East Cambridgeshire Aerial Investigation and Mapping Project Report
Author(s): Steve Crowther, Maggi Noke
The East Cambridgeshire Aerial Investigation and Mapping project combined the mapping and interpretation of vertical and specialist oblique aerial photographs, as well as airborne laser scanning data (lidar), to identify, map and record archaeological remains dating from the Neolithic to the mid-20th century. The project was carried out to provide comprehensive information from aerial sources to inform local and national planning and research. The project covered an irregular area of 364 square kilometres and extended southwards from the City of Ely to the City of Cambridge in the southwest, Fulbourn in the south, the Suffolk market town of Newmarket in the southeast and Isleham in the east. The project, in combination with Historic England’s oblique aerial photography programme, has significantly increased the evidence base and understanding of the historic landscape, particularly the extent and form of buried Iron Age and Roman settlement seen as cropmarks on the chalk uplands. The project also recorded widespread medieval field systems and settlements, along with significant 20th-century military airfields and camps. This report summarises the project results by broad chronological periods, with a more in-depth analysis of features related to the Iron Age and Roman landscape, as well as a discussion on the purpose and dating of an extensive complex of earthwork embankments associated with the medieval field system, but elements of which may have much earlier origins. Scheduled monuments were also rapidly assessed using aerial photographs and lidar (where available), to review interpretation, location and potential management issues. The project added 519 new monument records to the pre-survey total of 2,932 from Cambridgeshire County Council and Suffolk County Council Historic Environment Records (HERs) and provided enhanced information for a further 458 extant monument records. This represents an increase of total HER monument records within the project area of 18% and enhances information of 16% of extant HER monument records.
- Report Number:
- 56/2021
- Series:
- Research Department Reports
- Pages:
- 142
- Keywords:
- Bronze Age Coprolite Iron Age Medieval Neolithic Roman Settlement Aerial Photograph Interpretation First World War Aerial Photography Lidar Survey Brickworks Cropmark Second World War Earthwork Airborne Laser Scanning Agriculture Aerial Investigation and Mapping
