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.

ATRA – Atlas of Renaissance Antiquarianism is a digital system that maps the circulation of antiquarian learning in sixteenth-century Europe.
The ATRA database collects, confronts and interconnects published and unpublished letters of humanists and scholars who participated in spreading the antiquarian method.

Edited by G. Blakemore Evans, these works are studies of the stage texts used in various seventeenth-century performances of Shakespeare's plays. Evans has identified the different manuscript hands that annotate the prompt-books and compared the cuttings with other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Shakespearean stage texts. Thus, the collection provides an opportunity to examine Shakespearean performance traditions and innovations. Many of the prompt-books and other stage texts are reproduced here in facsimile, and the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center has created a searchable database of the editor's Introduction and Collations for each play. The textual references in the Collations are linked to JPEG images of the corresponding prompt-book pages, when possible. Use the table of contents at left as a guide to the eight volumes in the series.

The Catholic Record Society was founded in 1904 and through its work and publications makes available to scholars and a more general readership a wide range of sources relating to individuals and ecclesiastical institutions in the British Isles in the period after the Reformation. Its flagship journal, British Catholic History is published by Cambridge University Press. British Catholic History acts as a forum for the most innovative, vibrant, transnational, inter-disciplinary scholarship resulting from research on the history of British and Irish Catholicism at home and throughout the world. It contains peer-reviewed original research articles, review articles, and shorter reviews of works on all aspects of British Catholic history from the 15th century to the present day. Central to its publishing policy is an emphasis on the multi-faceted, national and international dimensions of British Catholic history. The CRS has also so far published over ninety records volumes, which form a unique and broad collection of primary source material indispensable to anyone working on any aspect the history of the Catholic Church in the British Isles. It has also published a number of monographs dealing with particular topics or with Catholic individuals prominent in public life. 

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Intertextual Networks was a three-year research project funded by a generous $290,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, focusing on intertextuality in early women’s writing. Starting in October 2016, the WWP began work on this collaborative research initiative, which examines the citation and quotation practices of the authors represented in Women Writers Online (WWO) to explore and theorize the representation of intertextuality.

The database of the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture is a research project of the Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Primarily, the Census database reconstructs relationships between Antique Monuments and Postclassical Works. For example, the Census links the antique statue of the Apollo Belvedere now in the Vatican Museums with prints, statuettes, texts, and drawings created in the postclassical era that reference or respond to this statue. Thousands of similar relationships are mapped by the Census dataset, shedding light on the reception of antique material culture as well as a history of the postclassical survival of antique ruins and remains.

This collection started inauspiciously. It grows out of a conference, organized by the two of us, and held at King’s College London. It opened on Saturday, May 8, 2015, the day after the general election in the United Kingdom. Opinion polls had forecast a hung Parliament, or perhaps a slim majority for Labour. But, and not for the last time, the outcome defied expectations. In the polling booths, “shy Tories” picked up the stubby blunt pencils (with strings attached) which the electoral officials provide, and they put their Xs down for David Cameron’s Conservatives, giving them 331 seats and an outright majority for the first time in 23 years.

En el marco de la pandemia que asoló al mundo en 2020, la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México a través del Instituto de Invetigaciones Bibliotecológicas y de la Información (IIBI) puso en marcha el proyecto PRESERVACIÓN DIGITAL DE CONTENIDOS PUBLICADOS EN PORTALES WEB Y REDES SOCIALES. DEL ACOPIO A LA DIFUSIÓN DE COLECCIONES DIGITALES SOBRE COVD 19 EN MÉXICO PAPIIT IT400121, auspiciado por la Dirección General de Apoyo al Personal Académico (DGAPA). La iniciativa fue creada para desarrollar una metodología basada en el uso de herramientas de identificación, acopio y acceso a información digital para la preservación de una selección de contenidos digitales relativos al Covid 19 en México publicados en la red social Twitter y en los portales web institucionales de la UNAM, la Secretaría de Salud Federal y diversos medios de comunicación.

This video walks you through how HSSCommons.ca can be used by the community for each journal that has already been shared on HSSCommons. It demonstrates how HSSCommons allows you to

• view statistics (number of views and downloads) for each publication,

• download publications,

• obtain citations,

• create open or private question-and-answer sessions,

• post anonymous or named reviews to facilitate post-publication peer review.

This video walks you through how HSSCommons.ca can be used by the community for each journal that has already been shared on HSSCommons. It demonstrates how HSSCommons allows you to

• view statistics (number of views and downloads) for each publication,

• download publications,

• obtain citations,

• create open or private question-and-answer sessions,

• post anonymous or named reviews to facilitate post-publication peer review.

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.

The HSS Commons is a collaborative digital platform that supports open scholarship across the humanities and social sciences in Canada and internationally. It enables researchers to share work, connect with peers, and participate in a community dedicated to openness, accessibility, and knowledge exchange.

The Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Commons is an in-development academic social networking site that aims to connect and support the work of Humanities and Social Sciences researchers across Canada. We provide a space to share your work openly and the infrastructure to connect and collaborate with other researchers. The infographic below details our mission, key features, and how we strive to support different academic audiences.

Looking for more? The Canadian HSS Commons is dedicated to supporting the work of Humanities and Social Sciences researchers across Canada. The following sample list of materials further describes the purpose, impact, and future possibilities of the Canadian HSS Commons. You can also view this list as a collection.

The Canadian HSS Commons is an in-development, national-scale, bilingual (French and English) network for Canadian HSS researchers and stakeholders to share, access, re-purpose, and develop scholarly projects, publications, educational resources, data, and tools.

The HSS Commons is a collaborative digital platform that supports open scholarship across Canada and the broader international research community. This presentation highlights how the platform enables scholars to share work, build networks, and strengthen interdisciplinary engagement in the humanities and social sciences.

Building on foundational research about the historical and intellectual roots of the digital research commons (Winter et al. 2020), this work examines the Canadian HSS Commons from a DH perspective, focusing on how it will meet the needs of Canadian researchers working within the highly collaborative, methodologically diverse, and exploratory domain of the digital humanities. We take the self-reflexive stance of the digital humanities to critically examine the metaphor of the commons as applied to an open, virtual space and to intellectual resources. We conclude that acknowledging the present-day challenges involved in implementing this ideal––and resisting the social, economic, and institutional pressures that have historically threatened to transform such spaces into sites of exclusion rather than inclusion––will allow us to reimagine the commons as a virtual, open, collaborative space for creating and sharing information.