Tom Gardner

 Originally from Scotland and having grown up between inner-city Glasgow and the crofts of the Northwest Highlands, I am currently resident in Edinburgh and work as an Ancient Monuments Officer in Historic Environment Scotland (HES). I am also an Honorary Fellow of the University of Edinburgh (2020) and a freelance consultant geoarchaeologist specialising in geochemistry and thin section micromorphology. I previously undertook academic study, field research, and field archaeology, mainly across Scotland and Northern England, and ran the wetland excavations at the Bradford Kaims with the Bamburgh Research Project from 2014–2018.

I undertook an MA in Archaeology and an MSc by Research in Geoarchaeology at the University of Edinburgh, finishing in 2014, before being offered a Carnegie Trust PhD Fellowship to undertake a PhD at the University of Edinburgh entitled ‘The Geoarchaeology of Burnt Mounds in Northern Britain’ (2015—2018), which will see publication this year.

My current research interests have expanded from the purely geoarchaeological, and now include both geoarchaeological work on the Earthen Empires Project (2019–2021) at the University of Edinburgh, advice to HES on environmental science and soil erosion, work with Peatland ACTION and Scottish Natural Heritage assessing the impacts of peatland restoration on historic assets and palaeoenvironmental records, environmental sustainability in prehistory, and my role on the National Peatlands Group providing specialist advice to the Scottish Government. I am also currently leading a research stream within HES investigating how Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital Accounting can be integrated with the historic environment for use within the planning system and policy decision making at a national level.

I have been a member of the AEA since 2016, and aim to better integrate the core aims of the AEA with heritage management and environmental and scientific advice across Scotland through my role within HES and the National Peatlands Group. In my spare time, I am an avid rock climber and gardener, and play traditional music.

I have been a member of the Association for Environmental Archaeology since I was student at the University of Bradford in the late 1990s. Very much inspired by my undergraduate tutors, Terry O’Connor and Jill Thompson, I went on to pursue postgraduate qualifications in Environmental Archaeology at UCL. I graduated in 2006 with a PhD in Archaeobotany, in which I combined macro-botanical and phytolith analyses to address questions of the development of agricultural communities in Northern and Eastern India. I have publications concerning my PhD research in India, subsequent work in China but also on methodological aspects of phytolith analysis and the identification of macro-botanical remains.

I have been working out of Archaeology for some time, as a science teacher, but over the last year I have been actively developing a new research project – the application of phytolith analysis on British Archaeological sites. As well as working on this new project, my other research interest is open science and I have been conducting a research project concerning open science practices in phytolith research. This has involved a review of articles in 16 prominent archaeological and palaeoecological journals to extract those with primary data (341 articles). I have then assessed the state of open access, data and meta data sharing in these articles and evaluated the next steps needed to move forward as a discipline to become more open.

I have recently received two small research grants (AEA and BSBI) and I am working on an application for a larger grant. My work is also being kindly supported by colleagues at Historic England’s Scientific Lab, who are offering much encouragement to develop a phytolith reference collection for the British Flora. I am trying to be as active as possible with my research pursuits; I have recently presented a poster at the IMAA workshop at the University of Reading and I am working with PalaeoSIG on their lay summary blogs as a copy-editor. 

 I have been a member of the AEA since 2004, and currently divide my time between commercial  work as the environmental archaeology manager for L - P : Archaeology, a medium-sized  archaeology company in the UK with offices in London, Essex, Chester and Bristol; and teaching  and research as Senior Lecturer in Environmental Change & Sustainability in the Geography  department at Bath Spa University. My primary specialism is the identification and interpretation of  mollusc shell assemblages, although I have fairly broad interests in ecological change, Quaternary  sciences, site formation processes, environmental sustainability and past human health and  lifestyles. I am especially interested in mentoring, training and wellbeing within the discipline, and  working to ensure the sustainability of the specialisms, especially primary identification skills, that  we rely on.  

 I am an archaeobotanist based at the University of Sheffield. I am interested in food and identity  (both archaeological and modern), agricultural decision-making, crop choices and risk management  in ancient societies. I’ve been a member of the AEA since 2004 when I was an undergraduate at  the University of Melbourne, Australia. I completed my MSc in Environmental Archaeology and  Palaeoeconomy and PhD at Sheffield. Following my PhD I worked for Headland Archaeology as a  post-excavation supervisor before returning to Sheffield as a post-doctoral researcher on the  ADAPT project for Glynis Jones investigating the spread of crops across Europe in the Neolithic.  Currently I am a British Academy post-doctoral fellow researching cultural connections through  crop choices and cultivation strategies in the Bell Beaker period. I have taught archaeobotany at  the University of Nottingham and I am currently teaching MSc courses in archaeobotany at  Sheffield. I’ve worked as an archaeobotanist on research projects in Bulgaria, Turkey, Israel,  Georgia and the UK and commercially as part of the Sheffield Archaeobotany Consultancy. 

 I am currently a Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology in Tarragona, Spain. I moved there in June 2019 after many years of work as a Lecturer at the University of Nottingham in the UK, which followed postdocs in UK institutions as well as work at the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) and as a freelance archaeobotanist. My rich work experience in the academic but also in the contract world has allowed me to gain a good understanding of the advantages and, importantly, the problems each sector faces. I am specialised in archaeobotany having completed a Masters at the University of Sheffield and a PhD at the University of Leicester, UK. 

My research interests include a variety of topics, such as the archaeology of food, cuisine and taste, ritual practices, the development of horticulture and arboriculture, Aegean archaeology but also Roman and medieval food trade. 

 I am currently a freelance geoarchaeologist and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Bradford. Alongside geoarchaeology and all things environmental, my focus is British prehistory. My last postdoctoral position was project managing and co-authoring the publication of the Broxmouth hillfort excavations, East Lothian, as a joint project between the University of Bradford and Historic Scotland. I’m currently co-authoring the publication of the excavations at the Iron Age site of High Pasture Cave, Skye, with the support of Historic Scotland, am involved in a range of projects (mainly geoarchaeological) with my colleagues at Bradford and beyond, and am lucky enough to spend some of the summers at the Ness of Brodgar excavations in Orkney, undertaking geoarchaeological sampling within this incredibly preserved complex of Neolithic structures.

I gained a BA Joint Honours in Archaeology and Classics at Nottingham (1994), after which I spent several years as a field archaeologist, mainly based in London. My interest in environmental archaeology was stimulated through my Archaeological Sciences MA at Bradford (2000), after which I travelled north to the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Stirling and a PhD in geoarchaeology, focusing on cultural soils in Scotland. After this, I worked from the University as a geoarchaeological specialist for a diverse range of projects, such as the Papar Project (Scotland), The Viking Unst Project (Shetland), the Landscapes Circum Landnam Project (Faeroe Islands), The Anuradhapura Hinterland Project (Sri Lanka) and the investigations at the First World War site of Fromelles (France). I’ve been a member of the AEA since 2005, and hope that my range of experience in both the commercial and academic sectors will make me a useful member of the Committee.

I am archaeobotanist, and started my ‘Cinderella adventure’ in the early 1990s. I studied environmental biology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and then I worked in W. Szafer Institute of Botany PAS. I was taught by Krystyna Wasylikowa, who supervised my masters and doctoral thesis in classical archaeobotany. Now I am employed as a professor in the Polish Academy of Science but I hope there is still a long and interesting way ahead. I work mostly with samples derived from dry sites but I am also familiar with waterlogged remains from medieval towns and from natural sediments. During these years I also identified wood charcoal and plant imprints in daub and pottery. I like that part of the work that is connected with time consuming observations of plant macroremains but I am mostly interested in answering some questions using all accessible and reliable sources of information; research that needs good collaboration and understanding with other specialists. Last time I started to study the possibilities of stable N and C isotopic analyses as a source of information about past environment and diet. I have published several scientific papers, participated in some projects (four as PI), and I am a secretary in the Commission on Quaternary Palaeogeography, Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. Despite working in a scientific unit I also have some experience of commercial archaeology, including participation in some projects of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, with most of these studies published in international scientific journals. I work in the Institute of Botany and I’ve always collaborated with other archaeologists and archaeological institutions. I have participated in several excavations in Poland and abroad, including Egypt, Georgia and Greece.

Although with some breaks I have been an AEA member since 2005. I am very well experienced in archaeobotany but I can see that when we try to solve any scientific problem then we need to join information obtained by several specialists. On such occasions a good cognition and interdisciplinary understanding is crucial for performing any valuable discussion. In practice this is not so easy.

I am a pollen specialist and environmental archaeologist with a research focus on prehistoric Britain and Ireland, specifically Neolithic to Bronze Age human–environment interactions. I obtained a doctorate from the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 2019, in which I linked multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental data obtained from lake sediments to the archaeological record of Co. Clare in western Ireland. The use of pollen analysis, in addition to a range of palaeolimnological techniques (chironomid, organic/inorganic geochemistry) allowed me to identify anthropogenic indicators relating to pastoral and arable agriculture throughout prehistory. My environmental claim to fame is taking the deepest core in Ireland through 30m of water at Lough Inchiquin in Co. Clare! 

I previously completed a BSc (Hons) in Archaeology at the University of Durham, graduating in 2011, and went on to complete a research MPhil at the University of Cambridge the following year. My research has been varied in terms of the techniques involved but has always been firmly grounded in the realm of environmental archaeology. I enjoy spending my time digging holes, floating on a raft taking lake sediment cores and staring down a microscope.

I currently work in the commercial sector in Ireland where I am based primarily in post-excavation and manage the processing of environmental samples as well as specialist pollen work. Occasionally I manage to escape the warehouse and work on site and have commercial experience both in Ireland and the UK. I have carried out fieldwork in the UK, Ireland, Greece and Libya, and also worked as an archaeobotanist in Egypt. I have been involved in the AEA since 2016 and enjoy being part of this supportive and productive community! 

David works as a Project Archaeologist at The Discovery Programme, Centre for Archaeology and

Innovation based in Dublin. He has extensive experience working as an environmental archaeologist

in Ireland specialising in archaeobotany. Since 2017 he also runs a consultancy providing

archaeobotany services to the commercial sector, gaining experience working on archaeological

assemblages dating from the Mesolithic to Later Medieval periods.

David holds a bachelor’s degree (Hons.) in archaeology from the School of Archaeology, University

College Dublin (UCD) and a Master of Studies (MSt.) in archaeology from the Institute of

Archaeology/Kellogg College at the University of Oxford. In 2016 he returned to UCD where he

conducted archaeobotanical research as part of the wider Archaeological Exploration of Barda

Project (AEB), focusing on the Late Antique and Islamic period agriculture in Azerbaijan, and was

awarded his PhD in 2021.

David is also a Fulbright scholar and a recipient of the first Fulbright-Creative Ireland Museum

Fellowship at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington DC,

where he conducted research on the dissemination and digital curation of ecofacts recovered from

excavations. He is also a board member of the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland (IAI), an all-island

organisation for professional archaeologists working in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and a member

of the Environmental Archaeologists of Ireland working group established to provide a collaborative

forum, build professional relationships, and establish strategies for the development of the

profession of environmental archaeology in Ireland.

I previously completed a BSc (Hons) in Archaeology at the University of Durham, graduating in 2011, and went on to complete a research MPhil at the University of Cambridge the following year. My research has been varied in terms of the techniques involved but has always been firmly grounded in the realm of environmental archaeology. I enjoy spending my time digging holes, floating on a raft taking lake sediment cores and staring down a microscope.

I currently work in the commercial sector in Ireland where I am based primarily in post-excavation and manage the processing of environmental samples as well as specialist pollen work. Occasionally I manage to escape the warehouse and work on site and have commercial experience both in Ireland and the UK. I have carried out fieldwork in the UK, Ireland, Greece and Libya, and also worked as an archaeobotanist in Egypt. I have been involved in the AEA since 2016 and enjoy being part of this supportive and productive community! 

 Dr Shyama Vermeersch has a broad archaeological background thanks to her master’s degrees in  both Egyptology and archaeological sciences. She obtained her dissertation titled 'Developments in  Subsistence Practices from the Early Bronze Age through the Iron Age in the Southern Levant' in  2021 at the University of Tübingen (DE). Now, Dr Vermeersch is a research and teaching assistant  in zooarchaeology at the University of Groningen (NL). Her research interests include  reconstructing past farming and provisioning systems in their cultural and environmental context by  integrating both faunal and botanical lines of evidence. Dr Vermeersch has been a member of  various excavation projects, and her work has been presented in international conferences and first -authored publications. Last but not least, she is also actively engaged in promoting gender equity,  women in science, and making our archaeological results accessible to the general public.  

 Throughout my career, the AEA has been a source of inspiration and connection. I have contributed

to the Association as both a co-opted and elected member of the managing committee, and through

my role in organising the 40th autumn conference. The friends and colleagues I have made through

the AEA have left an indelible imprint on my experience as an environmental archaeologist.

Those words above - inspiration and connection - underpin my candidacy as Chair. The AEA is in a

fantastic place right now: a testament to the skill and drive of committee members, past and

present. I hope the Association can continue to build on this with new, engaging initiatives. A key

aspect of this, for me, is the important role the AEA has played in inspiring the next generation of

environmental archaeologists. I hope to double-down on these efforts, maximising the good the

AEA's resources can do to enable early career researchers to undertake innovative research and

enhance their competitiveness for future funding. This will involve clear funding pathways that target

those at the outset of their career and those with limited access to other avenues of funding.

Another area of potential growth is strengthening engagement amongst the membership. This will

require a framework in which members can use the AEA as a conduit to forge new connections and

explore ideas as a community. Environmental archaeologists tend to be wonderful, inspiring people -

and ensuring we pull together is to all of our benefit.

I have had the privilege of working as an environmental archaeologist in both the academic and

commercial sectors. The former involved an 18-year stint at the University of Sheffield from BSc

student to post-doctoral fellow, taking in a project PhD, several post-doctoral research and teaching

positions. The latter includes my role as the environmental lead for the A14 scheme, one of the

largest-ever archaeological projects, in which I oversee all aspects of the scheme's environmental

archaeology. Though the commercial and academic worlds are very different, they are increasingly

intertwined. I am sure that my perspectives will help build an AEA that serves all. A big part of this is

providing an open space in which different ideas and perspectives can flourish into positive results.

This is a central tenet of my approach to research and projects, and my hard-won skills in this are

what I will bring to the AEA Chair role.

Having shared with you my vision for the AEA, I hope you will support me in my bid to become Chair.

If you have different priorities, I want to hear them. Success comes from a community pulling

together in the same direction, and I hope that together we can build on the successes of the current

committee.