Datasets

The archaeological dataset for the period 1500 BC to 1086 AD in England is extraordinarily rich (very possibly uniquely so in a European context). Much of this richness derives from work carried out since about 1960, and especially since about 1990: in other words, from modern and well-documented investigations.

A number of datasets are particularly important for the project:

1. English Heritage’s National Mapping Programme (NMP) and Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) programme. The NMP is creating a new national digital map of archaeological sites and landscapes, based on existing and newly commissioned aerial photographs. At present almost 50% of England has been mapped and work continues. The NMP is complemented by the HLC programme, which looks at the historic roots of present landscapes and the various forces of enclosure, urbanization and industrialization that have masked, destroyed or preserved earlier aspects of landscapes. This work, although not without its critics, has fed into the European Landscape Convention (Strasbourg 2000) which emphasizes the importance of landscapes and their histories to present day well-being, identity and quality of life.

2. A wide variety of landscape surveys have taken place since the 1970s. These have covered very extensive areas, using a range of techniques (notably measured ground survey, fieldwalking and geophysical survey). They provide more detailed information, generally for smaller areas, to complement the ‘broad-brush’ picture from NMP and HLC.

3. There has been a huge amount of development-led excavation in England, especially since 1990 (when new regulations, linked to the Council of Europe’s Valetta Convention, required developers to pay for archaeological work on construction projects). Some 4,500 individual excavations have been taking place annually since then, and it has been estimated that expenditure on this work is now around £100M p.a. The largest projects cover 100 hectares or more. The nature and quality of English development-led archaeological work have been much debated, although there is no doubt that the very large area excavations are producing important ‘landscape’ results on an unprecedented scale. A by-product of this project will be to assess the worth of development-led archaeological work in England, and to promote debate about whether a more planned and integrated system is needed (as exists in France, for instance).

4. The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) was started in 1997 to record archaeological finds made by members of the public (including coins and items of metalwork found by metal detectorists and others). The PAS has now has over 140, 000 objects registered (Bronze Age 4709, Iron Age 7661, Roman 114,472, Early Medieval 14,041). The PAS database is complemented by others, such as the 40,000 Iron Age coins registered in the Celtic Coin Index.

5. Further information is contained in a number of databases, national and local. These include the English Heritage National Monuments Record, the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) based in York University, which has increasing numbers of digital reports and databases on-line, and the Archaeological Investigations Project (AIP) database based in Bournemouth University, which contains comprehensive information on development-led work. At the local level, mainly of the county, Historic Environment Records (HERs) hold a mass of detail, increasingly in digital form, of local archaeological work and its results.

Working with a dataset of this size and complexity poses very considerable challenges (both intellectual and technical), but it also holds huge potential for examining landscape, material culture, and the relationships between the two, across a long period of time and at a variety of scales and levels of resolution, from inter-regional and broad-brush to local and very fine-grained. Attempting the integration, interrogation and interpretation of multiple complex datasets on this scale is one of the most innovative and ambitious aims of the project, and not without its risks.