The Bristol centre will be part of a network of projects announced today [Tuesday 1 October] as UKRI/AHRC launches its Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) programme. The centre shares funding from the first tranche of a major £80million research and innovation investment that will support the latest technology and scientific instrumentation to safeguard heritage for future generations and will boost the UK’s heritage economy.
The University of Bristol has a long history of pioneering mass spectrometric methodologies for molecular and isotope analyses in the heritage sciences with world-leading expertise and infrastructure that spans and integrates three schools and two faculties: the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology in the School of Arts, the Organic Geochemistry Unit in the School of Chemistry and the Bristol Isotope Group housed in the School of Earth Sciences.
Facilities included under the centre umbrella include an ultra-compact, high-precision radiocarbon accelerator. The BRAMS radiocarbon dating facility was established by the School of Chemistry in 2016 and housed in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology. This has led to major methodological developments, including the capability to radiocarbon date individual preserved fatty acids from food residues extracted from archaeological pottery.
The School of Chemistry and Department of Anthropology and Archaeology laboratories are also equipped with a unique suite of state-of-the-art organic mass spectrometry and isotope ratio mass spectrometry instruments for highly sensitive and selective analyses of molecular and isotopic signals held in archaeological materials. These typically include organic residues preserved in archaeological pottery, dietary signals in human and animal skeletal remains, climatic signals held in historic parchments, pigments and binders used in works of art and ancient Egyptian mummy balms.
Additionally, the Bristol Isotope Group uses world-leading mass spectrometric instrumentation to explore intra-lifetime patterns in human and animal diet and mobility from isotope signatures in biological remains.
The School of Chemistry's Professor Richard Evershed, a coinvestigator in the team led by Dr Lucy Cramp, said: “The new centre builds on more than 30 years of research at the University of Bristol focussed on developing and applying analytical chemistry in the field of heritage science. The RICHeS programme is a highly imaginative vehicle for sharing the expertise and approaches of leading heritage science proponents with the wider UK research community.”