2019-07-13_Archaeology_Magazine

archaeology.org 55

O

utside the village of Bramp-

ton, Cambridgeshire, a hand-

ful of archaeologists huddle

with a small group of local volunteers.

Some of these professionals have been

working here for two years and are

all that remain of one of the largest

archaeological teams ever assembled

in Britain. They are in the final stages

of excavating a small medieval hamlet

called Houghton and have invited

members of the public to join them

for their final few weeks. Houghton

was once a bustling little settlement,

its dozen or so properties arranged

around a broad central track. The

scattered postholes and pits from this

long-forgotten village are emblematic

of the entire landscape, which has seen

waves of people come and go over

the past 6 , 000 years. Each has left an

imprint upon the terrain.

Dump trucks, bulldozers, and

other heavy equipment rattle away

behind the archaeologists, kicking

up the dust that seems to perpetually

hover above the mostly flat farmland

that forms the backdrop to this once

bucolic countryside. As it happens,

the 800 -year-old settlement is in the

6,000 years of life on the Cambridgeshire landscape has been revealed

by a massive infrastructure project

by Jason Urbanus

LETTER FROM ENGLAND

BUILDING A ROAD

THROUGH HISTORY

A large circular Neolithic henge

(center) is one of three such

monuments that were discovered

during construction on England’s

A14 roadway. The markings

to its right are the faintly

visible outlines of Anglo-Saxon

buildings constructed more than

3,000 years later.