Staff from the department spent two intensive weeks in late September surveying Inner Farne, an island off the Northumberland coast known for its wildlife preservation efforts. It holds 1,300 years of human activity and significant early Christian remains, but very little archaeological investigation has taken place until now.

For asecond year, Prof. Chris Gaffney is leading a project funded by the National Trust to identify and record archaeological features on the island as well as evaluate soil sediments. The team consisted of Chris, Dr Michael Pisz, Dr Kayt Armstrong, Tom Sparrow and Lucy Benoit.

To do so, the team created a photogrammetric model of the island and deployed all the geophysical equipment they could on this uninhabited and remote island – Electrical Resistivity Tomography, Magnetometry, Earth Resistance and four different GPRs! This work presented unique challenges, with many areas protected to preserve puffin burrows and other seabird habitats. To avoid walking on these sensitive surfaces, novel methodologies were adopted. For example, single-channel GPRs were tied and pulled along traverses with ropes. Besides the more conventional operations, Tom was able to test a more innovative approach – the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with our brand-new GPR drone the MALA GD600!