Purpose of the examination

The identification of distinctive suites of pollen types within the cist floor at Loanleven and several other Bronze Age ‘cemeteries’ in Scotland (see Loanleven report below) led to the need to investigate the possibility of similar patterns within the Balneaves complex.

Samples from the basal and most securely stratified fills of five of the pits at Balneaves were examined (F1110A; Pit 3: F1109C and E from Pit 6: F1107A; Pit7: F1114B; Pit 13: F1115A; Pit 14) together with the blackened encrustations from within Urns 1 and 3 (see ‘The Pottery’; Alison Sheridan) were prepared according to conventional chemical techniques (cf. Moore and Webb 1978), including the use of 10|im nylon sieves and hydrofluoric acid to remove siliceous particles, stained with safranin, and examined at mag. x400 on an Olympus BHS microscope.