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Abstract
Abstract
Large development-led archaeological investigations can help to ‘bridge the gap’ in scales between ‘point-data’ and ‘landscape-scale’ surveys, placing the former in a wider context and aiding interpretation of the latter. Examples from southern England show how large-area excavations, geophysical surveys and field evaluations all provide highly detailed information over extensive areas. Among other things, work on this scale can confirm the existence of ‘blank’ areas, which contain few archaeological remains but which would have been important parts of the overall landscape in the past. Large-scale development-led work can contribute to archaeological interpretation of the landscape across a broad range of scales.
I am grateful to the EngLaID team for inviting me to speak at their 2012 symposium and to contribute to this volume. Letty ten Harkel provided helpful advice on preparing this article. Thanks are due to Archaeopress, Heathrow Airport Limited, Oxford Archaeology, Phoenix Archaeology and Wessex Archaeology for permission to reproduce images, and to David Davidson, Ian Frost, Anne Dodd and Magdalena Wachnik, Andy Richmond and Linda Coleman of those organisations respectively for assistance with this and for providing copies of the images.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Roger M Thomas
Roger M. Thomas is a member of English Heritage's Historic Environment Intelligence team. His current interests include historic landscape characterisation, landscape archaeology and promoting the value of results obtained from development-led archaeology for wider archaeological and landscape research. He is a Visiting Lecturer in the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Contact: [email protected]