People

Dr Jen Harland is a zooarchaeologist with an interest in fish remains, particularly those from the UK. 

She's currently employed as a lecturer at the University of Highlands and Islands, based in Orkney, and is working remotely as a post doctoral researcher at the University of York for the duration of the SEACHANGE project.  Her current research focuses on the later medieval and post-medieval archaeology of Northern Scotland, though she is also actively working on projects dating from the Neolithic onwards (e.g. the Ness of Brodgar). She is part of a team excavating Skaill Farm on Rousay, Orkney, a site with Viking foundations underlying a series of medieval and later buildings, culminating in 18th and 19th century crofts that were subject to clearances.  Jen is interested in the application of biomolecular techniques to fish remains, including ancient DNA and stable isotope analysis, and she also works with marine mollusc remains. Jen is a Co-I on the AHRC-DFG funded-project, Looking in from the Edge (LIFTE), investigating the impact of commercialisation on north-western Europe's peripheral communities in the 15th to 18th centuries.

Jen is contributing fish and shell remains from a variety of sites in Northern Scotland, including those from excavations at Skaill Farm on Rousay, and from archival collections held in museums and institutions. She has compiled a dataset of all fish remains from Scotland, from all time periods, and will be maintaining and building upon this throughout the project, allowing questions to be asked about the changing relationship between people and the sea over time. SEACHANGE will permit the zooarchaeological analysis of new and archived assemblages of fish and marine shells from Northern Scotland, and will help with artefactual and contextual dating.