Earthslides was founded in 2007 by Julie Boreham, a Geoarchaeologist with a special interest in British Prehistory. Julie has been producing thin sections of soils and sediments for microsocpic analysis for over 25 years, and was trained in 'The Art of Thin Sectioning' while working at the Departmnt of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. Since 2007 she worked with colleagues all over the world, and became well known as a world leading service in the production of high quality archaeological thin sections, and the development of new techniques and methodologies for different types of sediments. Julie decided to retire in June 2018, having produced over 5000 slides for the thin section community, and is now working on writing up a thin section preparation manual. You can follow her work on the Hidden Worlds facebook page.

Lisa-Marie Shillito trained in sediment micromorphology for her MSc and PhD at the University of Reading, during which she learned the skill of producing large format thin sections. Following this she worked for 2 years as a research assitant and lab manager, making thin sections slides for research and commercial projects, before moving to York in 2010 to take up a postdoctoral research post. She has used Julie's services since 2010, both for her own research and for collaborative work, including a joint exhibition in the Czech Republic in 2013 at the European Association of Archaeologists conference, "Hidden Cave Worlds - Geoarchaeology of the Paisley caves, Oregon, USA". She has over 10 years' experience in field sampling and analysis of archaeological thin sections, and is director of the archaeology labs at Newcastle University. The Earthslides facility is now part of the research labs here at Newcastle, and we will be taking external projects by the end of 2018.