DIG 2007: Catena special issue preface

This volume contains a number of papers that were presented at the second Developing International Geoarchaeology conference in April, 2007. The conference was hosted by the McBurney Geoarchaeology Laboratory in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. The ethos of the first Developing International Geoarchaeology (‘DIG’) conference, which was held in St John, New Brunswick, Canada, in October, 2005, was to foster Old–New World communication and collaborations between archaeologists, geoarchaeologists, geologists, geographers and environmental scientists at both the research student and professional levels (Wilson et al., 2007). The second ‘DIG’ conference aimed to expose geoarchaeologists to new and innovative work from around the world and encourage the development of new methodological approaches at a variety of scales of application. Major sessions included the analysis of palaeosols, landscape geoarchaeology and the interpretation of cultural sediments. Regrettably, only about one-third of those who gave papers at the conference submitted their papers to this Catena Special Issue, but their contribution to the conference was very much appreciated and they added significantly to the breadth of discussion.