A thousand metres wide, thousands of years deep: the archaeological landscapes at the foot

Alison Deegan (Freelance, England) Along the western edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds, where the chalk uplands descend abruptly into the valley of the River Ancholme, there is a narrow strip of land occupied by a string of spring-line villages. Examination of a wide range of aerial sources from 1940s verticals to recent LiDAR imagery has revealed complex and overlapping archaeological landscapes around and between these villages. In the 1940s there were near-continuous earthwork ridge and furrow, and medieval settlement remains. Later in the 20th century, when these are levelled by ploughing, the remains of Iron Age and Roman settlements and Bronze Age barrows began to appear as cropmarks, and the complexity and intensity of these continues to increase.