"Land or Sea?" with Sam Leggett. This Event will be preceded by the AGM.
Mon, 07 Apr
|Berwick Parish Centre
Diets and identities at Castle Park, Dunbar, c. 500-1500 A.D.
Time & Location
07 Apr 2025, 19:30 – 21:00
Berwick Parish Centre , Berwick-upon-Tweed TD15 1FD, UK
About the event
The adjoining sites of Castle Park and Captain's Cabin, Dunbar record over two millennia of occupation on the headland. This talk focuses on the site's use as a Northumbrian urbs regis through to a late medieval castle. Using cutting edge biomolecular archaeology, we have traced changes in mobility and diet at Dunbar, and how these may relate to how the headland changed hands over the centuries. Did the Northumbrians eat different things to the Scots? How did the North Sea fishing trade impact this coastal site? This is an exciting interdisciplinary case study of a key site at the interface of medieval kingdom formation.
Dr Sam Leggett is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh with her project "ArchaeoFINS: medieval Archaeology of Fishing around the Irish and North Seas". Before Edinburgh she was based at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; and in 2025 she will…