Beginning

It’s usually the right place to start, yeah?

These are some of the first books I remember reading or being read to me. The two go together for me, because I could read before I started school and don’t really have any memories of not being able to read. I do remember Dad reading The Once and Future King to me and waiting for him to catch up to where I was and turn the page.

It was always fantasy for me. Lewis, White, Tolkien and Garner taught me to read.

Not sure which I will read tonight. These are snack-sized offerings. And yeah, those are the original paperbacks from the 1980’s, the ‘Armada Lion’s imprint. There is an escaped page from the same edition of the Moon Of Gomrath slipped between the covers…. Need to find that next!

Cusps

I feel like I am emerging from a cocoon of grief and pandemic and heartache. There are creative urges that have been dormant and my heart is begging me to read old familiar stories and well known voices. For comfort, yes, but also as a way back to the before.

For years I have been unable to read. Or at least, read the way I did for at least 7/8ths of my life. Books that I have read at least once a year since I was eleven have been waiting on shelves.

New stories that everyone I trust to tell me where the best treasures can be found are sitting in damning piles.

It’s not that I haven’t read anything – popular science. Reams of work text (drafts and drafts and drafts). Some ebooks. Plenty of audio books. But my connection to past authors and books that I loved too much to leave behind in England has snapped. Or maybe just frayed to the point of whisps.

I hate it. I hate how short my attention span is, a combination of burn out and hiding from my own thoughts making anything challenging and an exercise in panic and uncertainty. The places that were once my escape and solace have become dangerous paths with lots of bushes that might be bears. Or bears that might be bushes.

The urge to write and to read has been building for a while now. I have been doing some private writing but that’s it’s own trap: if there is no audience (a book of letters I will never send, can never send as the recipients are dead or wishful thinking) then I fall into bitter self recriminations and spiral down so hard I have to hide from language for a while.

So this place has always been somewhere where I can write to an audience, a perpetual perhaps, but not like I am calling attention to it to all and sundry. Maybe some of you might get a notification on a long forgotten dashboard or feed. Or stumble here from somewhere else. You are a reader in potentia, and thus a filter. A safety blanket. A theoretical audience for whom some degree of consideration must be made, and also some degree of craft

If there isn’t an audience there isn’t a strive to polish and to play, to find the best word, the most right arrangement of clause and context. So, while cleaning my teeth I resolved to just write. Tonight at least. And tomorrow to read a bit and write a bit and see where we go. Maybe I am finally on the right drugs. Maybe I am finally through some of the tunnel. Writing was always how I worked myself out and maybe it is how I keep this new energy going, and write myself better.

Episode 5: Kayt Armstrong

After a long period of dormancy, I am back! I talked to Kimberley Teale about all things soil and archaeology and had so much fun doing the interview.

I am super stoked to have been included on such an amazing list of women in geophysics – check out the podcast and the other interviews at the blog below!

The Survey Like a Girl Podcast

In our fifth episode, I have a good chat with Dr Kayt Armstrong. Kayt has done some really interesting research and surveyed some incredible spaces, so please enjoy the blog below or scroll to the bottom for the podcast episode! To read more about Kayt, the link to her blog is here as well – scroll down to find it…

Kaytinitially graduated from Southampton University in 2006 with a BA in Archaeology and an MSc in Archaeological Computing. She then won a funded PhD place at Bournemouth University and completed her doctoral thesis on applied archaeological geophysical prospection in peatland environments in 2010.

Following this,Kaytundertook 3 post-doctoral research posts, in the Netherlands, Greece and at Durham University, all of which made combined use of her geophysical, geoarchaeological and GIS expertise in landscape archaeology projects in areas (and time periods) as diverse as the Italian Bronze Age and the early 20th…

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The Dark is Reading: part 1

In the run up the the festive season, a lady called Julia Bird, in conversation with Robert Macfarlane suggested a read along to one of my favourite books, The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper.

I have spoken before about the huge impact these books had on me as a kid, and so I have joined in, with great enthusiasm. For those that don’t know the story, it’s a fantasy series that overlaps the world of the UK in the middle of the 20th Century with very deeply resonant myths from our deep past. Herne the Hunter features, and in the rest of the books so does Arthur, and a host of Welsh magicians and mythic kings. This particular book, the second in the cycle takes place over midwinter, starting on the eve of the solstice, and ending in the new year.

I decided I wanted to blog about it as I went, so here we go!

I re-read these books at least anually and normally devour them very fast, but reading in real time is making me slow down and appreciate them. I also have friends reading along for the first time, and that’s helping me see the story with new eyes. I had forgotten how utterly chilling the opening chapter is, as strange and vaguely threatening things start to happen around our protagonist, culminating in the terror in the night.

I had also forgotten how especially immediate writing for young people is. There is a wonderful moment when our hero wrestles with accepting power, and the responsibility and other-ness that comes with it. It is dealt with in a few lines of text, rather than chapters of agonising. But it doesn’t make his choice any less significant or meaningful. I am so far sticking to the rhythm of the story, so I am off now to read the section that takes place on Christmas Eves eve. If you are reading too I hope you are enjoying it! Maybe we can chat in the comments or on Twitter 🙂

ISSGAP Soil Science Survey

Hey folks,

As you may or may not know, the ISSGAP (Interactions between Soil Science and Geophysics in Archaeological Prospection) network is examining how all things ‘geo’ in archaeology come together: geochemistry, geophysics, geoarchaeology, and a measure of geology and pedology too. We first met on Crete in 2015, recruited more members at ICAP in Warsaw in the same year, and will be having a second workshop this summer. We would like some information from the community of practitioners, researchers and students that use geophysical surveys in archaeology about how much they use soil science in their work, and what sorts of gaps in training there might be.

To that end, if you are a producer or consumer of geophysical data, could you please fill out this short, anonymous survey about your experience of geophysics and soil science? This will help us build up a picture of where the gaps are and help us develop things like workshops and conferences to fill those gaps.

Here is the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/soiltraining

Thanks in advance!

Kayt and the ISSGAP network.