All Outputs (5)

Recommendations for stable isotope analysis of charred archaeological crop remains (2024)
Journal Article
Styring, A. K., Vaiglova, P., Bogaard, A., Church, M., Gröcke, D. R., Larsson, M., Liu, X., Stroud, E., Szpak, P., & Wallace, M. P. (2024). Recommendations for stable isotope analysis of charred archaeological crop remains. Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, 3, Article 1465082. https://doi.org/10.3389/fearc.2024.1470375

Stable isotope analysis of plant remains recovered from archaeological sites is becoming more routine. There remains a lack of consensus, however, on how to appropriately select archaeological plant remains for isotopic analysis, how to account for d... Read More about Recommendations for stable isotope analysis of charred archaeological crop remains.

Further investigation into the impact of manuring on stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen isotope (δ15N) values in pulses: a four-year experiment examining Celtic bean (Vicia faba) (2024)
Journal Article
Treasure, E. R., Gröcke, D. R., Lester, J. J., Bishop, R. R., Jackson, S. E., & Church, M. J. (2024). Further investigation into the impact of manuring on stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen isotope (δ15N) values in pulses: a four-year experiment examining Celtic bean (Vicia faba). Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 16(8), Article 130. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-024-02045-x

Plant stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope values can be used to directly investigate crop husbandry practices such as manuring; a key variable in understanding the scale and intensity of past farming practices. We present new results fro... Read More about Further investigation into the impact of manuring on stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen isotope (δ15N) values in pulses: a four-year experiment examining Celtic bean (Vicia faba).

Scotland’s first farmers: new insights into early farming practices in north-west Europe (2022)
Journal Article
Bishop, R., Gröcke, D., Ralston, I., Clarke, D., Lee, D., Shepherd, A., Thomas, A., Rowley-Conwy, P., & Church, M. (2022). Scotland’s first farmers: new insights into early farming practices in north-west Europe. Antiquity, 96(389), https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.107

Thirty years after the discovery of an Early Neolithic timber hall at Balbridie in Scotland was reported in Antiquity, new analysis of the site's archaeobotanical assemblage, featuring 20 000 cereal grains preserved when the building burnt down in th... Read More about Scotland’s first farmers: new insights into early farming practices in north-west Europe.

Effects of marine biofertilisation on Celtic bean carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotopes: implications for reconstructing past diet and farming practices (2021)
Journal Article
Gröcke, D. R., Treasure, E. R., Lester, J. J., Gron, K. J., & Church, M. J. (2021). Effects of marine biofertilisation on Celtic bean carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotopes: implications for reconstructing past diet and farming practices. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 35(5), Article e8985. https://doi.org/10.1002/rcm.8985

Rationale: The application of fertilisers to crops can be monitored and assessed using stable isotope ratios. However, the application of marine biofertilisers (e.g. fish, macroalgae/seaweed) on crop stable isotope ratios has been rarely studied, des... Read More about Effects of marine biofertilisation on Celtic bean carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotopes: implications for reconstructing past diet and farming practices.

Archaeological cereals as an isotope record of long-term soil health and anthropogenic amendment in southern Scandinavia (2021)
Journal Article
Gron, K., Larsson, M., Gröcke, D., Andersen, N., Andreasen, M., Bech, J.-H., Henriksen, P., Hilton, R., Jessen, M., Møller, N., Nielsen, F., Nielsen, P., Pihl, A., Sørensen, L., Westphal, J., Rowley-Conwy, P., & Church, M. (2021). Archaeological cereals as an isotope record of long-term soil health and anthropogenic amendment in southern Scandinavia. Quaternary Science Reviews, 253, Article 106762. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106762

Maintaining soil health is integral to agricultural production, and the archaeological record contains multiple lines of palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental proxy evidence that can contribute to the understanding and analysis of long-term trajecto... Read More about Archaeological cereals as an isotope record of long-term soil health and anthropogenic amendment in southern Scandinavia.