Open Exclusion | The Personal Open Access Experience

Posted on 5 June, 2013 by Spencer Carter

Updated | 6-Jun-2013 to add LSE blog link
Updated | 7-Jun-2013 to add “blogs as scholarly publication” link

**The issue of open access is a boiling pot of frustration (cost) and anxiety (ethics and legality).**

For independent researchers, like myself, whether previously in academia and/or aspiring to be enrolled, or for community practitioners (I loath the term “amateur archaeologist“) or for members of the public where even access to public libraries is becoming an increasing luxury (if that library has access at all to academic journals, print or online)—open access is a friction point.

While governments, UK and Federal US included, are grappling with and legislating for open access to learned materials, funded by or as a part of publicly financed research, the incumbent publishing monopolies are lobbying to parry such initiatives based on “sustainable cost” doctrines, and their financial interests therein.

Personal Experience

I can certainly vouch for the pain, being outside academia right now, that pay-wall “open access” causes. I subscribe to the few e-publishers and academic societies that I can afford—a gradually diminishing number since I don’t presently have a regular income stream. I am grateful, as a university alumnus, in having access to JSTOR, although in archaeology the titles which are freely accessible are far from comprehensive, especially for fields like Mesolithic archaeology—a discipline that also spans many specialisations in science and social science, the humanities, cultural heritage management (CRM) and derivative disciplines. I am even more grateful for the “green” and (very rare) “gold” open access vehicles that allow me either time-delayed or immediate access to scholarly material.

Implications

One thing is certain: I will likely be several steps behind those lucky enough to be within formal education or post-doc (yet paying excruciating tuition fees for the pleasure). Open exclusion is part of the reason. That feels neither fair nor productive—the public are an equal and obligatory participant, a partner in our shared heritage, moreso in the evolution and management of our shared environment, the collective owners of our cultural assets? The public are not a simple “consumer bucket” happy to receive amorphous outputs or media sound-bites. Exclusivity and access-by-means are surely forms of cynical discrimination unworthy of our societies, not least those that espouse a lifetime education and education-for-all ethos? Aren’t these educational aspirations also being subjugated to a market-driven “economic return” mandate, naive in its focus on immediacy and therefore myopic in leveraging the true meaning of past, place, presence, well-being and footfall for healthier (and less welfare-costly, more inclusive, more sustainable, more attractive) communities?

Example

And yet, if I were to subscribe to the venerable Journal of Archaeological Science (publisher: Elsevier), by example, it would be beyond my budget (online access is a 5-user license). They are a respected and profuse publisher. If I were to pay-to-download every article they publish across monthly volumes in a given year, I would have to pay over $11,000 (obviously far more than the individual subscription, but it does illustrate my point around reasonable cost—many papers are only six or so pages). Something is amiss?

Returns

Any law of diminishing returns suggests a tipping-point between over-pricing in any given marketplace and realising income streams as a function of volume-based consumer viability—if not “popular” demand. I really don’t mind paying a few dollars/euros/pounds for a worthy, scholarly and life-changing article. I do, however, resent paying $31.50 per article or a mandate to cluster papers into discounted blocks that are still priced beyond my means.

Please read THESE blogs

These excellently written blogs go a long way to explaining both the terminology as well as the seemingly intractable issues that are not without tragedy. I highly recommend reading them. There are plenty more too.

» Sustainability at Any Price is not Sustainable: Open Access and Archaeology
By: Eric Kansa, UC Berkeley and OpenContext.org

» Academics and universities must continue to develop open access alternatives to break the monopoly of large publishers
By: Ann McKechin MP (LSE blog)

» Blogs as scholarly publication: “Taking a Chance: My Blog is a Publication”
By: Katy Meyers (2011) Bones Don’t Lie (blog), Michigan State University | The comments are also supportive and interesting

And now think about how YOU are and will be affected, how you will respond, what you will say, how you will canvass for a fairer outcome, what you will do.

Acknowledgements

Prof Julian D Richards (University of York) for posting it on Twitter today. York is also home of the Archaeological Data Service (ADS) who work continuously to digitise archaeological resources for the greater good. The authors of the ASOR blog need to be congratulated for a well-written and well-appraised status quo and portent for some difficult battles ahead.

♦ Microburin

Digging Seamer Carr 1985-6 | A few Mesolithic Memories of VP85

Posted on 26 May, 2013 by Spencer Carter

I came across these old pictures, showing their age a bit (and mine), from the excavations at Seamer Carr, not far from Star Carr in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire.

Located in the path of a whiffy landfill (or more accurately “floating on peat”) site, the open area excavation was part of a bigger environmental project to reveal the extent of post-glacial Lake Pickering (more properly Lake Flixton), on which Star Carr is but one of now many Early and Late Mesolithic activity areas. I like the later stuff most, and at least one microlith array is known (i.e. an arrowhead configuration).

I was a volunteer under-grad at Durham (1984-7) and when not digging on the North York Moors, East Yorkshire or Poland, recording Anglo-Saxon churches in Tynedale or cataloguing Roman Samian Ware in the Old Fulling Museum attic, I squelched at Seamer Carr and in a few 1x1s at Star Carr.

It rained every day except one. It was one of the coldest summers on record. A force 9 gale laid every tent to waste despite 4 foot stakes—I slept in dad’s car in year 2 and learnt a thing or two about shift gears. We shan’t talk about the Elsan loos, nor about blue not being my favourite colour anymore.

However, we all delighted in warm team spirit, hot tea, weekly showers, Helen Patterson’s wonderful cuisine, Schadla-Hall dry wit, Ed Cloutman’s auger, fine Yorkshire beer, and laughs at the expense of the last person to be submerged to the waist, or higher, in the sump pit—”soak away” would not be accurate. The lithics were fine (very few on the spoil heap), dead horses emerged (well, one) and a bit of antler at “the other place”. Great memories, dried out, like the peat.

See the story about the new exhibition at Yorkshire Museum →

♦ Microburin

After the Ice | Major Star Carr exhibition opens at Yorkshire Museum | Mesolithic

Posted on 23 May, 2013 by Spencer Carter

Updated 24 May 2013

Coinciding with the publication of a new popular book, the Yorkshire Museum is hosting a major exhibition of artefacts and interpretations of the UK’s most famous and finds-rich Mesolithic landscape at Star Carr in Yorkshire, England. The exhibition is open from 24 May 2013 for a year and is widely covered in the archaeological and regional media.

Bringing together the artefacts previously scattered across many museums and repositories since Clark’s excavations in the 1950s, the exhibition aims to present the most recent investigations in context—the landscape, the re-colonisation of Britain (or expansion of the late Glacial “epi-Palaeolithic” long-blade communities such as those at Creswell Crags in Derbyshire), the environmental transformations, human beliefs, behaviours, mobility and the material culture that give hints to a complex hunter-gatherer-fisher society. These were modern humans, just like us.

On Thu 30 May 8pm there will also be a UK television Time Team special on Star Carr (Channel 4).

Acid Attack

Current archaeological research and interventions in the eastern Vale of Pickering, recently under the leadership of York and Manchester Universities, acknowledge the very short remaining lifespan of previously waterlogged organic remains. What were hard, crisp and tangible testaments to Mesolithic lifestyles—barbed points, supposed “head-dresses”, the working of antler, bone and wood, shale beads, birch rolls and more—are now feeble ghosts of their former selves, if they survive at all in the peat. Drainage and agricultural activities have desiccated and acidified the waterlogged matrix: it often has the pH of stomach acid today.

Image | Star Carr excavations 2010 (Microburin)

Where did they go?

On the other hand, fieldwork since the 1980s and more recently has proven that Star Carr and the Early Mesolithic lakeside activity areas were far more extensive than previously thought, at around 9000 cal BC. Hoof prints from undomesticated horses have been discovered on Flixton Island—perhaps their last stand? Mobility across a forested, watery landscape becomes apparent by looking at the lithic (flint) distribution and operational chains, from sourcing the raw material, knapping reduction strategies, caching-curation, re-usage and discard behaviours. There’s also now evidence for structures* of some sort and repeated returns to the area over generations. Unlike corollaries in southern Scandinavia, linked by Doggerland across what is now the North Sea, only human burials remain entirely elusive at Star Carr—for now.

*Conneller, C. et al. 2012. Substantial settlement in the European Early Mesolithic: new research at Star Carr. ANTIQUITY 86 (334), 1004-1020.

If not left to the elements, perhaps the dead were deposited in the lake, or on islands now denuded, or far “offshore”? Watery places retained significance throughout the prehistoric period—were the many barbed points deposited rather than discarded? Do we even know what we are looking for? Within a few thousand years the North Sea inundation separated Britain from Europe, and a rather different material culture evolved—the so called Late Mesolithic. One can argue for evolution or revolution, but much more research and dating is needed from the post glacial into the Neolithic where communities with very different life-strategies may have co-existed (northern European evidence hints at this).

Watch the North Sea inundation (TemporalMapping on YouTube | 40 sec) »

The exhibition is a once-in-a-generation chance to see the most comprehensive and intimate story about our earliest post-glacial ancestors. People just like us, and yet so different. Or perhaps not? How many of our “instinctive” behaviours today bear testament to our hunter-gatherer-fisher past? Maybe we just live longer and refined the BBQ experience? I promise a review when I have seen it.

Recent Press Coverage

Image top | Courtesy University of York

National Museum Denmark | Highlights of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic collections

Posted on 8 May, 2013 by Spencer Carter

Having recently completed a round trip by train from London to Copenhagen via Hamburg, I’d love to share some of the highlights from the outstanding—content, preservation and display—early prehistory at the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen (Danish | English). It’s probably the best Mesolithic exhibition I have seen and I can but urge a visit if you have not yet been.

Between The Bogs and The Sea

The exceptional preservation of organic materials in Denmark (also northern Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, southerm Scandinavia and Baltics)—including human beings, clothing and artefacts—relies on two factors: (a) the rich, wet, anaerobic conditions in their fast-disappearing peat bogs; (b) that many Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic activity areas now sit below sea level, a reflection of significant sea level rises after the last glaciation (although some land in the west if Jutland has risen by 50-60m after the weight of ice was removed, and continues to rise very gradually, as in Scotland—although southern England is still sinking).

Image | Broddenbjerg idol, dated to the late Bronze Age (not Mesolithic, unfortunately). More info »

We do have similar preservation in the UK, but far less frequent. Sites such as Star Carr & Flixton, Uxbridge, Thatcham, Bouldnor, Stainton West, Amesbury and Goldcliff East are/were rare survivals. Modern land drainage, development, together with industrial-scale agriculture threaten to destroy the tiny fraction that might yet remain. Star Carr will be (organically) gone, dissolved in acid or dried out within our generation, after 10,000 years in soggy peace. Star Carr 2010 pictured ↑

If you’re interested in the travel itinerary, briefly, and it is well worth doing by train, here’s a rough summary. I used the Deutsche Bahn website (timetables) and then called the UK DB office to book everything, and they were able to find the best fares. There’s also some excellent advice on the brilliant website Seat61 that includes other options such as a ferry from the UK and the Köln or Hamburg sleeper trains to Copenhagen.

Itinerary Summary

London St Pancras Eurostar d. 06.50 (weekday) to Bruxelles-Midi
Change to DB ICE 15 to Hamburg Hbf (via Aachen) changing at Köln to ICE 2218, a. 17.12 | Overnight in Hamburg
Hamburg to Copenhagen on DB ICE 2218 direct d. 09.28, train boards ferry at Puttgarden (DE) to Rødby (DK) for 45 mins and great fun, a. 14.14
Two days in Copenhagen also visiting Roskilde Viking Ship Museum and Malmö Sweden (via the amazing Øresund Bridge) both about 35 mins by train from Copenhagen
Copenhagen to Hamburg on ICE 34 direct d. 11.44, a. 16.16 | Overnight in Hamburg
Hamburg (ICE 587) to Bruxelles-Midi by ICE trains (weekend) d. 10.53 with changes at Hannover (ICE 650) and Köln (ICE 14), a. 17.35
Bruxelles-Midi to London St Pancras by last Eurostar d. 19.52 (to be safe), a. 21.06

Some panorama views to tempt you – more below too. L to R | The Vig aurochs, Amber carvings and pendants, the dugout boat from Broksø (Early Neolithic) →

Pictures | Click to enlarge | Taken in “museum mode” without flash – sorry for the quality. This is a selection only since there’s so much more in the museum, all compelling. The Bronze and Iron Age collections are particularly disturbing, given the degree of preservation (with often palpable human violence, and nice wool costumes).

Navigating Danish Early Prehistory

Like archaeology in most other countries, Denmark’s is littered with “Cultures” or “Techno-complexes” derived from 19th and early 20th Century attempts to rationalise (and typologise) material culture—artefacts and common feature traits such as burial practices or settlement types—against a chronological “evolution”. Cultures, in this sense, are groups of like traits usually named after a “type site” or region. So, for example, we have the Creswellian (after Creswell Crags in Derbyshire) as the type site for upper Palaeolithic, late glacial lithics and bone & antler artefacts. Here’s my rough attempt at unraveling Denmark’s culturescape:

Cultural Period	Dates BC	Chronozone	Sea Level	Economy	UK Equivalency
Late Palaeolithic
Hamburgian	13,500 – 11,100	Warm Bølling Glacial Dryas II Warm Allerød	90m lower	Mobile hunters, tundra	Creswellian (Magdalenian)
Federmesser & Brommean	11,900 – 10,700	Allerød interstadial		Mobile hunters, tundra, ameliorating
Ahrensburgian	10,500 – 9000	Younger Dryas glacial to Preboreal Tundra	60m lower	Mobile hunters	Presence in Scotland, Orkney, Hebrides, England
Mesolithic
Maglemosian	9600 – 6000	Preboreal to Boreal Warm	30m to 5m lower, 1m / 100 years, isostatic land uplift in west 50 – 60m, less in east	Mobile hunter-gatherer-fishers, persistent places	Early Mesolithic Star Carr
Kongemose	6000 – 5200	Atlantic Warm and moist	0.5 – 2m fluctuations in 500 yr cycles (Littorina fluctuations)	Mobile hunter-gatherer-fishers, persistent places	Late Mesolithic
Mesolithic – Neolithic transition
Ertebølle	Early 5300 – 4500 Late 4500 – 3950	Atlantic to Subboreal Peat bogs forming		Mobile hunter-gatherer-fishers, persistent places, shell middens, pottery	Late Mesolithic
Neolithic
Funnelbeaker	4100 – 2800	Subboreal	As today	Animal husbandry (cows, pigs), emmer and barley crops	Early Neolithic

Ahrensburgian arrowheads from Stronsay, Orkney Islands (Scotland) →

The Tåderup Elk drowned while being hunted around 6700 BC | Early flint arrowheads (Hamburgian and Ahrensburgian – compare with the Orkney examples above | Antler barbed points (upper group retain their flint barbs) | 8,000 years of arrowheads and microliths ↓

The Aurochs from Vig (2m high) | A wild boar | Bone and antler tools | Two Ertebølle arrow shafts with tranchet flint arrowheads still in place (birch resin glue) ↓

Finds from very early Hamburgian and Ahrensburgian campsites | Flint assemblage | Paddle and bow ↓

Bone and antler “daggers” with flint blades still in place | Fishing trap | Musical instruments including mouth bow and drum beater | Selection of Ertebølle artefacts towards the transition to agriculture | Late Ertebølle grave goods ↓

And Finally into the Neolithic

Some amber bling, a little trepanation to relieve pressure, signs of violence (an arrowhead in the sternum and a hole in the head) ↓

♦ Spence

A bit of reading

Andersen, S. H. 2009. Ronæs Skov: Marinarkæologiske undersøgelser af en kystboplads fra Ertebølletid. Jysk Arkæologisk Selskabs Skrifter 64 | Underwater sites with amazing preservation

Blankholm, H. P. 2008. Southern Scandinavia in G. Bailey & P. Spikins (eds) Mesolithic Europe. Cambridge: University Press | State of knowledge in regional summaries

Eriksen, B. V. (ed.) 2006. Stenalderstudier: Tidligt mesolitiske jægere of samlere i Sydskandinavien. Jysk Arkæologisk Selskabs Skrifter 55 | Early Mesolithic research papers with English summaries

Vang Petersen, P. 2008. FLINT fra Danmarks oldtid. Forlaget Museerne.dk | No English, but still a useful guide to flint sources, technologies and typologies

Orkneyjar | Excellent Orkney website with Mesolithic coverage

Posted on 7 April, 2013 by Spencer Carter

Keywords | Mesolithic, Epipalaeolithic, Ahrensburgian, Younger Dryas, Orkney, Scotland, Britain, Viking-Bergen

Orkney is perhaps better known for its spectacular Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Viking archaeology, with clear evidence for long-distance contact and seafaring from earliest times. However, there are more than hints that the islands were occupied in the Mesolithic period, 9000–4000 BC if not earlier, when sea levels were as much as 30m lower than today.

◊ Orkneyjar is an excellent heritage and archaeological news aggregation website, well worth a visit. News items are categorised by period such as Mesolithic »

Discoveries through the noughties have included hazelnut shells dated to 6820–6660 Cal BC and diagnostic flints buried below Bronze Age and Neolithic monuments.

There’s even earlier and extremely exciting evidence too:

“The discovery of two tiny flint arrowheads in Stronsay could represent the earliest evidence of human activity found in Orkney – if not Scotland – to date.

Naomi Woodward, of Orkney College, found the tanged points – thought to have been used between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago – in a flint scatter collected during the Stronsay Archaeological Survey in April 2007. Flint experts Caroline Wickham-Jones and Torbin Ballin subsequently identified them as very early forms of prehistoric arrowheads – a type derived from a classification known as Ahrensburgian, found across the plains of north-western Europe.”

Epipalaeolithic – Ahrensburgian

These finds, plus a few others across the western Scottish mainland and Hebridian islands, push evidence for hunter-gatherer activity back to before the arctic conditions of the Loch Lomond Stadial, around 9000 BC (equivalent to the Younger Dryas of north-western Europe). Prior to this re-chilling—at around 11,000 BC—temperatures had improved after the last glaciation to be similar to those of today. Finds of a similar date (11,000–10,500 BC) have been dredged from the North Sea (Viking-Bergen) between Shetland and Norway, showing that there was occupation quite a considerable distance north at this time.

◊ Timothy Darvill’s book Prehistoric Britain has a good summary of known evidence and toolkits | Google books preview »

♦ Spence

University College Dublin to reconstruct Mesolithic house | New blog

Posted on 25 February, 2013 by Spencer Carter

Keywords | Stone age, Mesolithic, Hut, Mesolithic house, Experimental archaeology, Archaeology, Ireland, University College Dublin

This UCD School of Archaeology project aims to build a Mesolithic (middle stone age) house in the Centre for Experimental Archaeology. Basing the experiment closely on archaeological data, they will use stone age technologies and materials in an attempt to learn something of the real conditions within which these remarkable structures were built.

Visit the UCD buildingmesolithic Blog »

Background

Howick “tepee” reconstruction

A series of discoveries over recent years have transformed the twentieth century database of Mesolithic structures in the British Isles and Ireland. There’s an emerging picture that the first “architecture” was more complex, more frequent and more enduring than the hitherto scant records of stakehole arcs, ‘windbreaks’ and tent weights¹. So, for example, Howick in Northumberland (NE England), and perhaps new discoveries on the Firth of Forth (Scotland) and Merseyside (NW England), suggest occupation over more than a hundred years, whether intermittently or permanently, in sub-circular structures around 6m in diameter with internal hearths and lithic (and sometimes organic) evidence for many activities.

In Ireland, Mount Sandel (Londonderry) is a well-known excavation by Peter Woodman in the 1970s² and uncovered substantial structural remains. Similarly Howick, excavated by Clive Waddington³, provided evidence for occupation over multiple generations with periodic rebuilding events. Recent discoveries at East Barns in East Lothian³ and Echline (Scotland) suggests the genesis of semi-permanent or permanent structures very early in the Late Mesolithic (8000 BC)*, perhaps coinciding with the increasing inundation of the North Sea up to about 6400 BC, a palpable event between generations that finally separated Britain from mainland Europe and rendered a considerable, productive landmass uninhabitable—Doggerland. Combinations of isostatic land rise/fall and seal level changes have also altered the British west coast topography significantly**. Is there an association between displaced or maritime communities and the advent of the house? Or is it that most evidence (and tentative aggregation sites) are now under the sea?

* My feeling is that the early Mesolithic “structure” at Star Carr needs more scrutiny (2-3m diam. hollow with associated postholes extending it to 4m non-linearly) and more evidence from the environs to substantiate a “dwelling” or purposeful structure. Ref ANTIQUITY 86(334) Conneller et al. pp 1004-1020.

** England is still sinking and Scotland still rising today—no political commentary intended!

This exercise will be interesting to watch since there are a number of ways to interpret the archaeological evidence for post- and stake-holes, scoops, pits and hearths as well as patterning of artefactual evidence. Bigger questions remain around the significance of these structures for a hunter-gatherer ancestry thought, until now, to have been far more mobile and transient than this new evidence suggests?

Visit the UK Sites and Finds page for some of the more recent media coverage → | or view some news headlines on scoop.it »

Selective References

¹ For example, see (a) Wickham-Jones, C.R. 2004. Structural Evidence for the Scottish Mesolithic. In A. Saville (ed.) Mesolithic Scotland and Its Neighbours (229-42). Edinburgh: Soc Ant Scot; (b) Smith. C. 1992. Late Stone Age Hunters of the British Isles. London: Routledge.

² Woodman, P.C. 1985. Excavations at Mount Sandel 1973-77. Northern Ireland Archaeol Monographs No 2. Belfast: HMSO.

³ Howick | Waddington, C. (ed.) 2007. Mesolithic Settlement in the North Sea Basin: A Case Study from Howick, North-East England. Oxford: Oxbow.
East Barns | Gooder, J. 2007. Excavation of a Mesolithic House at East Barns, East Lothian, Scotland: An Interim View. In C. Waddington and K. Pedersen (eds). Mesolithic Studies in the North Sea Basin and Beyond (49-59). Oxford: Oxbow.

microburin

populating the mesolithic | stones tell stories | resonating places

Category Archives: Microburin miscellaneous

Digging Seamer Carr 1985-6 | A few Mesolithic Memories of VP85

I came across these old pictures, showing their age a bit (and mine), from the excavations at Seamer Carr, not far from Star Carr in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire.