Project objectives

The primary objective of this research project is:

• To create a skilled workforce capable of collecting and measuring archaeomagnetic samples from archaeological and cultural sites, particularly those likely to be destroyed, or made inaccessible, as a result of economic development within the EU.

In order to achieve this objective, a number of activities are proposed:

• Improve, unify and establish best practice in archaeomagnetic techniques to provide greater precision and consistency throughout the EU.
• Optimise the information obtained and speed with which it is retrieved from archaeological sites.
• Construct a spatially and temporally coherent record of the behaviour of the Earth's magnetic field during the last 10,000 years within the EU, based on common standards.

Research outcomes from the project will include:

• A database for archaeomagnetic dating of other archaeological sites within and adjacent to the EU, thus establishing an absolute dating technique applicable to archaeological, geological, environmental and natural hazard situations, using materials not usually dateable by other methods.
• Observations necessary for evaluating theories and models of the origin of the Earth's magnetic field, the relationship between the Earth's magnetic field and climatic change, the determination of past production rates for cosmogenic nuclides to be used for dating natural hazard features and the influence of the Earth's magnetic field on the penetration of harmful solar and cosmic radiation.