Whilst shapes, styles and decorations of prehistoric pots have been intensively studied by generations of archaeologists, what pots were actually used for has received much less attention, as until recently it has been extremely difficult to determine the original contents of ceramic vessels. However, using a combination of high-resolution chemical and isotopic methods, traces of foodstuffs and other products either absorbed into the ceramic fabric or preserved as visible surface deposits (sometimes called 'food crusts') can now be detected after thousands of years.\n\nWe propose to apply these techniques to a large number of prehistoric pots from Northern Germany and Denmark to examine the changing uses of pottery in the Baltic region during the 4th and 5th Millennia BC. This period is particularly important, as it is when the whole of Northern Europe witnessed massive economic, social and ideological changes, often directly associated with the arrival of agriculture and pastoralism. In particular, we will examine how changes in the use of pots and the introduction of new forms of pottery relate to these economic changes. This will provide a more detailed understanding of the persistence of undomesticated resources into the Neolithic, the rate and completeness of the transition to agriculture and will provide new insights into certain economic activities, such as dairying, which are not easily detectable using other methods.\n\n

The EPSRC Collaborative Doctoral Training Centre in Science and Engineering in Arts, Heritage and Archaeology (CDT SEAHA) will create a sustainable world-leading training hub producing leaders in the cutting-edge domains of measurement and sensing, materials characterisation, interaction technologies, digital technologies and new ventures. The graduates from the programs will not only create new scientific and engineering knowledge and fill skills gaps in these domains but have a deep understanding of the ethical, practical, economic and social imperatives of the deployment of this knowledge in the arts, Heritage and Archaeological sectors. University College London, University of Oxford and University of Brighton will work as a team bringing together highly complementary supervisory capacities in order to fill the skills gap in the cycle of data creation, data to knowledge and knowledge to enterprise by pushing the state-of-the-art in metrology, sensing, spectroscopy, materials characterisation, modelling, big data mining, crowd engagement, new interaction technologies, digital technology and business skills. Partnering with globally renowned (national and international) heritage organisations representing a world class, broad range of forms of heritage and the arts, the student cohorts will be trained and developed in fully engaged cross-disciplinary environments, challenged by research questions addressing complex materials and environments. The most advanced scientific tools and approaches, some to be developed in collaboration with the Diamond Light Source and the National Physical Laboratory, will be deployed to answer questions on its origin, date, creation, conservation and composition of objects and materials. In addition to the fundamental physical science approach, the students will, in an innovative cohort approach to training and development, explore ways of engaging with presentation and visualisation methods, using pervasive mobile, digital and creative technologies, and with qualitative and participatory methods. This approach will engage the sensors and instrumentation industrial domain, as well as creative industries, both high added value industries and major contributors to the UK economy. The CDT will have a transformative effect on public institutions concerned with heritage interpretation, conservation and management, generating substantial tourism income. Without the CDT, some of the most dynamic UK sectors will lose their competitive edge in the global arts and heritage market. The CDT was created with the close involvement of a number of stakeholders crucially contributing to the development of the training programme based on the cohort teaching approach. The added value of this approach is in that creativity is unleashed through the promotion of excellence in a series of cohort activities, in which the Partner institutions intensively collaborate in teaching, placements, supervision, networking and organisation of public engagement events. The particular added value of this CDT is the high potential for engagement of the general public with science and engineering, while promoting responsible innovation conscious of ethical and social dimensions of arts, heritage and archaeology. The CDT SEAHA builds on the highly successful AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme at UCL which mobilised the UK heritage science sector and repositioned it at the forefront of global development. The CDT will represent a step-change in capacity building; it will propel a young generation of cross-disciplinary scientists and engineers into highly challenging but hugely interesting and rewarding careers in the heritage sector, in SMEs, and public institutions and equip them with translational and transferrable skills that will enable them to thrive in the most complex research and entrepreneurial environments.

The InterArctic project focuses on vulnerability, resilience and adaptation of northern societies facing global change. The rapid current warming of Arctic and Subarctic climates has already produced many changes in the social, economic and cultural behavior of the populations inhabiting these regions and more changes are expected to come. Few of the changes are considered to be positive or not disturbing the fragile balance between human and the environment. Populations of these areas have to face these challenges, and in this context, looking at the past provides the opportunity to document the complex relationships between climate, ecology and human societies, which may provide deeper understanding into ways of better facing the future. The chronological frame of the project encompasses the last millennium, a well-documented period by both ice core data and historical archives. The study area includes Eastern Canada (Nunavik, Nunavut and Nunatsiavut) and Greenland (South and North). Around 1000 years cal. AD, some of these areas witnessed the meeting between European farmers coming from Scandinavia, and hunters-fishers arriving from Beringia. Today, these two lifestyles are still coexisting, with farming in South Greenland, and hunters/gatherers/fishers in Nunavik, Nunavut, Labrador coast and Greenland. Within these study areas, our aim is to document 1000 years of interactions between Thule/Inuit people, Norse settlers and their environment, through an interdisciplinary approach exploiting different kinds of natural archives. The use of pedo-sedimentary archives (lakes, peat deposits, cryosols, anthrosols) and palaeoenvironmental multiproxy analyses will highlight landscape evolution, climatic and anthropogenic forcings upon ecological processes. Archaeological sites, and more specifically archaeological soils, ecofacts and artefacts, will give precious information about the nature of these interactions. The complementary anthropological/cultural approach will focus on human memory, perception, practices and prospects of environmental and social changes, archaeological heritage and past settlement location choices, of different communities in Greenland and Canada. These issues will be explored in an interdisciplinary work through open interviews and co-design workshops bringing Inuit elders and youth together with project researchers. Coproduced knowledge (blending traditional and scientific), including Inuit visual documentation of the community changes and the writing of science fiction narratives, as well as cognitive maps (Inuit internal representation), will then be shared through innovative educational projects such as an interactive web platform designed to share project results, involving local partners in Greenland and Canada as well as French secondary schools and universities.

The areas targeted by the Implementation Action Team (IAT) are cities on the banks of Hugli River in West Bengal, India. The origins of the unique value of much of their built heritage can be traced back to European trading and fortification (the French in Chandannagar from the 1670s, the Danes urbanizing Serampore from the 1750s and Barrackpore being developed by the British in the 1770s). During the nineteenth century, Indian merchants and traders who enriched themselves supplying the Europeans had grand residences built in a highly original hybrid style: their Palladian facades mirrored the public buildings built by the Europeans, but their cloistered inner courtyards were geared to the climate, multiple family occupancy and to Hindu devotional practice. The importance of this wealth of built heritage and the hybrid cultural heritage that has sprung from it in terms of food cultures, musical traditions, language variation etc, led the UK historian of heritage conservation Philip Davies to comment in 2015 that the Hugli 'is not just an Indian river but belongs to the world'. The state of West Bengal lies below the median in terms of many of the standard development markers when compared against other Indian states and the state of the heritage and tourism sectors reflect this. For example, the first hotel for overseas visitors opened in Serampore only in 2018. The economic liberalization of India starting in 1991, however, has led to the Hugli Corridor being subjected to overwhelming and accelerating urbanization increasing the population density, but this wave of so-called development has put domestic built heritage at extreme risk. The developers' imperative is that its riverine environment and excellent commuter rail links make the Hugli Corridor the ideal suburban dormitory pendant to the megacity of Kolkata (population 14.03M in the 2011 census). The Hugli Corridor's Unique Selling Point, therefore, also places it at the highest risk. In the absence of any enforceable planning law and building control, hundreds of heritage properties have been demolished and replaced by three-storey, identikit, concrete flats. IAT's partners, the West Bengal Heritage Commission and the Serampore Initiative have both done important work, listing and renovating seven public buildings, but the IAT's blended mix of wealth-creation, renovation, education, well-being and documentary film pathways will show the West Bengal state government a diverse toolkit of ways to invest resources to preserve and develop the region's cultural and built heritage before it is too late. Crucially, the IAT will do this through the people and organisations that its predecessor project, the Hugli River of Cultures Project (HRCP), won and up-skilled for the cause of heritage. The predecessor AHRC-ICHR funded Hugli River of Cultures Project documented heritage assets and sensitized large numbers of people into how the river connects them, but the IAT's pathway activities will make selected key individuals even more active throughout 2020. Those individuals will no longer be only witnesses and co-creators of heritage knowledge, they will move up to the next level and apply the IAT's tools to built and cultural heritage and used both to create wealth and well-being for themselves in a sustainable manner. When in ends in January 2021, the Implementation Action Team (IAT) will show the new agency that West Bengalis from diverse socio-economic groups can have in creating bottom-up heritage infrastructure in their state (pop 98.8M, 2018), thus marking a radical and much-needed change of course from the overwhelming top-down, culturally elitist and (rather unfortunate) superficial efforts that have characterized official interventions to date (not WBHC). It is only with active intervention and skilled local people that effective action can be taken to address the present heritage emergency caused by urban sprawl and to prepare this low-lying region for climate change