Wednesday 10 December 2008

YPS Prize Presentations


David Harker and Ben Elliot have both been awarded Charles Wellbeloved prizes by the Yorkshire Philosophical Society for their outstanding undergraduate dissertations of 2008. Both David and Ben gave short presentations in which they outlined their work.

David's work titled Making thermal age accessible using web based applications, introduced a novel approach for predicting the preservation of biomolecules. Algorithms based on thermal models, obtained from published databases, were used to predict the preservation of DNA in particular. The predicted thermal age was found to closely correlate to published values from real samples. This web-based application is helpful in deciding whether specimens are suitable for further research. The DNA Recovery Rate Calculator (DRRC) can be accessed here.

Ben's presentation, Is there evidence for barbed point manufacturing at Star Carr?, revisited the material from this Mesolithic site, and focussed on the manufacture of barbed points made from antlers. He carried out experimental work to mimic the production process using authentic tools. The debitage produced was compared to the remains found at the site to try to determine whether Star Carr was indeed a production site for these barbed points.

Well done and congratulations to both!

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