A bucket of soil samples with labels on them, a late 19th to early 20th-century industrial iron vessel with drying racks, and a hand wearing a blue glove holding a chunk of raw mineral or soil.

Flotation

Feedback from preGeoFlo use whole sample processing as outlined in the Historic England Guidelines for Environmental Processing. Our samples are processed to a consistently high standard minimising cross-contamination and supported by a system of Quality Control.

Soil samples are weighed and their volumes recorded to enable subsequent statistical analysis. The samples are wet sieved through a 0.5mm main sieve for 100% recovery of micro-artefacts, plus a 0.25mm flot sieve. The environmental material is then dried (excepting where it needs to remain moist), catalogued and bagged for further analysis. An initial sort of the flots can be carried out at this stage. The heavy residues are also retained and dried, and can be sorted for ecofacts, artefacts and micro-artefacts if required.