Topic description and stories

Cattle grazing in the River Ouse water meadows south of Ely

Casting light on the dark ages: Anglo-Saxon fenland is re-imagined

21 Jul 2017

What was life in the fens like in the period known as the dark ages? Archaeologist Susan Oosthuizen revisits the history of an iconic wetland in the...

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Latest archaeological finds at Must Farm provide a vivid picture of everyday life in the Bronze Age

14 Jul 2016

Excavation of a site in the Cambridgeshire fens reveals a Bronze Age settlement with connections far beyond its watery location. Over the past ten...

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How 'more food per field' could help save our wild spaces

28 Jan 2016

Increased farm yields could help to spare land from agriculture for natural habitats that benefit wildlife and store greenhouse gases, but only if...

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Haua Fteah, Cyrenaica, Libya. ̽»¨Ö±²¥cave’s entrance.

Let’s go wild: how ancient communities resisted new farming practices

06 Jan 2016

Analysis of grinding stones reveals that North African communities may have moved slowly and cautiously from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to more...

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Rural Landscape near Fife

Boosting farm yields to restore habitats could create greenhouse gas ‘sink’

04 Jan 2016

New study using UK data is first to show that raising farm yields and allowing ‘spared’ land to be reclaimed for woodlands and wetlands could offset...

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Millet: the missing piece in the puzzle of prehistoric humans’ transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers

14 Dec 2015

New research shows a cereal familiar today as birdseed was carried across Eurasia by ancient shepherds and herders laying the foundation, in...

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Pigs eating swill at Stepney City Farm

Feeding food waste to pigs could save vast swathes of threatened forest and savannah

10 Dec 2015

New research suggests that feeding our food waste, or swill, to pigs (currently banned under EU law) could save 1.8 million hectares of global...

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̽»¨Ö±²¥Magic Apple Tree by Samuel Palmer

Here’s looking at ewe: Samuel Palmer and his watercolour sheep

07 Oct 2015

̽»¨Ö±²¥Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, S is for...

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Bombus pascuorum

̽»¨Ö±²¥Life and Death of the Queen Bumblebee

23 Sep 2015

̽»¨Ö±²¥Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, Q is for...

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Vast pivot irrigator shows farming encroaching on wilderness in New Zealand.

Paying farmers to help the environment works, but ‘perverse’ subsidies must be balanced

09 Sep 2015

First analysis of effectiveness of agri-environment schemes measured at a national level suggests that they work, but are still a drop in the ocean...

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Oronsay

What limpets can tell us about life on Mesolithic Oronsay

19 Aug 2015

̽»¨Ö±²¥Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, L is for...

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Sausages (cropped)

MRSA contamination found in supermarket sausages and minced pork

18 Jun 2015

A survey carried out earlier this year has found the first evidence of the ‘superbug’ bacteria Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) in...

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