Reference collections at UCL- a brief history

Recently published is a short account of the UCL archaeobotany laboratory reference collections, "Seeding and branching out: sixty years of a laboratory for plants in archaeology". The archaeobotany laboratory began in earnest in 1964, with the arrival of Geoffrey Dimbleby as Professor of Human Envionrment. He was a palynologist, who had contributed to archaeology through the reconstruction past environments through studying palaeosols in northern England, e.g. his book

The Development of British Heathlands and Their Soils (1962). By the end of later 1960s he had broadened his archaeobotanical interests, as represented by his book Plants and Archaeology (1967), and in the 1970s he began teaching an MSc-- among its early students was George Willcox, who went on to make important contributions on the archaeobotany of London, Afghanistan, and Syria (among other places). After Dimbleby's retirement in 1979, David R Harris TBA from UCL Geography became professor of Human Environment. David brought on board Gordon Hillman, first as research fellow (1981) and then lecturer (1983), and they established a quite famour MSc program which focused on archaeobotany on alternative years.Through these years and onwards, including since I joined UCL in 2000, our reference collections have grown. The have grown in geographical breadth and categories of plant materials, but they have also been enhanced through cataloguing anf storage, making them more accessible for teaching and research, including visitors who want come and consult for research. I am especalli thankful for the years of efforts at curation and cataloguing by Dr Sue Colledge, our honorary professor, who worked with Hillman and Harris as a research assistant in the 1980s, was emlpoyed to curate Hillman's collections for a couple of years from his reitrmement in 1998, and who was a post-doctoral researcher on numerous projects here in the 21st century.

Archaeobotany lab at UCL refurbished and reopened

UCL Archaeobotany Laboratory

This past summer the UCL Archaeobotany Laboratory was refurbished and enlarged (slightly), thanks to funds from the A3RC project funded by the UKRI Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science program. Over the past term we have moved collections and equipment back into the lab. This offers some improvements for teaching practical courses in the lab, such as my seed identification short course, also a MSc course (email me to get on the waiting list for future), and facilities for visiitng researchers who come to consult the collections for identifications. Over many years Dr. Sue Colledge has been cataloguing the extensive references (more 19,000 accession catalogued), a catalogue of which we aim to make available online soon. Dr Ayelen Delgado, the new technician for archaeobotanical collections is working on a new catalogue of legacy collections of archaeological plant remians. As part of our lab re-launch we have a new instagram account to feature modern and archaeological specimens, @archaeobotanylab, which will also report news coming out of the lab.

For my part is is high time I reactivated this blog with surveys of important finds from the world archaeobotany and critical reviews of publications, as I was known for a decade ago. Its time for me to provide some updates on some of my favorite topics, like rice, millets, domestication and archaeobotany in Africa, the Near East, India and China (among other places).

The archaeobotany laboratory here at the UCLInstitute of Archaeology has a been centre for research and teaching for over 60 years. Geoffrey W. Dimbleby (1917-2000) was appointed as Professor of Human Environment from 1964 (to 1979) [obit. by Harris], succeeding the famous archaeozoologist and geoarchaeologist Frederick Zeuner. (Zeuner's successors in zooarchaeology are still going strong here at the Institute too). After Dimbleby's retirement (1979) David R. Harris became Professor Human Environment (1980-1998), moving from UCL Geography. David was a great synthesist and theorist of domestication and agricultural origins. To enhance the more practical aspects of archaeobotanical research and teaching Harris recruited Gordon Hillman in 1981, who brought extensive plant collections from Turkey and Syria. Gordon Hillman tuaght and trained many archaeobotany students through 1980s and 1990s-- although the reference collection was then in a different and smaller room. Harris and Hillman retired in 1998, and I was lucky enough to be offered a lecturing position starting in 2000. We moved the collections and microscopes into its current space in 2000/01, the first academic year in which I attempted to teach practical archaeobotany at the Master's level. (I like to think my teaching and experience has come along way in the quarter century since then.)

New online Phytolith reference collection

A new searchable database of l phytoliths images has been made available by the Barcelona lab GEPEG (Research Group for Palaeocological and Geoarchaeological Studies). Find it here: GEPEG phytolith database. I have not  had a chance to explore it in detail, but it will doubtless prove useful. It has about 185 images in it, so it by no means comprehensive, and it includes archaeological as well as modern reference material. (And it reminds me that our UCL phytolith on-line gallery needs updating, as I have let in languish for a few years without additions).

Archaeobotanical photo-sharing platform

A couple of enterprising Harvard students have built a facebook of seeds, or rather a kind of networking platform for uploading images of archaeobotanical specimens, or reference materials.  http://paleobot.org/

So you can see what others have found, identified or unknown, and have another venue for looking for matches for your own mystery seeds. Potentially a very useful resource, that is once archaeobotanists start to log in and upload. Time to sign up!