◊ Dear Microburins,
One of the Bamburgh Research Project’s focal points has been at Bradford Kaims located a few miles from Bamburgh, near the village of Lucker in Northumberland. A combination of excavation and palaeo-environmental investigations are ongoing in a wetland area, with excellent organic preservation, where early Neolithic burnt mounds are associated with a stone-based hearth, a timber platform and finds including lithics and a wooden ‘paddle’.
Image courtesy of Bamburgh Research Project.
- More about the Bradford Kaims project (ongoing) »
You can also get involved!
Related to the ongoing project, the project blog includes some great reports on archaeological and palaeo-botanical scientific techniques being deployed — there are some excellent videos too. Two such updates, on what phytoliths are and what they can tell us, have been published in the last week:
Archaeological Science at Bradford Kaims | Phytoliths:
Both are informative and well worth a read.
♦ Spence
microburin 
These articles have come just right as we embark on a similar project at Pennyhooks Valley. There is very little we can do at the moment through conventional excavation and it’s now to the microscopic world we are turning our attention. On the research I have done so far (reading lots), I can concur that it’s quite a complicated process. However, I also think that the potential is enormous. Here we go then……