Our Archaeology department is home to a new £2m facility providing cutting-edge tools to support heritage science across North East England and nationally.
The North East Material Culture Analytical Suite (NEMCAS) offers researchers, galleries, libraries, museums and industry the opportunity to explore ancient and historical artefacts in greater detail.
It is part of a national network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) programme.
The facility includes Earthslides a state-of-the-art thin section facility.
Equipped with a high-precision saw and thin section sample prep lab, Earthslides makes it easier to analyse soils, sediments and artefacts under the microscope.
It also hosts an extensive collection of thin sections from archaeological sites from around the world and is closely connected with our microscopy laboratories offering detailed analysis of samples.
Sitting alongside Earthslides is NEMCAS’s X-Ray Computed Tomography (XR-CT) facility, a non-destructive way of seeing inside objects using 3D imaging.
The NEMCAS XR-CT facility prioritises humanities and social science research and is open to national galleries, libraries and museums through RICHeS Access Fund, as well as through collaboration with our academics. It is also open to industry and commercial users.
NEMCAS specialises in heritage applications and has expertise in analysing a wide range of materials including human and animal bone, teeth and dental plaque.
The facility can also be used to examine ceramics and pottery, wooden objects and modern and archaeological plant tissues
For example, our researchers are working with Durham Biosciences investigating barley stems at the cellular level, revealing how genetic changes influence plant structure, growth and resilience.
NEMCAS is a fantastic facility helping us to make heritage science more accessible to a wider group of people and organisations. Our ambition is to reveal heritage objects in unprecedented detail while pioneering less destructive analytical approaches. By doing so, we not only transform how we study the past but also inspire new applications of heritage science across the wider scientific landscape.
RICHeS has 31 investments that form a distributed infrastructure of collections, facilities and expertise that will unlock access to heritage science across the UK.
NEMCAS is also funded by Durham University’s Strategic Research Fund.
Learn more about using NEMCAS and how your organisation can access the RICHeS Access Fund.
NEMCAS is led by Professor Lisa-Marie Shillito. Professor Shillito joined Durham University under our Strategic Research Fund.
Our Department of Archaeology is ranked sixth in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025 and fourth in the Complete University Guide 2026. Visit our Archaeology webpages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
More about the Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) programme. Read this blog about the recent RICHeS visit to Durham University.
Learn about the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.
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