The principal method adopted for the soil phosphate analysis for the Shaugh Moor project was a slightly modified version of that published by Dick and Tabatabai (1977). This method involves extraction of soil phosphate by alkaline oxidation with Sodium hypobromite (NaOBr-NaOh). It has been calculated that this process extracts about 60-70% of total phosphate from soils such as those on Shaugh Moor (Ralph, pers comm). This was considered satisfactory foe the purposes of this project.

It is thought that this method has not been used before in archaeological survey work but it is suggested that the simplicity of the technique and the relatively high level of phosphate extraction might prove of value in future work.