The University of Manchester

Faculty Member, Archaeology

Other Affiliations: University of Chester, History & Archaeology

Thesis Title: Dealing with the dead: manipulation of the body in the mortuary practices of Mesolithic north-west Europe

About

I’m a human osteologist and funerary archaeologist and have recently completed doctoral research at the University of Manchester. I currently have a fixed-term (half-time) post as Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Chester and I also lecture in Archaeology at the University of Manchester.

My research is focused on the treatment of the body throughout the Mesolithic of north-west Europe.  In this period there appears to be enormous variation in the way that the body was treated after death and where/how it was deposited – from inhumation in ‘formal’ cemeteries to dismembered, disarticulated or fragmented bodies (or parts of them) deposited on settlements, in middens and as co-mingled “collective” interments in caves.

I’m using osteological analysis to reconstruct the specific practices that are responsible for these variations in treatment, and exploring issues such as the nature of living people’s bodily engagement with the dead (e.g. dismembering fleshed bodies), the parallel treatment of animals and objects, and the role that the manipulation of the body after death plays in the production, reproduction and transformation of Mesolithic identities.

Prior to starting my PhD I was part of a team of osteologists at the Museum of London Archaeology Service working on the medieval cemetery of St. Mary Spital (Spitalfields, London). With over 10,000 skeletons, this is one of the largest cemeteries ever excavated in Europe – and analysing >5,000 of these nearly drove us mad, if we weren’t to begin with. However, we did end up with a pretty amazing account of life in medieval London, and a very large database!

My first love however is field archaeology, in particular the Vale of Pickering in North Yorkshire, where my love of fieldwork was born, and the amazing archaeology and beautiful landscapes of the neighbouring Yorkshire Wolds, where incidentally they also brew the best beer in the world.

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