In February, students of our MSc in Forensic Archaeology and Crime Scene Investigation (FACSI) carried out a survey in Keighley, at Keighley Shared Church (St Andrew Parish Church), as part of a local community collaboration.

The survey was led by Dr Michal Pisz ( Lecturer in Archaeological Prospection), with the assistance of Faye Corbett, Teaching Technician and Ben Urmston, PhD student. Nine students carried out geophysical surveys with Ground Penetrating Radar and EMI methods, as well as metal detecting practice.

The surveys are advance of the Church developing its facilities and expanding some buildings. To assess the potential needs (and costs) for rescue excavations, they needed to find out if there are any human burials within the extent of planned development, and if so, how many.

FACSI students designed and carried out survey using Mala MIRA 3D GPR – recently purchased with AHRC CapCo funding. The site was first assessed, and surveys were planned using mobile GIS on field computers. The real-time GPS positioning feature was used in QGIS software to outline the survey area. Students set up the RTK GNSS reference base station for high-precision real-time location of the GPR survey.

Although the weather was rather cold and windy, the University team was treated to lunch, with hot soup and cakes, to cheer everyone up. During the survey, FACSI students managed to record subsurface features within the area of interest and located a several burials. Further collaboration is anticipated, as it us exoected that unrecorded burials may be found inside the church, and a 3D GPR may well locate such structures.. From the point of view of our students,this was a great opportunity to work on an actual site, addressing real-world problems with the state-of-the-art methods taught at Bradford.

Dr Michael Pisz