Parent Project: Orkney: Gateway to the Atlantic Rousay, Orkney: Gateway to the Atlantic	This project forms part of the Orkney Gateway to the Atlantic project. The core aim of this research initiative is to inform on sustainability and reliance strategies in the past, investigating how people (and society) reacted and adapted to climatic and environmental change over time. Due to the northerly position of Orkney, the islands have shorter growing seasons and a degree of marginality, which offers a remarkable opportunity to study the long-term effects of climate change and how people survived and adapted, from the first farmers over 5,000 years ago through to the clearances in the 19th century. As well as adaptation and sustainability, this long time frame provides the potential to study cultural changes as a result of contact and trade. This research initiative is linked to a wider research agenda investigating these themes across the North Atlantic by fellow researchers within the North Atlantic Biocultural Organisation (NABO). The field school was designed as a research programme. The majority of sites targeted for study are coastal as Orkney has a serious and growing problem of rising sea level and coastal erosion. The two main sites examined so far are both suffering from the effects of coastal erosion. These are the broch mound at Brough or South Howe, and the Knowe of Swandro. Both sites have enormous research potential, providing important archaeological and scientific data that might be used to study how people in the past confronted the marginality of these northern islands and how this changed over time with fluctuating environmental/climatic parameters.
	The River Site	This Archaic Period site has remnants of the Archaic Strombus Line feature that stretched across the southern coast of Barbuda.
	The Caves of Barbuda	Part of the Barbuda Historical Ecology Project - the caves on the windward side of Barbuda show evidence of occupation from earliest settlement through to the present day. These caves present a fascinating spectrum of activities from the many different cultures who have inhabited Barbuda.
	Houses for the Living and the Dead	This research combines archaeological and ethnohistorical research to study the organisation of settlement space and residence rules among the Late Ceramic Age (“Taino”) Indians during the Late Ceramic Age (AD 1000-1492). Collaborative research between the Caribbean Research Group, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University and the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, Santo Domingo, has resulted in a PhD dissertation on the settlement features from El Cabo San Rafael (Samson 2010) as well as numerous published articles, reports and MA/BA theses. The Taino were the first indigenous people encountered in the New World by Christopher Columbus. Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) was home to the most densley populated and complex precolumbian societies in the Caribbean. Existing interpretive models of village settlement and household organisation are based almost entirely on colonial documents and chronicles written by the Spanish. Such ethnohistoric models have only been minimally supplemented by archaeological data from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antillean islands. To address this and complement the picture, archaeological investigation was undertaken at the site of El Cabo, in the Higüey region, Altagracia province of the eastern Dominican Republic. Dense feature clusters provided an excellent opportunity to study the spatial organisation of a late pre-Columbian settlement in the Greater Antilles. Over 30 houses were excavated in the indigenous town of El Cabo, as well as numerous other community and work structures, burials and associated artefact assemblages. El Cabo, inhabited since ca. AD600, was eventually abandoned in the early years of the 1500s after European colonization. An early contact Spanish assemblage associated with the indigenous houses provides insight into early contact dynamics in this region of Hispaniola. Archaeological research was complemented by a detailed re-analysis of the ethnohistoric accounts.
	Parent Project: The Archaeology of Climate Change in the Caribbean The Archaeology of Climate Change in the Caribbean	Pre-Colombian populations in the Caribbean, from 5000 BC to AD 1492, lived through more than five metres relative sea level rise, marked variation in annual rainfall and periodic intensification of hurricane activity. This Leverhulme funded project exploits the time depth of cultural practice to provide archaeological lessons that can inform current responses to the impacts of climate change in the region. This parent project emerges from an interdisciplinary collaboration between Cuban, British and Canadian archaeologists and palaeoenvironmental scientists. This collaboration, that began in 2002, has included a wide-ranging study of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data. The primary aim of this project is to explore the temporal and spatial scales at which cause and effect between archaeological and palaeoclimatic phenomena can be correlated, analysed and interpreted. Recent research has identified spatial and temporal patterns in the changing nature of pre-Colombian lifeways in the Caribbean. This archaeological information has then been closely correlated in space and time with the long and short-term impacts of climate variability and environmental change. It has then been possible to evaluate the relative advantages and disadvantages of past cultural practices in the face of environmental change and establish lessons that will contribute to contemporary mitigation strategies. It is clear that by developing research questions compatible with the data resolution available it is possible to identify ways of living in the past that helped mitigate the impacts of climate change. This research can provide modern day populations with practical information on settlement locations, food procurement strategies and household architecture that have not previously been considered and that can now be used to inform climate change mitigation strategies in the Caribbean.
	Los Buchillones Archaeology Project	The Los Buchillones Archaeology Project involves Cuban, Canadian, Mexican and British specialists in archaeological survey, excavation and material analyses from a number of newly identified sites in a case study area in northern Cuba. This case study area includes 2000 sq km in northern Ciego de Avila province and the Sabana-Camaguey archipelago. Fieldwork includes the continuing excavation of a number of archaeological sites and the analysis and classification of the full spectrum of material remains including XRF and SEM analyses of selected exported material. Palaeoenvironmental reconstructions from this case study area are being created through the analysis of a series of marine, lacustrine and terrestrial sediment cores that transect the case study area. Studies of local past human ecodynamics have been developed focusing on the impacts of relative sea level rise, precipitation change and palaeotempestology in this case study area. In 2010, we completed the construction of a new heritage research centre at our central site of Los Buchillones and this centre now employs a full time staff of 8 specialists, 5 technicians and 6 administrative staff all focused on developing this collaborative research.
	Pagan Burial Maps	Maps of Pagan Burials in Iceland developed through arcgis software and uploaded on Google Earth. In essence, the focus of this project was to create individual maps considerably zoomed in, showing not only the burials but also the landscape features surrounding each burial. The level of transparency of the maps is directly associated with Google Earth features so we can match their accuracy. It has been argued that in the Viking Age the choice of a placement of a burial could be related to the landscape, e.g. near a river or a farm. The reasons could vary from burying an individual near water – perhaps seen as a liminal zone between the land of the living and the dead; or near a farm in order to mantain the connection between the living and the dead (R Maher 2003). In placing these maps onto the layout of Iceland, it may be possible to perceive the landscape features around the burials in a more comprehensive way and perhaps create theories about the supposed association with the landscape.
	Survey of medieval harbours at Shetland
	Survey of archaeological remains at Svínanes, Iceland
	Archaeolgocal excavations at the Law Ting Holm, Tingwall, Shetland, 2011	Data Structure Report / Interim Field Report on the excavation carried out in summer 2010.

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