Archaeology Gallery

Rescue excavation 29676_017

Bedale, Aiskew and Leeming Bar bypass, North Yorkshire. Archaeological excavation of an Iron Age/Roman ditched enclosure and construction works for the bypass, March 2015. SE2689

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Aerial, Enclosure, Excavation, Road Construction, Soilmark

Farmstead, Lavenham 29817_004

Late medieval farmstead in Lavenham, Suffolk. This 2015 aerial photograph shows the buried remains of a late medieval farmstead revealed as cropmarks. You can see some of the farma??s field boundaries and a trackway which linked this farm to its neighbours. They are reminders of the generations of families who lived and worked the land here. These farms were abandoned after changes in farming practice and illustrate the widespread changes that have affected the rural landscape of Suffolk over the last 500 years. This is a good example of the many Suffolk farmsteads Historic England has discovered from the air in recent years. It looks similar to prehistoric settlements found in Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire but is more typical of late medieval farmsteads still in use elsewhere on the Suffolk clay lands

© Historic England Archive

Enclosures, Stoke Hammond 26957_027

Neolithic long mortuary enclosures in Stoke Hammond, Buckinghamshire
Features below the plough soil that cause cropmarks can be man-made or natural. In this case it's both. The man-made features are two elongated, capsule shaped enclosures, a circular enclosure and a few large pits. The rest are marks in the gravel, created naturally during the Ice Age. The capsule shaped enclosures are examples of one of the oldest types of monument in Britain called Neolithic Long Mortuary Enclosures. They're thought to be areas where dead bodies were placed before burial although there's debate within the archaeological community about what really went on in these enigmatic places

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