Natural resource economics form the kernel of my interest in the ancient world, in particular the forest economy. Studies on fuel and the forest economy are as yet embryonic, particularly from an archaeological standpoint. Archaeological charcoal analysed as to wood type, and characterized in terms of cropping marks, is our base tool. The results are interpreted in the light of the historical sources, and incorporate ecological and ethnographic data. The goal is to provide a regional economic view of forest management, including transport, supply and consumption patterns of various wood products. During my Fellowship, I focused on the Rome portion of my project, and I sought and analysed charcoal data from a range of sources, both inside Rome and from satellite settlements nearby. Some of this legacy data produced results that demonstrated much information about the timber supply (for construction), rather than the fuel supply; there were so many fires in ancient Rome! This has greatly enhanced my work, as I have had to develop methodological advances in charcoal analysis to be able to differentiate charcoal fuel remains from those of building timbers. While the size of the original wood is a factor, a close reading of all of the archaeological contextual information is essential, and reviewing the historical texts on building (in particular Vitruvius) has been greatly informative also.

This year, I took the opportunity to give seminars at the University of Michigan, USA (Gabii and Pran ‘e Siddi Projects), and the Food and Agriculture Organization Forestry Division, Rome. The forestry library and FAO staff were instrumental in enhancing my ethnographic studies. I plan further expansion of my work to include ‘non-wood’ forest products, and ‘non-forest’ wood supply sources. I commenced a small pilot study examining the quality of charcoal fuel (investigating its carbon content) through the University of Oxford Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, and I also visited the London Archaeological Archive Centre to audit charcoal, and propose a pilot to examine Roman Londinium's fuel supply. Future opportunities that have arisen as a result of my Fellowship include a number of invited speaking engagements, and a colloquium entitled ‘Fuel and Fire in the Ancient Roman World’, to be held at the British School at Rome and the Finnish Institute, 8–9 March 2013. In organizing this conference I am joined by former Rome Scholar, Victoria Leitch, with the support of the BSR and the Oxford Roman Economy Project.

My written scholarship has received the boon of review by senior scholars, and at the beginning of my Fellowship I reviewed proofs for two separate Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement chapters, one on continuity and change in the late Roman landscape of Calleva Atrebatum, and the other arising from a RAC 2010 paper examining charcoal from context to economy in Pompeii. My doctoral thesis, which I have revised, will be published in book form as Fuelling Pompeii (London, Accordia (2013)). I further wrote a long synthetic chapter on the topic of fuelling mediterranean cities (to be published in a Brill volume edited by W.V. Harris); a charcoal methodological paper; and two shorter reports for the monographs on Villamagna (E. Fentress) and on Santa Maria Antiqua (H. Hurst). Further chapters are underway for the Piazza Navona project (M. Dewailley), and the Palazzo Valentini charcoals (P. Baldassarri). I hope to synthesize these first results in a paper for the European Journal of Archaeology in 2013.

I have enjoyed visiting several excavation sites and institutes to talk about and examine charcoal, and I particularly thank the École Française de Rome, the Provincia di Roma, the American Academy in Rome, and Cambridge University Faculty of Classics and the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. I have appreciated greatly the use of the Camerone for my laboratory work, and I thank all of the staff of the BSR for their help over the year. The stimulating company of my artistic and academic colleagues, as well as those who passed through the BSR, was a constant source of inspiration.