. The news is constantly changing and you may have written a perfectly good story which the editor were happy with but was then cut from the final paper because new content came in and pushed it out.

A good example early on was when one of the editors called me over to tell me my article on the cancer fighting properties of wasp venom was going to be the lead story on page 9. As he was talking the mock-up of the page for tomorrows newspaper on his computer flashed and my story was replaced with a large photo of Boris Johnson getting his hair cut. I learned that you cannot afford to be precious about news stories – The Times can be particularly harsh in this regard because for the most part if a story does not make the print version of the paper then it is not uploaded on the online version.

Unlike academia where you deal with a particular topic in detail for months or years, in science reporting you have the thrill of dipping into a different scientific discipline or discovery every day. At the beginning of each day you do not know what you will be covering from aspirin trials and aliens to nanotechnology and shipwrecks. Then you spend the day trying to get up to speed to cover that particular story. For one day you immerse yourself in that research, get to speak to world leaders conducting the research, write it up and then move on.

Tom Whipple, Science Editor at The Times, and just behind him Science Journalist, Oliver Moody

I came away from the experience with strong respect for the science journalists at The Times (they really cared about the science aspect of the stories they covered not the sensationalist ones – if the science was bad then they wouldn’t cover it) and a realisation that stories need to be properly managed and embargoed to make national news (something we are not generally very good at in the Humanities). Newspapers take science news mainly from EurekAlert! – an online news service. Not only do we need to ensure our stories are on the networks journalists use but, just as importantly, we need to then be prepared to deal with multiple requests for interviews and further information that follow. You would be surprised how many academics were unreachable for comment on the day before their supposedly timed press embargoed stories broke, effectively killing off any coverage of the story.

The problem of timing is particularly acute for archaeology as most archaeologists see talking to the public and, in turn, the press as a core part of their activity – after all if we are not informing people about the past then what are we doing? As a result rather than embargoing information archaeologists tend to talk to anyone and everyone at all stages of a project. This often means that projects are covered in the press in their initial phases when excavations have just started or are still taking place. However, the best results come much later after the excavated data has been fully analysed and the final reports written. Because archaeologists have already spoken at random to member of the press prior to this it can often then be difficult to get the final and most important outcomes of finished projects into the news.

Speaking personally probably the biggest culture shock for me was having a strict deadline every day. I am used to more, shall we say, malleable writing deadlines. “Can’t get your chapter in this week? No problem we are still waiting for a few others. You know how busy academics are!”

Probably that and working in an open plan office. Trying to write while people around me talk about news, pitch stories, answer the phone, breathe, generally exist and, worst of all, type in an absurdly proficient fashion. Every expertly executed keyboard click gnawing into my head and reminding me that while the person across from me is happily writing up their article, I am not. I’m listening to them typing. My deadline is looming and I’m listening to them typing. Aaaaarrrggghhh! Get a grip. It’s 4 o’clock, my story needs to be submitted in an hour…. Happy days!

Short interview on the placement on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU5QP5-TnNM

If you have a Times account you can read some of the stories I covered here.

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