[An Archaeologist’s Guide to British Species] #123: Crocus, Autumn
In 2026, I am continuing to blog an A-Z compendium of human interactions with species in the British landscape. A list of references for information used in this series can be found here. An index of species covered so far can be found here.
By Aloxe – Own work, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44132047
Crocus, Autumn
Colchicum autumnale
Also known as meadow saffron, upstart and naked ladies
A highly poisonous plant which bears purple flowers that emerge in August and September in damp meadows and woodlands. When the plant is flowering, it has no leaves, and so it has also been termed ‘naked ladies’ and ‘upstart’. The leaves emerge in spring, along with the fruit which has overwintered inside the corm. Despite its common names the plant is neither a true crocus nor saffron. The whole plant is toxic to humans and other mammals including cattle, especially the corm, and so the plant was often destroyed and is now quite rare. In very small doses it has been used as a treatment for gout.
[An Archaeologist’s Guide to British Species] #122: Crayfish
In 2026, I am continuing to blog an A-Z compendium of human interactions with species in the British landscape. A list of references for information used in this series can be found here. An index of species covered so far can be found here.
Crayfish
Austropotamobius pallipes (Lereboullet, 1858)
By David Gerke – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3274551
There is one native species of crayfish in these islands, the white-clawed crayfish Austropotamobius pallipes. They are large freshwater crustaceans that resemble lobsters, and are found in well-oxygenated canals and rivers with hard water. They are active at night, feeding on snails, worms and insects. In recent years, native white-clawed crayfish populations have declined due to the introduction of American signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) which not only compete with native crayfish for food but can also carry a fungal disease.
Crayfish ‘eyes’ have been used in western Europe as a cure-all. Rather than being the actual eyes of the crustacean, the ‘eyes; are actually nodules of limey material laid down in the stomach, most likely as a calcium reserve for use after moulting.
Call for papers: TAG, Exeter, 14th-16th December 2026
N.B call for papers closes 5pm BST on September 7th
People in Places: archaeological perspectives from environmental psychology
Organisers: Matt Law, Bath Spa University; Claire Nolan, University College Dublin; Ben Gearey, University College Cork
Environmental psychology seeks to understand how interactions with the environment change humans’ experiences and behaviours, and how and why people relate to and modify their environment. Topics of investigation include: psychological impacts of environmental stress; risk perception; ambivalence to nature; the mental health benefits of being in nature; place attachment; ecocultural identity; and the experiences of children in nature.
Historically, use of the past to understand human-environment relations has largely been undertaken by scholars outside of archaeology, with little to no reference to archaeological data. This has resulted in inaccurate assumptions about the past and, sometimes, the development of problematic evolutionary psychological theories that perpetuate deterministic ideas about human nature, including controversial views of sex and gender. Bringing this discussion back into archaeology, this session welcomes papers that apply an environmental psychological perspective, within an evidence-based archaeological context, to people in the past, and the experience of learning about or envisioning past landscapes or environmental change for people in the present. As such, it aims to understand how empirical archaeological narratives interact with and influence present-day experiences of loss and persistence in relation to the environment.
Relevant themes might include: grief and hope in studying past environmental change; creative/artistic responses to environmental archaeological evidence; teaching difficult environmental histories; ethical dimensions of public engagement with environmental loss; and archaeological perspectives on solastalgia and climate emotions. The session also welcomes presentations that critically investigate non-specialist understandings of the relationship between environmental psychology and archaeology, what is lost in such readings, and the implications for the future.
Submit paper proposals to: m.law[@]bathspa.ac.uk
In 2026, I am continuing to blog an A-Z compendium of human interactions with species in the British landscape. A list of references for information used in this series can be found here. An index of species covered so far can be found here.
By Andreas Trepte – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39163967
Crane, Common
Grus grus (Linnaeus, 1758)
A tall, grey bird with a black, white and red head, the crane was formerly widespread in Britain, but apparently stopped breeding here around 1600, partly as the result of hunting for meat and feathers, and partly due to the drainage of marshes for land reclamation. Since 1981, a small resident population has lived in East Anglia. Crane footprint tracks are common around Mesolithic Goldcliff, south Wales, although no crane bones were found suggesting the birds were not being eaten. Crane bones were among the finds at 1st century AD Gorhambury, St Albans and in early sixteenth century deposits at Baynard’s Castle, London, as well as at the Iron Age Glastonbury Lake Village in Somerset. According to Naomi Sykes, cranes are the most-represented wild bird at archaeological sites between the mid-fifth to mid-eleventh centuries, and occur frequently in placenames (for example, Cranfield). In an eleventh-century deposit in Lincoln, Terry O’Connor identified crane bones showing evidence of the toes being cut from the legs, which, drawing on later medieval recipe books, Sykes suggests was a method of dressing the carcass for presentation at the table.
A congregation of cranes is known as a sedge or siege.
Next year, I am co-convening a session at the ICAZ (International Council for Archaeozoology) conference in Vancouver, Canada. Below is our call for papers. Please do get in touch if you have any questions.
please find below a call for contributions for our session at the 15th ICAZ Conference next year. Beyond its multidisciplinary scope, the session is also a meeting point for members of the ICAZ Archaeomalacology Working Group. Vancouver is a rare treat for people working with shells or on shell midden sites, as its Biodiversity museum hosts a wide range of marine fauna and information on historical fishing practices. The conference itself has a strong integration of maritime themes beyond our own session and should offer a lot of inspiration and discussion.
The deadline is the 25th of August via the official ICAZ 2027 conference platform:
#20 More than Shells
Interdisciplinary Approaches in Archaeomalacology
Matthew Law, Rosa Arniz-Mateos, Niklas Hausmann, Danai Theodoraki,
Meghan Burchell, Amy Prendergast, Sharada Channarayapatna, Fred Andrus
Mollusc shells are among the most durable and information-rich materials recovered from archaeological deposits. They provide insights into a multitude of ways in which humans in the past interacted with, made use of, harvested and fostered them.
They are also among the most culturally pervasive finds in archaeological records, from Palaeolithic ornaments to purple-dye industries and forms of currencies. Beyond those specialised uses, they have been employed as tools, vessels, fish-hooks, instruments, raw material, fertilizer, ceramic temper, and more. They are often found at the centre of human- animal relationships along coastlines, involving lunar harvesting calendars, gendered divisions of labour, and traditional ecological knowledge of their sustained and long-term use, informing conservation efforts of today. Cosmologies, oral traditions, and ethnographic records from coastal, riverine, and inland communities are further signs of their deep entanglement with societies across time. As calcified records of individual lifetimes, they preserve high-resolution environmental and ecological signals accessible through geochemical, morphometric, and genomic analyses. They are also among the most widely used materials for absolute dating, via radiocarbon, amino acid racemisation, and uranium- series across the Pleistocene and Holocene.
This session showcases research on marine, freshwater, or terrestrial molluscs from all geographical distributions and invites contributions to any and all of their applications and interpretations in archaeology.
In 2026, I am continuing to blog an A-Z compendium of human interactions with species in the British landscape. A list of references for information used in this series can be found here. An index of species covered so far can be found here.
Cranberry
Vaccinium oxycoccos L. 1753
Vaccinium oxycocos. By Christian Fischer, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1311657
Also known as fenberry
A creeping, evergreen dwarf shrub of bogs and marshy places that grows up to 50 cms tall. In summer, it bears pink, downturned flowers, which give way to small, round, red berries.The berry is extremely sharp raw, but can be made into sauces and jellies. Richard Mabey states that cranberries used to be very common in these islands, but wetland drainage has led to loss of their habitat and they are now mostly found in northern England and Wales. The species found here is not the same as the larger American species (Vaccinium macrocarpon) that is exploited commercially, although the European species is also found in northern North America.
In 2026, I am continuing to blog an A-Z compendium of human interactions with species in the British landscape. A list of references for information used in this series can be found here. An index of species covered so far can be found here.
Crab
Crabs are crustaceans in the class Malacostraca and order Decapoda and have ten limbs – four pairs of legs and two pincers – and a hard, close-fitting calcareous shell called a carapace. The largest crab found around these islands is the edible crab Cancer pagurus, which usually lives offshore although smaller specimens may be found on the shore. Edible crabs are known as partan in Scotland. More familiar might be the shore crab Carcinus maenas, which is a small green crab. Hermit crabs, of which Pagurus bernhardus is the most common species, are not true crabs and rather than a tail tucked beneath their body theirs is twisted to fit the spiral of an empty mollusc shell they carry for protection.
Crabs are eaten, although in Britain it is likely only two species (edible crabs and thorn-backed (or common, or spiny) spider crab, Maja squinado) have been eaten with any frequency. With care, they can be transported inland alive, and so kept fresh for some time. Crabs are also used as a fishing bait. Smaller crabs may be used for the manufacture of fish stock.
Crab remains are difficult to identify to species from archaeological remains, which are usually fragmentary. The carapace of the edible crab has a distinctive pie-crust like margin. Thorn-backed spider crabs have very spiny carapaces. Swimming crabs have distinctive red claws with a knobbly texture.
A possible edible crab claw was recovered from a Late Iron Age ditch fill at Bishopstone in Sussex. Edible crabs, shore crabs and swimming grabs were present at Neolithic Udal on North Uist. Edible crab was also reported from the Mesolithic shell midden at Culverwell in Dorset, Roman Tanner Row, York; and from 9th century deposits at Coppergate, also in York. They have been found in several post-medieval contexts, for example at Priest Lane, Ripon, the Castle Ditch at Newcastle, Queen Street, also in Newcastle, and Holy Island village, Lindisfarne.
In 2026, I am continuing to blog an A-Z compendium of human interactions with species in the British landscape. A list of references for information used in this series can be found here. An index of species covered so far can be found here.
By Peleg – self made by Peleg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1107460
Coypu
Myocastor coypus (Molina, 1782)
Also known as nutria
A 20th century introduction to Britain from South America, but subject to aggressive population control, which led to its eradication by 1990. A large semi-aquatic rodent, coypus were once exhibited in fairground sideshows as the largest rat on earth. They were introduced in the 1930s for fur-farming, but some escaped and became established in East Anglia. They gained a reputation for taking sugar beet and bulbs from farmland, which led to their unpopularity.
In 2026, I am continuing to blog an A-Z compendium of human interactions with species in the British landscape. A list of references for information used in this series can be found here. An index of species covered so far can be found here.
Primula veris. Picture taken by BerndH – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117421
Cowslip
Primula veris L.
Also known as cowslop, cowslap, peggles, Herb Peter and petty mullein
A springtime flower of well-established grassland on lime-rich soils. Its name is a form of cowslop, or cow pat, a reference to its tendency to appear in discrete clumps in pasture. Balls of cowslip flowers can made by hanging the flower heads on a string. Children would then throw them between one another, reciting ‘Tissty-tossty tell me true/ who am I going to be married to?/ Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor/ rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief’ as the ball disintegrated.
The flowers can be used to make a delicate wine, and a vinegar which Richard Mabey reports was drunk with soda water rather than used as a condiment. They have also been used as a folk remedy for jaundice and for coughs. Allen and Hatfield (Medicinal Plants in Folk Tradition) also note its use as a folk cosmetic. According to Dr Prior, the name Herb Peter derives from its resemblance to a bunch of keys, the badge of St Peter.
Cowslip Sunday is celebrated on the first Sunday in May in Lambley, Nottinghamshire. According to Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica, it is celebrated with a basket of cowslips at the church altar, but when cowslips were more common people would travel from Nottingham to buy bunches picked by local children.
In 2026, I am continuing to blog an A-Z compendium of human interactions with species in the British landscape. A list of references for information used in this series can be found here. An index of species covered so far can be found here.
By Jonas Bergsten – Photo taken by Jonas Bergsten using a Canon PowerShot G3., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1233144
Cowberry
Vaccinium vitis-idaea L. 1753
Also known as lingonberry and mountain cranberry
A small evergreen shrub of moorland bogs, with leathery oval leaves. Cowberries are small red spherical fruits with a very sharp flavour when raw, rather like a cranberry, which can be made into jams and jellies. The leaves and stems can be used to make a yellow dye. Allen and Hatfield’s Medicinal Plants in Folk Tradition records the use of the leaves in Cumbria to make a decongestant, but note that it is surprisingly absent from other folk medicine records.
