17th March 2015
Met’s Geophysics team has provided technical support to geophysical investigations of Fountains Abbey, which were undertaken by Bradford University in collaboration with manufacturers Mala Geoscience and Geoscan Research.
Fountain’s Abbey is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is one of the iconic heritage sites of North Yorkshire. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, relatively little archaeological excavation work has been carried out around the abbey and its surroundings, and much of what is known or believed about the history of the site derives from old written sources and illustrations.
Bradford University, with assistance from manufacturers Mala Geoscience and Geoscan Research, has been carrying out geophysical investigations across the site to try to unravel its complex history. Met Geo Environmental has sponsored employees to study the 
Archaeological Prospection MSc. course at Bradford, and has a close working relationship with MALA, using many of their new technologies on a day-to-day basis.
As a result, Met Geo Environmental was asked to provide technical support to facilitate new investigations seeking to better characterise and understand the buried remains. Met provided equipment and personnel to help carry out the surveys, which were undertaken using a variety of methods. The use of many different techniques allowed a comparison to be made of which were the most effective, as well as providing lots of new information on the site.
The results of the surveys were intriguing, with the many different techniques providing additional detail to known areas, as well as discovering wholly new things about the site. One of the most exciting of these discoveries was to establish that the area believed to be the graveyard extended much further than previously thought, and contained tens or possibly hundreds more burials.
For more information about the surveys and results please go to: http://www.nsgg.org.uk/meetings/nsgg2014/NSGGAbstracts2014_fullres.pdf