Camilla Dickson, botanist; born December 4, 1932, died May 18, 1998
MRS Camilla Dickson, nee Lambert, was one of the leading scientists in the comparatively new field of archaeobotany, the interplay of botany and archaeology. Her scientific career began in Cambridge University when she became the technician in the sub-department of Quaternary Research of the Botany School, and worked under Professor Sir Harry Godwin FRS, the foremost pioneer of the plant ecology of the glacial and interglacial periods in Britain.
In the 1950s, when such work was at its peak in Cambridge, she learned a highly critical approach to the identification of pollen grains and macroscopic fossils, notably seeds. Many of Sir Harry's later papers depended totally on the practical skills of Camilla Lambert, who in 1964 married James Dickson, then one of Sir Harry's last research
students and now Professor of Archaeobotany and Plant Systematics at Glasgow University.
In the mid 1970s, when her children, Peter and Kate, were of sufficient age, Mrs Dickson resumed her scientific work, concentrating to great effect almost exclusively on the archaeobotany of Scotland. Her first major success concerned the investigation of the silted-up east annexe ditch of the Bearsden Roman fort. Working with her husband, she proved that the ditch had a substantial component of sewage, rich in the food plants consumed by the Roman troops.
Much of the organic material was bran from the imported cereals the troops had eaten and expelled. Part of the proof was a heroic little experiment, conducted unknown to Professor Dickson; she ate for some days only wholemeal bread, sieved her excreta and examined it down the microscope. The product so very closely resembled the Roman bran that when her husband was asked to comment he said: ''Why are you looking at the Bearsden material again?'' But it was not Bearsden circa 145 AD, but Milngavie 1978!
Mrs Dickson's work on the Bearsden plant remains has
since become very well known, not least for her pioneering work on distinguishing microscopically minute scraps of the likes of dill, lentil, coriander, and broad bean from cereals.
Her work expanded to cover all periods of Scottish history, most recently on the plant remains from silts deposited in the mid-fifteenth century drains under Paisley Abbey.
Greater celandine was recognised for the first time in Scottish archaeology, monk's rhubarb in British archaeology, and mace in world archaeology; the latter
must have been gathered in what is now Indonesia and traded all the way to Scotland probably via the Low Countries.
She has finished a highly detailed archaeobotanical study of the middens of Skara Brae, Orkney, the famous Neolithic village; one of the most remarkable findings was the identification of no less than four types of driftwood, likely to have crossed the Atlantic from North America.
In 1990 she delivered the Goodfellow Lecture to the Glasgow Natural History Society. The title was a very apt one: Memoirs of a Midden Mavis - The Study of Ancient Diets and Environments from Roman Plant Remains.
Mrs Dickson had no formal scientific qualifications whatever, but possessed abundantly those attrib-utes that really matter: great observational skill and perseverance.
She died after a long fight against lung cancer and only two days after returning from a curtailed botanical and archaeological holiday in Crete with her husband. Only after her illness was diagnosed did she begin to write a book which will be the summation of her scientific career. The provisional title is People, Plants and Diet in Ancient Scotland. The book is very largely complete and will be finished by her husband.
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