Sustainability in Archaeology: Reducing the Impact of Academic Travel

Patrick Quinn was invited to give a keynote lecture entitled 'Scientific analysis of archaeological ceramics: Findings and thoughts from a quarter century of research' at the 10th Scientific Conference Methodology and Archaeometry in December.

Using examples of his personal research and supervision, spanning over 25 years, his talk demonstrated the wide spectrum of themes and human processes that can be tackled via the scientific analysis of ancient ceramics. These include maritime and terrestrial trade and exchange, migration and settlement shift, cultural interaction, manufacturing technology, craft tradition, quality control and the supply chain logistics of pottery production. 

Patrick challenged himself to take a sustainable and low-carbon train journey to the conference in Zagreb, Croatia and back! His trip had 5x less carbon footprint and saved over 400kg of CO₂ compared to flying. He documented his adventure in a blog and an article for Sustainable UCL.

At UCL, students and staff work together to embed sustainability through our campus and culture. Our world-leading sustainability research informs how we run our institution and provides inspiration for our teaching.

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