Dr Barry Taylor
Senior Lecturer
Biography
Dr Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Chester. He coordinates the undergraduate archaeology programme and leads on teaching in Palaeoecology, Archaeobotany, Experimental Archaeology, and the Mesolithic of Northwest Europe. He manages the McLay Laboratory for Archaeological Research, and is a member of the faculty ethics committee. He is also an associate editor of the journal Plant Perspectives.
Teaching and Supervision
Dr Taylor teaches across the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. His undergraduate teaching focuses on aspects of environment archaeology, notably the modules HI5010 Reconstructing Past Environments, HI5015 Ethnobotany and Experimental Archaeology, and HI6015 Bioarchaeology, and the archaeology of past and contemporary hunter-gatherers, notably modules HI4007 European Worlds and HI6019 Hunter-Gatherers: A Global Perspective. He also he also leads the postgraduate research skills module and supervises MRes and PhD students.
Research and Knowledge Exchange
Dr Taylor’s specialises in the archaeology and palaeoecology of northern Europe during the Mesolithic (c. 9600-4000 CBE), a period where much of the region was inhabited by human communities who lived by hunting and gathering. His research focuses on the relationships that formed between these human communities and their environment, and how this can help us to respond better to the environmental issues that we face today. He has directed archaeological excavations and palaeoenvironmental surveys on wetland sites across the north of England, including the internationally important site of Star Carr, and is currently involved in fieldwork projects in North Yorkshire and the Inner Hebrides. Dr Taylor’s current research covers three main themes: • How plant communities in the past were affected by human and non-human factors and how this can inform contemporary conservation strategies. • How humans responded to the arrival of new plant species during the Mesolithic. • How Mesolithic communities came to understand different plants and the nature of their relationship to them. He also leads the Plant Encounters projects, which seeks to address the issue of Plant Blindness (our culturally induced tendency to overlook plants and the important roles they play), by showing how aspects of past human society were shaped by the different plant species they shared their world with. As part of the project he works in collaboration with colleagues from the School of Creative Media (University of Chester) to use dramatic performance, music, and creative writing as methods of disseminating archaeological and palaeoecological data.