Research findings in ecology have the potential to drive evidence-based actions that could reverse biodiversity decline, inspire nature-based solutions to climate change and enhance restoration of severely degraded waters and lands. However, publishing findings in peer-reviewed papers alone is not sufficient to turn ecological research into action, as evidenced by the burgeoning field of translational ecology. Scholarly literature remains inaccessible to many conservation and restoration practitioners. While the open access publishing movement has increased the availability of research, the knowledge is still poorly indexed and unstructured, leading to inadequate findability.

We present a solution to these challenges in the form of the Ecolink Model (ELM) – an open-source schema for creating knowledge graphs that describe environmental variables, ecological processes and the relationships between them. Drawing on core concepts from ecological modeling and advances in biomedical knowledge synthesis, we outline a model written in LinkML – a domain-agnostic data modeling language – that captures the relationships at the heart of complex systems, thereby providing a structure for knowledge graphs. ELM establishes a consistent and reusable format that enables the discovery of new connections and presents knowledge in an easily searchable, intuitive way. Knowledge graphs that are constructed using ELM have the potential to enable restoration and conservation practitioners to easily access relevant research findings, to unveil new insights using graph data science techniques and drive an AI interface to provide plain-language access to ecological knowledge as described in the graph.

This thesis investigates the stratigraphic framework and paleoenvironmental evolution of the Pevensey Levels, focusing on the depositional histories of the sediment covering the bedrock-cored islands Horse Eye and North Eye in East Sussex, United Kingdom (UK). Low-lying coastal systems such as the Pevensey Levels are sensitive to climatic variability, geomorphological changes, and human interaction, yet detailed stratigraphic and environmental reconstructions are limited for these landscapes. By combining field observations, sedimentological analyses, and laboratory analyses, this research enhances the understanding of climatic events, geomorphological factors, and anthropogenic influences that have shaped this low-lying coastal-lagoonal landscape over the Holocene. A multiproxy laboratory approach- including laboratory methods that include laser diffraction grain size analysis, portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), loss on ignition (LOI), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and AMS radiocarbon dating- was applied to create a stratigraphic framework for reconstructing the stratigraphy and environmental history of the sediment on these bedrock-cored islands. The stratigraphic analyses reveal a broadly consistent depositional sequence across both islands, transitioning from lower marine silty clays at the base to organic-rich peat layers and finally to upper terrestrial clayey silts. Despite this similarity, there are differences that emerge: North Eye’s stratigraphy includes sand-dominated units, attributed to its thinner sediment cover, bedrock exposure, and localized sediment contributions during episodic higher-energy depositional events. In contrast, Horse Eye’s thicker sediment cover and more continuous peat layers indicate prolonged lower-energy deposition and water-logged conditions. Additionally, the lithologic and stratigraphic analyses conducted in this thesis offer a higher level of detail compared to earlier studies, providing localized depositional variability. These findings distinguish this research from earlier work in the area, which provided generalized stratigraphic data for North Eye and focused on broader regional depositional sequences within the Pevensey Levels. The integration of results from the different techniques identified a temporal alignment between localized responses in the sediment with key climatic events, such as the globally recognized 4.2 ka event- a period characterized by dry climates in some regions but has remained poorly understood in Western Europe. At the Pevensey Levels, the stratigraphy during this period reveals an increase in sand content, indicative of heightened depositional energy and fluctuating hydrological conditions, providing new insights into how this global climatic phase may have influenced low-lying coastal landscapes in the UK. The findings also align temporally with documentation of human modifications during the late Holocene, including drainage and land reclamation. For example, lenticular laminations and an increase in sand content in the upper stratigraphy align with documented medieval drainage efforts in this region. This thesis situates these modifications within a regional context, noting how anthropogenic activities may have influenced sedimentary processes in dynamic coastal environments. This thesis provides a new framework for understanding the evolution of the Pevensey Levels within a broader regional context by drawing comparisons with adjacent systems such as the Romney Marsh and Somerset Levels. While the Pevensey Levels exhibit broadly similar depositional patterns to adjacent systems, including marine-to-terrestrial transitions, there are localized differences in sediment depositional processes due to geomorphological controls, such as the differences in size and shape of the bedrock islands, as well as their location with respect to their proximity to sediment sources. The Pevensey Levels’ stratigraphy is more influenced by bedrock-controlled sedimentation near the bedrock-cored islands, landforms that are not present in the Romney Marsh. These regional comparisons reveal variations in depositional energy, peat development, and anthropogenic modifications, offering new insights into the factors shaping coastal-lagoonal systems during the Holocene.

This slideshow was created by the primary students who visited Site 20 at Streethouse in 2025. 

The last three years have seen a blossoming of partnership between British Archaeology and Waterloo University. Starting with a low-key exchange involving four students in 2023, each year further cohorts of students arrived in Yorkshire with one suite of skills and departed with a portfolio of attainments, new skills and expertise. This programme does not stop now  after our first three years, indeed we have plans for a new collaboration on a Roman excavation in 2026. However, we started in a more measured manner in the Spring of 2023 with Dr Steve Sherlock, Heritage Advisor for National Highways Lower Thames Crossing Project, talking with Professor Steve Bednarski about producing 3d scans of Archaeological finds for public benefit. The Dragenlab at Waterloo University in Canada have been doing scans and reconstruction of finds since 2019, whilst concurrently museums in the UK were looking for quality reproductions of objects that are tactile and affordable for schools.

Objectives: Bioarchaeological studies have provided important information about mortality patterns during the second pandemic of plague, including the Black Death,

but most to date have focused on European contexts. This study represents a spatial contribution to plague bioarchaeology, focusing on Central Asia, the origin of the sec-

ond pandemic. We examine the relationship between stature and plague mortality during an outbreak of plague at Kara-Djigach in northern Kyrgyzstan in 1338–1339,

the earliest archaeological site known to contain victims of the Black Death in Eurasia.

Methods: This study uses epigraphic data and in situ measurements from the Syriac Christian cemeteries at Kara-Djigach, obtained from field notes from excavations conducted by Russian archaeologists in the 1880s (n = 34 individuals). The epigraphic data provide detailed information about the interred individuals, including occupations, year of death, and gender. In situ measurements provide data on adult stature. This study uses chi-square and Fisher's exact tests to examine relationships between stature and plague at the site.

Results: We find evidence that relatively short people were disproportionately affected by plague when compared with non-plague years.

Discussion: These results might reflect increased mortality risks from plague based on exposure to early life biological stress events.

BETWEEN 2005 AND 2007, a large Anglo-Saxon cemetery was excavated at Street House, near Loftus in Cleveland in north-eastern England. The site was discovered during a programme of research into late-prehistoric settlement in the area and hosts a range of monuments dating from 3000 bc to ad 650. In the context of the conversion period, the Anglo-Saxon cemetery is of significant interest due to a range of reused prehistoric and Romano-British objects found as gravegoods. By ad 650, when some of the objects were buried, they were already antiques, and some may have been at least 250 years old when deposited. During the conversion period, furnished burial was a diminishing rite and the placement of objects within the grave may therefore have held a greater significance. This study considers reused artefacts recovered from conversion-period cemeteries. At a time when a number of cemeteries were being founded in relation to earlier monuments, some contained burials that reused artefacts and jewellery of prehistoric and Romano-British date. There is a compelling pattern for this practice at Street House, but this phenomenon also occurred at other sites of a similar date.

This article looks at the demographic contours and impact of the pestis secunda—the second wave of the Second Plague Pandemic—which ravaged England and Wales in 1361–62. The study is based on a rich corpus of statistical data deriving from manorial records—primarily court rolls, but also inquisitions postmortem and episcopal registers—on a national level. A close analysis of the data reveals that the wave in question tended to discriminate across regions, socioeconomic statuses, and genders. The study’s findings are then considered within a wider context of ongoing historiographical debates related to the total size of the English population before and after the Black Death. It argues that the population size of England on the eve of the Black Death was higher than often argued, and that the impact of the pestis secunda was harsher than often assumed. The evidence suggests that it was the pestis secunda, rather than the Black Death, that had severe, long‐term demographic and socioeconomic repercussions for England and Wales.

Three samples of briquetage were collected from a salt production site at Street House near Loftus for dating by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). A series of radiocarbon dates hinted at the existence of a rare Early Neolithic saltern dating to the early fourth millennium cal BC. There was a distinct possibility, however, that these dates may relate to an earlier phase of occupation with subsequent Bronze Age, Iron Age or even Roman activities potentially having disturbed much older deposits. The aim of the luminescence dating was to provide independent age estimates for the salt-making activity, allowing the taphonomy of the samples submitted for radiocarbon dating to be assessed.

For many students, the opportunity to engage in meaningful original research under the tutelage of an academic supervisor is relegated to those pursuing graduate studies. Although many undergraduate students write honours theses, much of what appears in those papers is learned through access to their library’s core collections, with students accessing their library’s monograph and journal literature. What is often overlooked, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, is the richness of their own institution’s special collections and archives. As the authors of this paper argue, many instructors (and students) are unaware of the depth of their home institution's archives and special collections. This article presents a case study of a recent student-research collaboration conducted by an academic Librarian and an instructor in the Medieval Studies Program at St. Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Bioarchaeological studies have provided important information about mortality patterns during the second pandemic of plague, including the Black Death, but most to date have focused on European contexts. This study represents a spatial contribution to plague bioarchaeology, focusing on Central Asia, the origin of the second pandemic. We examine the relationship between stature and plague mortality during an outbreak of plague at Kara-Djigach in northern Kyrgyzstan in 1338–1339, the earliest archaeological site known to contain victims of the Black Death in Eurasia.

This article looks at the demographic contours and impact of the pestis secunda—the second wave of the Second Plague Pandemic—which ravaged England and Wales in 1361–62. The study is based on a rich corpus of statistical data deriving from manorial records—primarily court rolls, but also inquisitions postmortem and episcopal registers—on a national level. A close analysis of the data reveals that the wave in question tended to discriminate across regions, socioeconomic statuses, and genders. The study's findings are then considered within a wider context of ongoing historiographical debates related to the total size of the English population before and after the Black Death. It argues that the population size of England on the eve of the Black Death was higher than often argued, and that the impact of the pestis secundawas harsher than often assumed. The evidence suggests that it was the pestis secunda, rather than the Black Death, that had severe, long‐term demographic and socioeconomic repercussions for England and Wales.

Early modern England was a world of wood. Everyone from laity to elite had a vested interest in woodland resources because it was a necessity for all aspects of life from warmth, fuel, shelter, transportation, and industry. Starting in the late fifteenth century and lasting through the early modern period, anxieties about timber scarcity spread as the Royal Navy complained of shortages. Since the Royal Navy was responsible for the protection of the Kingdom and was an integral part of England’s colonial exploits abroad, the possibility that the maintenance of the fleet was at risk was cause for grave concern.

Through the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Royal Navy accused merchant ship builders, agriculturalists, woodland industrialists, and private woodland owners of fomenting shortages through careless destruction of woodlands for profit, leading to a “timber famine”. Although most naval timber that furnished the Royal Navy came from private estates, historians have focussed on management in the Royal Forests. This thesis investigates how private woodland owners in the Weald, who owned most of the wood and timber reserves in southeast England managed their most essential resource. Private landowners’ interests directly conflicted with the interests of the Royal Navy, yet ultimately it was not the landowners who were responsible for perceived timber shortages. However, an inability to reconcile these competing interests contribute to historic myths about the state of England’s woodlands in the early modern period.

Through an in-depth HGIS (Historical Geographic Information System) study, this thesis argues that private landowners in the Weald were motivated by profit to sustainably maintain their woodlands. They chose to manage their woodlands with a preference for local underwood economies rather than timber because they were the most lucrative and thriving markets, much to the behest of the Royal Navy. I argue that the Royal Navy’s inability to procure timber during this period was due to lack of funds, disorganization within the Navy Board, and poor Royal Forest management which ultimately left them unable to keep up with the competitive timber market and provided more motivation for landowners to give preference to local underwood economies. Additionally, this thesis argues that timber scarcity in the Weald did not result in woodland destruction. In fact, the case study on Glassenbury demonstrates that Wealden landowners’ sustainable management was largely responsible for the maintenance of Wealden woods to this day.

Excavations at Street House between 2016-2022 unearthed evidence for Neolithic salt making and settlement at Street House, near Loftus, occurring 6,000 years ago. In 2023, we aimed to understand more about the Neolithic activity at Street House, to find out if salt manufacture was occurring elsewhere in the area and to gauge how the process worked.

In recent years (2016–22), I have been undertaking excavations on a Neolithic saltern at Street House (Sherlock 2021). Indeed, some readers will recall some earlier excavations at Street House that revealed the evidence for Iron Age salt making at the site (Sherlock & Vyner 2013). It was with that information about a potential pattern of salt manufacture at the site that led to a critical evaluation of the geophysics to assess the potential for other salterns. Further work by James Lawton (AoC Archaeology) suggested there were other locations indicative of kilns or salterns. 

DUMAS, Geneviève. « Santé publique et gestion des effluents urbains à Montpellier à la fin du Moyen Âge ». Bulletin historique de la ville de Montpellier, n^o42, 2020, p. 82-99

DUMAS, Geneviève. « Responsabilité et reddition des comptes à Montpellier au XVe siècle ». Actes du colloque : L'histoire des villes à travers leur comptabilité (Montpellier, 14-15 juin, 2017), ComptabilitéS, [En ligne], 12, 2019

L’article examinera d’abord la notion d’« imputabilité » avec pour objectif de comprendre les horizons d’attentes de l’universitas montpelliéraine en ce qui a trait aux dépenses publiques. On verra ensuite comment le contexte de production, la mécanique des comptes et les processus comptables sont inhérents à la notion de responsabilité financière. On conclura en montrant que la gestion des finances publiques est une importante manifestation de l’autonomie urbaine.

DUMAS, Geneviève, DUBÉ, Catherine. « Muddy Waters in Medieval Montpellier ». Dans Carole Rawcliffe et Claire Weeda, dir., Policing the Environment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, Amsterdam, Presses universitaires d’Amsterdam, 2019, p. 179-206.

DUMAS, Geneviève. « Montpellier face aux mortalités : discours, prise en charge et matérialité des victimes ». Dans Thomas Labbé et Gerrit Jasper Schenk, dir., Actes du colloque "Pour une histoire de la sensibilité. Perception et prise en charge des victimes de catastrophes", (Lorsch, 11-13 décembre 2014), Turnhout, Brepols, 2018, p. 103-123.

Cet ouvrage se propose de réfléchir à la construction historique de la condition de victime, en relation avec les événements traumatiques dans l'Europe médiévale et moderne. Dans le contexte contemporain, le discours et la gestion des situations de catastrophe ou de mort de masse s'organisent en priorité autour de la place des victimes dans la fabrique événementielle. Cette attitude de la société contemporaine face à la dévastation, qualifiée tantôt de « compassionnelle », tantôt « d'humanitaire », ou bien encore de « tragique », reflète une forme de sensibilité qui définit en premier lieu la réalité catastrophique comme un drame.

Une telle approche de la souffrance possède-t-elle cependant une histoire ou constitue-t-elle une constante anthropologique de la société occidentale ? Quel regard les sociétés médiévales et modernes ont-elles posé sur cet aspect autant éthique que social du réel ? Les essais réunis dans ce volume proposent d'offrir quelques pistes de réflexion. À la lecture ambiguë de la victime au Moyen Âge, entre souffrance et responsabilité, la Renaissance semble commencer à proposer une vision plus « tragique » des individus souffrants. Les victimes peuvent dès lors entrer progressivement dans une politique des émotions qui triomphe au XVIIIe siècle.

DUMAS, Geneviève. « Bien public et pratiques de la santé à Montpellier au XVe siècle ». Dans Lucie Galano et Lucie Laumonier, dir., Montpellier au Moyen Âge, Bilan et approches nouvelles, Turnhout, Brepols, 2017, p. 77-89.

Fondée à la fin du Xe siècle, Montpellier connut une expansion fulgurante à partir du XIIe, à la faveur du développement d’échanges culturels et économiques, vers la Méditerranée ou le nord de l’Europe. Cette expansion était le fruit de politiques menées par les Guilhem et confirmée lors du passage de la seigneurie sous l’autorité des rois d’Aragon et de Majorque après 1204, quand la ville obtint un gouvernement consulaire. Devenue une communauté urbaine d’importance au XIIIe siècle, Montpellier était habitée par une population cosmopolite. Dans et hors les murs se croisaient grands marchands, changeurs et simples revendeurs, universitaires et intellectuels de renom, artisans et agriculteurs. L’attractivité et le rayonnement de Montpellier en faisaient l’une des principales villes du Bas-Languedoc. Pourtant, son histoire médiévale n’a bénéficié que d’une attention inégale de la part des chercheurs. Cet ouvrage, procède d’un colloque international  réuni à Montpellier en 2013 et rassemble des articles réalisés par les principaux contributeurs et principales contributrices à l’histoire et à l’archéologie de la ville. Basés sur des archives originales ou sur la réinterprétation de données connues, les recherches proposées ici, tout en présentant un bilan des travaux passés, empruntent des voies nouvelles démontrant les promesses des études historiques et archéologiques sur Montpellier.