Ever wondered what to buy the archaeologist in your life at Christmas time? Well wonder no more! In this fun article, staff and post graduate students of the University of York archaeology department share their ideal archaeological Christmas gifts with us...
Dr Oliver Craig - "A week off...."
Dr Cath Neal - "Munsell chart."
Jocelyn Hayes (staff and post-grad) - "I have been thinking of trying to disguise my boiler vent extractor that spews out clouds of steam - with something more decorative such as a dragon shaped gargoyle so that at least it will look more decorative and exciting with a dragon breathing out steam...Otherwise - a William Morris or Ruskin's drawings calendar would do nicely..."
Prof. Terry O'Connor - "Ideal archaeological Christmas present? Obvious - a pair of state-of-the-art replacement knee joints!"
Dr Steve Ashby - "For me it would obviously be a well-provenanced Ashby Type 8b comb with chequerboard decoration and a nice runic inscription."
Prof. Matthew Collins - "A robot to speed up sample preparation in the lab, so we could move bioarchaeological analysis onto an 'industrial scale'."
Michael Tigwell (post-grad) - "My ideal archaeological Christmas present would be: 'Dr Alice Roberts' Preferably, gift-wrapped and delivered to my home in Suffolk!"
Dr Soren Sindbaek - "The ideal archaeological Christmas present? The app which turns your iPhone into a portable 3D RXF scanner and automatically uploads the results to Facebook (but ask again if the Benghazi treasure turns up on e-Bay)."
Lee G. Broderick (post-grad) - "A time machine. Not to go back to the past, just to freeze the present so that I could get all my work done."
Robbin van Splunder - "Archaeological christmas present? A trowel in the shape of a christmas tree."
Katie Whitaker (post-grad) - "Can't say I wouldn't mind a huge skeletal collection with excellent preservation and permission to sample as much as I want!"
Prof. Julian Richards - "A time machine - so I could check out a few theories."
Thanks to all the staff and post-graduates that took the time to reply, and a Merry Christmas to all our readers.
