David Petts

On the basis of this year's culinary trends, I'm looking forward to sitting down to a steaming dish of Dubai Hot Honey Collagen

Today I start my research trip sailing down the River Seine from Paris to Honfleur (via a few stops) in a reconstruction of the Klåstad cargo ship built in 998. It’s the penultimate stage in the ship’s journey from Rome to London throughout the summer. I’ll post updates as we go #Saga25 #MedievalSky

sorry :-( - but do keep an eye out on DigVentures -they have lots of other projects !

absolutely - it's a tricky one; the question is how do we break this loop (and I also appreciate the fact that church guidebooks are probably not even in the top 20 priorities for shrinking rural congregations)

definitely need to read more on that! :-)

I was generalising *massively* :-)

In essence, the entire notion of the 'Celtic church' is a post-medieval romantic creation that emerges in a colonial/post-colonial context and has little relationship with the actual evidence for the (far far more interesting) early medieval churches of Ireland and Atlantic Britain

all combined with a massively simplistic reading of later documentary evidence (particularly saints' live).

First, that there was some kind of church entity in Scotland/Ireland/Wales/Cornwall/W England/Brittany that was seen either internally or externally as a defined 'Celtic church'. Second, that this putative entity was less hierarchical/more gender equal/more ecological than the Roman church

the manuscript workshop where the Lindisfarne Gospels were created

I'm mean its pretty clearly the early medieval period; I thought this debate had been settled decades ago!

It will vary depending on how the project is structured - whether this is the responsibility of project manager or someone else. But H&S is front and centre of all archaeological fieldwork (and something we train students in )

This is a classic case of something where the debates are pretty settled in academia (and have been for decades) but this has made no traction with the general public. [and an alarming number of churches have guides that appear to have been written over 50 years ago]

The basic answer is 'very carefully' - in the UK there is strict Health and Safety legislation around this kind of thing. Shoring, stepping of trenches, HE clothing all help. But basically, if its not safe to dig, it shouldn't be dug.

Anyway - having just come back from several days exploring the churches of the Welsh border, I can say that we need to have a long hard chat about public perceptions of the 'Celtic church'...

Also worth remembering impact of survival - major prehistoric monuments more likely to survive in upland areas with little history of long-term ploughing to destroy earthworks and where presence of plentiful stone encourages construction of stone monuments.

Basically its due to the development of later deposits above them - it can vary wildly; in arid environments with little soil formation even old archaeological feature survive at ground level, whereas in major urban centres with long histories of occupation, ground level can rise substantially.

not sure I'd use that term - but prehistoric fields are often smaller (although they can also be laid out in large grid systems). A key variable is topography - very hard to lay out grids in hilly terrain - but other factors obviously include farming type (e.g pasture v arable)

acidity generally won't destroy deposits (per se), but it can badly affect preservation of certain artefact types, particularly bone/organics and most metals. But there are lots of other factors too (e.g. levels of waterlogging etc).

This hugely simplifies things and there is lots of more subtle regional variation - but gives a general sense of the big patterns

On the other side there are areas where these open fields never developed and there has always been a network of smaller fields probably going back into Iron Age. These are often irregular - partly reflecting the topography of these areas (hilly; lots of small valleys).

UK landscape breaks down into two general types (and I'm simplifying massively). First, areas that used to be dominated by medieval open fields (farmed broadly cooperatively). T these were essentially privatised in the post-ediveal period and divided up into new field systems - in a 'griddy' way

Its getting better - but the answers are rarely as simple as people think (..want...)

Iffy narratives of all sorts and from a range of different political positions

Rise of genetic techniques fantastic- but hard to interpret - resulting in deeply iffy narratives

I've always fancied being an oligarch

Definitely digging holes...

Lindisfarne- c.800 - just a general nosey around!

Its #askanarchaeologist day! So I'm happy to (try) and answer any questions about archaeology and/or archaeologists :-)

Photograph of the landscape of central Shropshire (UK). Looking across Corvedale towards Wenlock Edge

Deep in Housman country- looking across Corvedale towards Wenlock Edge