Fitness and social media

I've noticed since taking up my fitness hobby that my social media accounts have polarized into different areas. Facebook has always been my 'friends only' account. Everything about my personal profile is private, and it's the only place I make any substantial posts about family. I use it mostly to chat with 'real life' friends who live far away, and to keep in touch with the American side of my family. I do however have two Facebook 'pages' related to each of my blogs, which I use for sharing posts with friends and blog readers alike, but I always post under the blog alias rather than my personal profile. Twitter on the other hand is very much my academic persona. I use it to network with other archaeologists and related academics, and to keep track of different university departments' news, to follow conferences through live tweeting etc. I also manage several other Twitter accounts for academic related bodies, where it's used for sharing the latest research papers and news. Instagram was not a site that I used a great deal. I did have a profile but never really posted that much. Maybe because I shared all my family photos on Facebook and didn't want to make them public. Getting involved in body building and fitness, my Instagram account has firmly become the place where I follow other like minded fitness folk, and my news feed has turned into a stream of flexing gym pictures, food, and motivational pics. It probably looks quite odd to those who are not into the whole gym thing! I do follow a few friends on there as well, but most of the stuff I post myself is now related to my super hero training efforts, or nutrition and meals. It has a very different feel to it than my other profiles. It's funny how each of the different accounts has its own distinct focus, but they're all a part of me, just a different emphasis. Does anyone else separate their social media in this way? I find it interesting, though perhaps not surprising, that Instagram has such a focus in the fitness industry. I guess for a sport/hobby that has a lot of emphasis on physical appearance, it makes sense that this would be the case.

5 archaeological sites where ancient dietary evidence comes from fossil faeces

Last week I talked briefly about one of the more unusual ways that archaeologists study ancient diets, through looking at the contents of fossilized human faeces! Today for your reading pleasure, are 5 examples where fossil faeces (aka coprolite analysis) have given us insights into prehistoric diets around the world.

Desert Flowers and Grasshoppers: Pecos River, Rio Grande canyon Texas, dated 2800 - 1500 BP (AD 500).

The southwest USA has seen a huge amount of coprolite analysis. The dry environment and the fact that peoples occupied caves and rockshelters has meant that fossil faeces have preservation really well. One study found that human coprolites contained large amounts of zoophilous pollen - that is, pollen from plants which are pollinated by animals. This is interesting as pollen that is transported by animals doesn't get very far, and also the plants only produce small quantities of it. It is usually pollen that is transported by wind that we see more of, as it gets blown all over the place and it is produced in huge volumes. If you suffer from hayfever, it is very likely that it is wind transported pollen! So, human coprolites containing large quantities of animal transported pollen means that people were ingesting the flowers of these plants. The most common plant pollen was yucca, agave, sotol and anther, along with prickly pear cactus fruits, wild onion bulbs, goosefoot seeds and...grasshopper!

Mostly Maize, Some Small Mammals: Anasazi diet, Antelope House Arizona,  1500 - 500 BP (AD 500 - 1500).

This site is also located in a cave at the bottom of a canyon. Coprolites were examined for pollen, and also contained large amount of 'visible' particles. Pollen types included cattail and horsetail. Cattail pollen is highly nutritious, and still eaten today - you can forage for it yourself, or buy it online either as raw pollen or prepared into a protein rich flour. Maize, or corn, was found in 74% of the samples, either as whole kernels or milled. Even more interesting was the fact that the whole kernels and milled maize were never found together, which suggests that these made up two different types of 'cuisine' that were eaten on different occasions, or at different times of the year (milled maize could be stored, for example, and so could be eaten out of season). Other types of seeds found included amaranth, cactus, pine nuts, squash and physalis (you may have seen these in the supermarket - the weird little orange fruits with a papery case). Coprolites with bone fragments were found together with the maize kernels, maybe a maize and small mammal stew! These coprolites were also analysed for protein residues, which found a small number of samples tested positive for animal protein, including pronghorn, rabbit, deer, guinea pig/squirrel, cat and dog.

Lots of Rabbits: Dust Devil Cave, Utah, 8800 BC - 6800 BP

Another site where prickly pear was incredibly popular, along with chenopod seeds, other desert succulents, pinyon pine nuts, sunflower seeds, fragments of wild onion bulbs. A huge amount of rabbit bones were also found at this site, along with smaller quantities of rodents and unidentified small birds, and it is thought that these people focused their hunting efforts almost exclusively on the cottontail rabbit.

Bone Marrow: Catalhoyuk, a Neolithic 'town' in Turkey, 9400  - 8200 BP

Of course I had to mention Catalhoyuk, as it's the site I have worked on for over a decade, working on fossil faeces and rubbish heaps! It is one of the earliest large settlements in the world. Compared to the other sites above, we have a much wider range of dietary evidence from Catalhoyuk, because we have human skeletons, houses with food storage bins etc, so we can look at diet in lots of different ways. My own work has shown that some of the human coprolites have large angular fragments of bone in them. This is normally something that is associated with dog coprolites, as dogs chew on bone and ingest splintered fragments. Finding these splinters in human poop shows that people in the past had less qualms than many people do today about chewing on bone! It is possible that this was done deliberately to 'suck' or otherwise remove the marrow from the bones.

Lots of Meat, Also Veg: Neanderthals at El Salt, Spain, c.50,000 BP.

Rather than looking at the remains of seeds and bones inside the coprolites, these archaeologists looked at invisible chemical residues. They found that the Neanderthal diet was meat heavy, as has always been suspected, but also that plants were a significant component. So they were very much omnivorous, much like modern humans.


These are just a few examples. Basically, prehistoric diets were incredibly varied, and often based on what was available in the local environment on  a seasonal basis. Where in the world you are obviously dictates the types of plants and animals that were available to you. Some groups hardly ate any meat, others relied heavily on one type of animal. Some ate mostly wild plants, others engaged in cultivation, from small scale horticulture to more intense agriculture, or had a mix of food strategies that included both wild and 'managed' resources. Even in the permanent settlement of Catalhoyuk, people ate a mix of 'domestic' and wild resources.

desert succulents, parched Sporobolus (drop-

seed) caryopses, sunflower achenes, wild onion

bulbs and pin

˜

on pine nuts

Palaeodiet from Palaeofaeces

What?

Yes, you read that right, there is such a word as palaeofaeces. It's a word archaeologists sometimes use to refer to ancient human shit. It's pretty common knowledge that archaeologists work with human skeletons, so it's not that much weirder that they look at poop, right? Another word that is more commonly used is coprolite. Technically it means fossilised poop, and is the word for dinosaur poo that has turned to rock, cause it's like millions of years old. Ancient human poo isn't really old enough to be properly fossilized, but coprolite sounds much more polite than palaeofaeces doesn't it. Anyway, why I am posting about ancient poop? It's something I've talked about a lot over on my archaeology blog, and that's because it is probably one of the most useful things that we can examine in order to understand what people ate in the past. It can also tell us a lot about the gastro-intestinal health of ancient populations. So if we want to learn something about 'real' palaeodiets, it's a fun place to start.

What can you learn from ancient poo?

Just like a doctor can ask for a stool sample to check the health of your digestive tract, archaeologists can look as these little packages to get an idea of how healthy people were in the past, and what they were eating. Although a lot of the nutrients that you eat are absorbed by the body in the process of digestion, it's not a completely efficient process, and bits of the food and nutrients make their way through the body until they emerge at the other end, in an amorphous brown lump that we are all familiar with. This can include stuff you can see like fragments of bone, parasite eggs, bits of partially digested seeds and plant fibres, and also 'invisible' stuff, like chemical residues of fat and protein. We use pretty much the same tests that a doctor would to determine how much of this stuff is present, and where it came from. Unlike many of the other methods that archaeologists use to study ancient diets, looking at the stuff bundled up in a coprolite is a direct indicator of what someone was eating, over a very short period, probably a few days, along with an indication of their health. If the coprolite is well preserved, you can even slice it up into little bits to look at how the diet varied between each individual meal!

It's a bit like a detective game - not everything makes it's way through the digestive tract. Some stuff survives better than others (corn cobs anyone). So we have to be careful when we interpret the results. Ideally we look at lots of samples to get an idea of variations and whatnot. So finding ancient toilets is way more exciting than finding the next Stonehenge or some boring old precious metal object. If you're interested in palaeodiets anyway.

Next time...what sort of stuff do we know about palaeodiets that we learned from looking at palaeofaeces?

The famous Lloyds Bank turd - Viking coprolite

Getting used to be a student again

The best thing I ever did in my quest to become a superhero was to go and get the advice of a professional. For a long time (well, the 3 ish or so years) when I first started out to become a not crap at physical activity person, it never really crossed my mind that it was something I should get advice about. Maybe it was all the bad memories of being utterly useless at PE at school, and the hugely unhelpful pseudo-shaming and lack of encouragement from the PE teacher. The more I reflect on it, the more annoyed I get. As someone who now does a lot of teaching as part of my job, it infuriates me that I was made to feel so embarrassed and upset about school sports, just because it didn't come naturally to me, and because I was super shy. That's not the job of a good teacher; the teacher is someone who helps you achieve your best, whatever level that might be, and provides the encouragement and support that makes you want to succeed. Yes it's super exhilarating to work with the students who are exceptionally bright and talented at your subject, but that doesn't mean you neglect the rest. And actually, the sense of satisfaction is often greater from helping those who started out at the bottom, and made huge individual improvements.

So I spent almost a year doing random stuff in the gym by myself, with no help whatsoever. It wasn't completely pointless (though I suspect some of my amusing muscle imbalances are a result of all those bicep curls...), but it wasn't until I decided to ask for help that I started to see real changes. It makes sense - you wouldn't try and master any other subject without getting instruction! I've achieved more in the past 6 months than I thought was possible, and more importantly, I've learnt more about why I am doing certain exercises, the muscles that are being targeted, and the processes that are taking place in the body, why it is important to eat certain combinations of food macros. For me having that understanding makes it easier, more interesting, dare I even use the word exciting! I've gone from sort of wanting to go to the gym but not really being arsed half the time, to really looking forward to it on a daily basis.

Biceps yeah!

The hardest part has been putting myself back into the role of student. It is a long time since I was a student (I finished my PhD in 2008), and even longer since I was the kind of student that took instruction (I won't even mention the last time I went to a lecture that I wasn't giving myself). So having to keep quiet and learn from someone else has been strange, I am just so used to being in the instructor role. It's a big of an ego check as well, not being the person in the room who knows the most about the subject. But it's made me remember how much I enjoy learning, and also how I'm not the sort of person who can do something challenging without going as far as I can with it. I am determined to get a superhero physique, in the same amount of time or less than it took me to get a PhD!

How it all started

How it all started. I am referring here to the gym thing, rather than how I became an archaeologist. If you're interested in that you can read all about it here. So, the gym - some background. I was never ever into fitness or sports when I was younger, in fact I was one of those kids that absolutely dreaded PE lessons and would come up with any excuse not to do it. Not because I was lazy - actually when I was really small I used to love running around playing outdoors. I can't really remember when I started hating physical activity, but I do remember it being linked to being diagnosed with asthma as a child (not really bad asthma, but enough that I needed an inhaler), which made me really nervous about exerting myself. That, and being a very shy child, I found the team sports that we focused on at school very daunting. It didn't help that the PE teachers didn't really pay any attention unless you were already really good at something. All in all a combination that led me to label myself as being crap at any sort of physical activity, with a medical condition to justify it.

Fast forward to university. I still considered myself crap at sport, but I did begin to wish I wasn't. For some reason though it never occurred to me that maybe I could do something to change things. I tried stuff like climbing with friends, but there was always a voice in the back of my head telling me that I wasn't any good at it and that I would never be a 'sporty' person. I was good at academic stuff and books, and that was that.

Funnily enough the major change happened as a result of a personal crisis with the academic stuff. Back around 2013 I found myself in a situation where I didn't have a permanent job (contract jobs are the norm in the early stages of an academic career, and there is no guarantee that you will ever get a permanent contract). My future was hugely uncertain, and I thought I might have to give up everything that I had worked towards. At the same time I became pregnant, which made everything even harder. I sank into a bit of a depression, probably post-natal combined with the career crisis. It was pretty bad if I'm honest, and I knew I had to do something to help deal with all the negative feelings. Putting on my researcher hat I read that physical activity was a really good way to combat depression, and something clicked. I thought, honestly nothing can be as bad as the way I am feeling right now, and even if I'm crap at it at least it will give me something different to focus on.

Julie Bell self portrait

So I started running. I was bloody awful at it to begin with. I spent 40 mins to an hour at a time on the treadmill, slowly slowly increasing my pace and aiming for 5k. Sometimes I made it, sometimes I didn't, but after about 4 weeks it suddenly got easier, like really noticeably easier. I started doing 5k in around 20-25 minutes, and better still, I didn't feel like I was dying afterwards, all the tightness in my chest that I got from the asthma disappeared. I started to feel more confident, and plucked up the courage to start running outdoors. Up and around Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh (where I lived at the time) nearly every day. The feeling was so exhilarating. Not just the running, but the feeling of achievement, having done something I never thought I would be capable of. Once you have that moment where it 'clicks', everything else becomes easier. I started to wonder, if I have managed to become a runner, maybe I can do other physical things as well.

So I started lifting weights. Despite being anti-sport when I was younger, I've always had a huge admiration for athletic female physiques. I was (and still am) very much into sci-fi and fantasy books and comics, and some of my favorite artists since I was young have been Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell (NB some of their art is a bit NSFW). Julie Bell was a bodybuilder in her youth, and the women (and men!) in their paintings are all very muscular. I would spend hours trying to draw women that looked like that, but I never imagined it would be possible for me. I didn't have a clue what I was doing though. I spent about a year randomly doing bicep curls and lat pulldowns. Not much happened to my physique but I did find it oddly relaxing.

Then, at the end of 2015 I achieved the impossible and got my dream job in my hometown of Newcastle! After the stress of the house move I stopped running for a few months, but was desperate to get back into doing something physical. I tried doing some classes at the university gym but didn't really enjoy it. My new route to work took me past a private personal training gym, and I thought maybe I should talk to someone who knows what they're doing and see if I can really do this muscle building thing. I cannot stress the difference this has made - I've been training with guidance for 6 months now, and in that time I've learned so much about biochemistry, biomechanics and nutrition. It's a perfect applied science in many ways, putting ideas into practice with yourself as the experiment, and seeing how amazing the body is at responding to change. And it's a huge challenge - if I can get the job I always wanted, maybe I can master this as well!

Phoenix versus Magneto - one of Julie Bell's X-Men paintings

Palaeo!

As this is the first post of a new blog, I'll begin by explaining a bit about me, and the name of the blog. I am not new to blogging - over at my other blog, Castles and Coprolites, I've been blogging there for 5 years now, mostly work related. I am an archaeologist, I work at Newcastle University, and I blog about my research, field work and topics related to academia. Archaeology is a very diverse subject, and my own work comes under the heading of environmental archaeology, which means I look at how people interacted with the environment in the past, how they selected and used different resources, and the impact this had on the environment. One of the ways I do this is by looking at ancient diets. What types of food were people consuming, how did it relate to what was available in the environment, and how does it link in with other things that rely on environmental resources, such as cooking and fuel use. And also, how did all of this vary in different parts of the world, and how did it change over time?

So this is where 'palaeo' comes from. In archaeology the word 'palaeo' means old or ancient. So when I look at what the environment was like in the past, it's the palaeoenvironment, when I look at what people were eating in the past, it's palaeodiet. But the reason I started this new blog is because of my non-work interests. At the beginning of 2016 I decided to take up bodybuilding. I'll be posting more in future how and why I made that decision! I've learnt that a huge part of weight and strength training is diet, more than I ever realized. There is a lot of talk in the fitness world about Palaeo Diet, based on the types of foods that are presumed to have been eaten by early humans, but largely separate from archaeological research as far as I can tell. This seems to be based largely on meant and fish, with certain vegetables and fruits, and excluding cereals, dairy and processed food. I've been fascinated how popular the Palaeo Diet is, and how it relates to my academic research. There has been a lot of criticism from archaeologists about the justification for Palaeo Diet not being wrong, but that is not the point of this blog. I am more interested in why people are into Palaeo and the mechanisms behind why it really works (or possibly not, for everyone?). So a lot of what I'll be talking about in this blog is related to the modern idea of Palaeo Diet, in what ways it relates to the 'real' paleodiets that we know about through archaeological research, and also how it differs. Importantly I'll be thinking about geographic variability. We have a tendency to talk about the past as if everything was the same everywhere, which is obviously not true today and wasn't true in the past either!

As I learn more about fitness and nutrition, I'll be incorporating this into the blog as well. So basically this is a place for me to discuss my thoughts informally about diet, fitness and nutrition, with less of the serious stuff about academia!