IMAA 2017 | Integrated Microscopy Approaches in Archaeobotany

The second IMAA Workshop was held in the School of Archaeology, Geography and Environment Science, University of Reading on 25th-26th February 2017.

The aim of the workshop was to bring together specialists in geoarchaeology, NPPs, palynology, plant macroremains, and phytoliths who are working in universities, major heritage organisations, and commercial archaeology companies in order to share research and skills. The 2 day workshop included presentations, poster sessions and microscope sessions.

The workshop was structured around the following themes:

The taphonomy of plant remains in urban contexts
Palaeobotanical approaches in landscape archaeology
Fired up: composition and preservation of organic remains in burnt contexts
Morphometric approaches to macro and micro- scopic plant remains
Animal management strategies

The workshop also included a number of more specialist ‘break-out’ microscopy sessions:

Phytoliths (Dr Marta Portillo)
Charcoal identification (Dr Cathie Barnett)
Tropical pollen (Dr Macarena Cardenas)
Non pollen palynomorphs (Lionello Morandi)
The micro-contextual analysis of ash, dung, and plant remains (Dr Rowena Banerjea)

The complete list of abstracts can be seen here.

A storify of the event #IMAA2017 was kindly put together by Martin Hodson and be viewed here.

Terry Ball from the Brigham Young University, Utah discusses morphometric analysis of phytoliths, a tool that can be used to distinguish between plan species.

Alex Brown, former UoR Archaeology student, talks about Wessex Archaeology’s work on the Late Glacial and early Holocene palaeoenvironments in the southern North Sea Basin.

Luc Vrydaghs from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles further discusses phytolith morphometrics and discusses ample sample sizes of articulated phytoliths in thin section.