Staff profile

Academic Biography

• 2013-2015 MA Archaeology (Landscapes) Birmingham University

• I also hold a BA in History ( Exeter), a Post Graduate Certificate in Education ( University of Wales) and a Diploma in Psychology (Nottingham Trent University)

Research Topic

My area of interest is regional scale prospection in uplands for post Roman-Early Medieval sites of interest worthy of non-intrusive and potentially intrusive investigation. My research area covers the feeder streams and uplands of the upper Ure, upper Swale, upper Tees and upper Wear. The region covers the valleys of Bishopdale, Wensleydale, Swaledale, the A66/Stainmore gap, Teesdale and Weardale. My research will also take in Lunesdale in the recently extended Yorkshire Dales National Park

I have classified uplands as upland habitats using the benchmarks published by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee in ‘An Illustrated Guide to British Upland Vegetation’ (Averis et al,2004).

I am currently carrying out desk based assessments for and visiting/photographing twenty locations representing a sample of Domesday ‘manors’, in the Wapentakes of Hang and Gilling in order to ‘start from the known’ and work back in time.

I will use the survey results to characterise the types of land area and their constituent habitation clusters. From that process I will identify a small number of locations for more intensive investigation.

At this point in time the manor/township of Bainbridge; a ‘lost’ Domesday settlement in Bishopdale; the manor of Fremington; the possible settlement/shieling at High Carlingill in the Howgill Fells; the manor(s) of Lonton/Crosthwaite and the combined manors of Hunderthwaite/Romaldkirk are provoking challenging questions about the evolution of upland habitation clusters; related resource exploitation and patterns of communication.

In the final stage of my research I will attempt to use the archetypes represented by the sample above to attempt to identify post Roman Early medieval patterns of occupation and land use in the landscapes of Upper Teesdale and Weardale, which were not covered by Domesday.

I have specific interests in geoarchaeological techniques ( because many of the sites I excavate at lack substantial evidence of material culture and often present diverse/divergent structural morphologies) and fish bones (see SHARP below)

Conference Contributions

(upcoming) Early Medieval Archaeology Student Symposium 2019 ‘Finding Crin’s Fremington: the nature and extent of the historic landscape of a Domesday ‘manor’ in the northern uplands’

Engagement

Education officer CBA Yorkshire

Member/excavator:

• Altogether Archaeology, Holwick, Well Head deserted settlement
• SHARP, Sedgeford Early medieval maltings; medieval use and occupation of ‘Saggy Horse Field’; fishing in Smethdon Hundred in the early medieval up to and including intensive exploitation in the later C11th ( and a possible ‘haecweir’)
• Lunesdale Archaeology Group, High Carlingill possible Romano-British and/or shieling site.