The Institute's primary research groups

In the 1997/98 issue of AI, the Director explained how the Institute's research groups were set up. Here the respective coordinators report on the activities of the four primary Groups.

The Institute's primary research groups The coordinators of each of the Institute's fi ve primary research groups report on their group's activities during the 2004/2005 academic year.

The Environment and Culture Research Group
Coordinator: Andrew Garrard T he group brings together the many staff, research students and honorary members of the Institute whose research is con cerned with past interactions between people and the environments they occupied.Members of the group also participate in the activities of the UCL Centre for the Evolutionary Analysis of Cultural Behaviour which is directed by Stephen Shennan.

Research projects
Several members ofthe group are involved in research on the origins, development and impact of agriculture.Dorian Fuller and Eleni Asouti have continued their field studies of early agricultural systems in southern India, looking particularly at the use of woodland resources.Arlene Rosen has continued her investigation of environmental changes that accompanied the spread ofrice agriculture in the Y ellow river basin of China and the impact of agri cultural changes on the development of complex society there.She is also working with Emma Jenkins on the ecological impact of early agricultural societies in Southwest Asia using phytolith analysis, and Eleni Asouti is analyzing macro botanical remains from terminal Pleis tocene and early Holocene sites in that region.In North Africa, Dorian Fuller has undertaken archaeobotanical research at Roman Volubilis in Morocco and at Meroitic sites in northern Sudan, and Mary Anne Murray is studying ancient Egyptian crops and the agrarian landscape (see pp. 38-42 in this issue of AI).Mark Lake and Alex Bentley have continued their studies of the spread of farming in Neo lithic Europe and interaction between for agers and farmers, using, respectively, agent-based computer simulation and strontium-isotope analysis (

Seminars
Daniel Antoine organized a seminar series for the autmn term entitled "Famine, Black Death and health in the past: a multidisci plinary approach".Derek Keene (Institute of Historical Research, University of Lon don) discussed the Great Famine in four teenth-century London; Lavinia Ferrante de Ruffano and Tarry Waldron spoke about archaeological and clinical aspects of cranial pathology; Fekri Hassan gave an account of famine in ancient and medieval Egypt; Daniel Antoine described how he is using the remains of Londoners who died from the Black Death to investigate the effects of the Great Famine; and Sam Cohn (Department of History, University of Glas gow) presented documentary evidence which suggests that plague may not have been the cause of the Black Death pan demic.
For the spring term, a seminar series entitled "Submerged cultures and land scapes from the Stone Age" was organized by Ole Gron.He described his research on submerged Mesolithic cultural landscapes in the Baltic, focusing particularly on exca vations at the Danish site of Mollegabet n.Nicholas Flemming (Southampton Ocea nography Centre) and Geoffrey Bailey (Department of Archaeology, University of York) gave seminars concerned with sub merged Palaeolithic landscapes in relation to Pleistocene colonization and coastal adaptations, and Eske Willerslev (Ancient Biomolecules Centre, University of Oxford) described new developments in the analysis of ancient DNA from such sources as lake sediments, permafrost horizons and fossil remains.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/ai.0803 The Material Culture and Data Science Research Group Coordinator: Thilo Rehren T he group brings together staff, research students and honorary members of the Institute who are interested in the analysis of archaeological materials, par ticularly by instrumental and quantitative methods, within broader archaeological frameworks.It aims to apply these meth ods to archaeological questions by gener ating data that are independent of, and complimentary to, traditional archaeolog ical methods of enquiry.A major aim of the group is to study ancient technologies by analyzing the form and composition of artefacts, raw materials and waste prod ucts, and by means of experimental studies.We endeavour to optimize the productivity of the Institute's substantial human and technical resources in this fi eld of research, and to promote the under standing of science-based archaeological information as an essential component of material culture.One way to achieve this is for the group to facilitate the early integra tion of quantitative methods and data in projects being developed by the Institute's other research groups, and for its individ ual members to contribute to group research, in addition to their own projects.

Research projects
Most of our research is done collabora tively, with colleagues in the Institute and with external partners.From the wide range of research undertaken by members of the group, Ihighlightin this year's report three areas of activity: ancient glass and glaze production, ceramics, and past iron technology.Three research students, Satoko Tanimoto, Fatma Marii and Christy Henshaw, work on ancient glass, together with several staff, honorary members of the group and master's degree students.The research fo cuses on the Late Bronze Age and the early Islamic period, and recently it received international recognition when a paper reporting the first direct evidence for Late Bronze Age glass making in Egypt was accepted for publication in Science. 1 This study combined fi eldwork in the east ern Nile delta with experimental and ana lytical work in the Institute, including material from Amarna in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.
Research on ceramics is also increasing.Two new members of staff, Ethan Cochrane and Marcos Martin on-Torres, are studying ancient pottery from, respec tively, Fiji and central Europe.The recent refurbishment of the Institute's Wolfson Archaeological Science Laboratories (see below) will further strengthen our research and teaching in ceramics.Also, a book on the medieval pottery of Novgorod and its hinterland, edited by Clive Orton, is due to be published by UCL Press in the near future.It is the first of three volumes reporting the results of collaborative research at Novgorod.
The study of past iron technology main tains its central position in the work of the group.Xander Veldhuijzen and Shadreck Chirikure are currently completing their PhD theses on, respectively, the earliest known iron-smelting site in the Middle East, at Tell Hammeh (az Zarqa) in Jordan, and Early and Late Iron Age smelting in northern Zimbabwe.The third field season of my project on ancient crucible-steel production in eastern Uzbekistan was suc cessfully completed in May 2005, includ ing a geophysical survey by Simon Groom using UCL's new caesium magnetometer.

Artefact studies
The Artefact Studies MA, coordinated by Bill Sillar, provides training in the analysis and interpretation of artefacts, and each student undertakes a placement in a museum or an archaeological unit to gain practical experience in artefact recording and to develop a topic for their disserta tion.Recent placements have included Museum of London Specialist Services, the Ure Museum at the University of Read ing, the Horniman Museum, the British Museum and the Portable Antiquities Scheme.As this issue of AI goes to press 12 more placements are being organized and we would like to express our thanks to all the institutions and individuals who sup port this scheme.

Refurbishment of the Wolfson Laboratories
Work on the building that will house UCL's Department of Anthropology con tinued throughout the year, causing considerable disruption to the Institute's teaching and research, especially in the basement laboratories.However, the final phase, scheduled to be completed in the late summer of 2005, will see the sample preparation laboratories re-instated in their previous space, and two small labora tories created in spaces between the steel supports of the anthropology building above.One of them will house a clean chemical facility to enable more demand ing chemical extraction processes for iso topic and trace-element studies to be carried out, and the other will be a teaching and research laboratory for optical micro scopy, fitted out with a set of new micro scopes.When all the work is completed, the layout and instrumentation of the Wolfson Laboratories will have been con siderably improved.

International recognition
The award in the summer of 2004 of a four year grant from the European Commission under the "Marie Curie Action for Early Stage Researchers" programme enables us to offer each year between eight and eleven visiting fellowships and MA, MSc and PhD scholarships in the field of materials sci ence and geographic-information systems in archaeology (see the back cover of this issue of AI).This reinforces the position of the Institute at the forefront of the field and enables us to recruit outstanding European students.The international standing of the group 's work was also reflected in, for example, an invitation to Clive Orton to speak at the 24th International Research Symposium "Reading historical spatial information from around the world: stud ies of culture and civilization based on geo graphic information systems data" in Kyoto, Japan, in February 2005. The

The Social and Cultural Dynamics Research Group
Coordinator: Ruth Whitehouse T he group brings together staff, postgraduate students and hon orary members of the Institute whose primary interest is in anthropological and sociologi cal approaches to the study of material culture.Its members share the common aim of studying the dynamics of material culture systems comparatively, cutting across the regional and chronological boundaries that have traditionally divided archaeology.

Research projects
Several existing field projects organized by members of the group continued and some new ones were initiated or are in advanced stages of planning.One of the main themes of this research continues to be island archaeology.In the Mediterranean, Cyprian Broodbank's Kythera island project is in its post-survey stage, Andrew Bevan is devel oping a new project on the nearby island of Antikythera, and Todd Whitelaw's major project at Knossos in Crete is getting into gear, with a first field season planned for July 2005.In the Caribbean, Jose Oliver has begun a new project at Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic while continuing to work in Puerto Rico, now at the site ofVivi Arriba near Utuado; and Jago Cooper is engaged in a project at Los Buchillones in Cuba (with Elizabeth Graham and David Pendergast).
In mainland areas, several existing projects have continued and new ones have been started.Elizabeth Graham's Maya project at Lamanai in Belize, and Kevin MacDonald's Cane River African diaspora project in Louisiana have contin ued.In Africa, Kevin has undertaken extensive field survey in the Segou region of Mali and has located one exceptionally large settlement which may have been a capital of the historical Segou state; and An drew Re id has begun work at Bweyorere in Uganda, which was also the capital of a former state.In Europe, Sue Hamilton and I have continued our Neolithic-Iron Age project in northern Puglia, Italy; and the other Italian project entitled "Develop mental literacy and the establishment of regional and state identity in early Italy: research beyond Etruria, Greece and Rome", which I direct (with John Wilkins of the Accordia Research Institute of the University of London) assisted by Kathryn Lamas as research fellow, completed its second year with concentrated study of inscriptions from southeast Italy.Kather ine Wright continued her research on the evidence for and the cultural significance of cooking in prehistoric Southwest Asia, focusing on its changing technology from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic (see pp. 33-37 in this issue of AI ).

Conferences and lectures
In November 2004 the group, together with the Complex Societies Research Group, sponsored a one-day conference on the theme of literacy in the ancient world.It was organized by Kathryn Lamas under the title "Literacy and state development: comparative perspectives".It brought together scholars studying literacy in Egypt, western Asia, the Mediterranean and Peru and provoked some fascinating and wide-ranging debate.We hope that, with some additional invited papers, it will result in a valuable publication.
In April 2005 the group sponsored the sixth workshop on Celtic-Romano-British religion, known by the acronym FERCAN (Fontes epigraphici religionis Celticae antiquae).The three-day workshop, enti tled "Continuity and innovation in reli gion in the Roman west", was held at the Institute and organized by Sue Hamilton, together with Professor Tony King (St Alfred's College, Winchester) and Dr Ralph Hiiussler (University of Osnabruck) .with support from the British Academy.The event included a reception at the Insti tute and a book launch for the proceedings of the FERCAN workshops held in Vitoria Gasteiz, Spain, in 2000 and in Osnabruck, Germany, in 2002.It is expected that the proceedings of the sixth conference will be published in the same series.
The Forum for Island Research and Experience (FIRE).established last year under the aegis of the Social and Cultural Dynamics Research Group, is now contin uing as an independent forum run by Jago Cooper and Helen Dawson.In February 2005 they organized a very successful con ference at the Institute on the theme "Learning lessons from cultural heritage for sustainable island development".It brought together archaeologists, geogra phers, social anthropologists, and emer gency and disaster managers and will lead to the publication of a volume of papers.
In the autumn term the group hosted two lectures by distinguished American scholars on the subject of gender archaeol ogy.In November Anne Pyburn, fr om Indi ana University, gave a lecture entitled "Archaeology and the gender without history" and in December Joan Gero, of the American University, Washington DC, spoke to the title "Sexpots of ancient Peru: is sex below gender?".Both lectures were very well attended and enthusiastically received.
In the spring term a half-day meeting was held at which members of the group presented their own research.Six papers were given, by three members of the aca demic staff and three research students.The group introduced this type of meeting last year and because it worked well then we decided to repeat it this year.Finally, in May 2005, the group sponsored a lecture by the Colombian archaeologist Augusto Oyuela-Cayced, who spoke about his research in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta of northern Colombia under the title "From the Tairona to the Kogi: a case study in the historical ecology of religion".

Publications
The first of the three volumes being pub lished by UCL Press, which I mentioned in my report last year -Agency uncovered: archaeological perspectives on social agency, power and being human, edited by Andrew Gardner) -was published in July 2004.Archaeology and women, edited by Sue Hamilton, Ruth Whitehouse and Karen Wright, is in press for publication in the autumn of 2005, and The archaeology of water: social and ritual dimensions, edited by Fay Stevens, is also expected to be published in the near future.

The Complex and Literate Societies Research Group
Coordinator: Andrew Reynolds T he group has continued to pro vide a cross-cultural forum for academic staff, postgraduate students, and honorary mem bers of the Institute whose research interests and expertise concern the archaeology of literate societies world wide.I succeeded John Tait as coordinator in 2004 and thanks are due to him for his efforts during his three-year term.In future, the group aims to strengthen sup port networks for its postgraduate stu dents, in particular by organizing seminars on themes related to research methods.The first of these meetings, concerning the uses of texts in archaeology, was held in the summer term.David Wengrow, a new member of staff who works in Egypt, has joined the group and has completed a book on the archaeology of early Egypt which is due to be published by the end of 2005.

Research projects
The research of many members of the group relates to Europe.Kris Lockyear con tinued his collaborative project at Roman Noviodunum in Romania (the first phase of which he described in AI 2002/2003).In the 2004 field season, further resistivity survey of the site was undertaken, as were trials to assess the potential value of mag netometry survey.Analysis of the pottery retrieved so far was completed and the results of the first four seasons (2000,

Conferences and seminars
In November 2004 the group sponsored, with the Social and Cultural Dynamics Research Group, a one-day conference on literacy in the ancient world (see p. 6 in this issue).Also in November, Alan John ston and Vassos Karageorghis (of the UCL Department of Greek and Latin) organized a highly successful one-day meeting on the theme "The work of UCL alumni in the archaeology and history of the ancient Mediterranean".Additional sponsorship for the event was provided by the Leventis Foundation, the UCL Centre for the Clas sical World and UCL's Development and Corporate Communications Office.The Institute's medievalists maintained links with the British Museum through the jointly organized Early Medieval Studies seminar, with an impressive list of speak ers that included Janet Nelson (King's Col lege London), Helen Geake (University of Cambridge), Jo Story (University of Leices ter); and in May 2005 the group organized a seminar given by Boyan Dumanov (New Bulgarian University, Sofia) , who spoke about his research under the title "Ethno cultural transformations in the early medi eval Balkans".National Museums of Scotland, one on the future of museums and the other on the issue of disposal from collections.
This year the group did not offer a semi nar series in heritage studies because Beverley Butler accepted responsibility for organizing the Institute-wide series in the autumn term.It was entitled "Archival memory: the case of Palestine", and in ten two-hour seminars led by Institute staff and invited speakers issues relating to identity and the past in a fractured and displaced society were examined.The seminars were very well attended, and, as has already been mentioned in the previ ous section, Beverley is now developing a wider research project related to the archaeology and heritage of Palestine (the Director of the Institute also comments on the seminar series in his report on page 3 of this issue).
40-43 in the 2002/2003 issue of AI); in China, where Luisa Mengoni has exam ined the role of archaeology in the study of regional cultures (see pp. 52-55 in this issue of AI); in India, where Robert Hard ing has been studying religious, especially Buddhist, topographies (see pp. 48-51); and in Egypt, where Stephen Quirke has continued his study of Middle Kingdom papyri from Kahun and John Tait has con tinued his work on the Tomb Robbery Papyri housed in the British Museum.
Wolfson Laboratories continue to attract researchers from around the world to join us in collaborative projects.For example, this year Dr Jianjun Mei from the Institute of Historical Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing spent three months with us investigating prehistoric and early-modern copper slag from northwest ern China -a project that also forms part of the group 's growing involvement in the International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (see p. 3 in this issue of AI); and Blanca Maldonado from Pennsy l Note 1. Th. Rehren & E. Pusch, "Late Bronze Age Egyptian glass production at Qantir Piramesses, in press, Science, 2005.
will be published in the next vol ume of the Journal of Roman Archaeology in 2005.The continuation of the project for Hebridean ecclesiastical site ofHowmore on the island of South Uist will be written during the summer of 2005 prior to excavation at the site in 2006.The second phase of excavation at the Anglo Saxon monastic site at Buckfastleigh in Devon (see pp. 22-25 in this issue of AI) will likewise take place this summer.I have also secured an award from the Lever hulme Trust for a three-year project to explore the landscape context of Anglo Saxon civil defence in the Viking Age.It is a collaborative venture with the universi ties of Nottingham and York, and Stuart Brookes, who is currently an honorary research assistant at the Institute, will be employed for its duration.Another project in which I have participated, entitled "Peo ple and space" and fun ded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board, explored community definition in the early middle ages in Britain, and a book resulting from it is due to be published in 2006.Martin