2019, Raynor’s crew had uncovered some 25,000 of the
boneyard’s residents, including ghosts like auction-
house founder James Christie and sculptor Charles
Rossi, whose caryatids watch over the nearby Crypt of
St. Pancras Church. Gazing at the site from her make-
shift office, Raynor marvels at the scope of the work still
ahead: “It’s very difficult to dig a hole anywhere in the
UK without finding something that directly relates to
human history in these islands.”
Construction and archaeology weren’t always so
close-knit. Through much of the 20th century, builders in
the UK often haphazardly regarded artifacts and ruins.
Sites were rescued only by the goodwill of developers or
ad hoc government intervention.
The chance discovery of the Rose in the late 1980s
spurred England to adopt new rules. Among the brothels,
gaming dens, and bear-baiting arenas on the south bank of
the River Thames, the Rose was one of the first theaters
to stage the works of William Shakespeare, including the
debut of Titus Andronicus. The construction team had the
right to pave over it after only a partial excavation, and the
government wasn’t eager to step in to fund a preservation.
Actors like Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Judi Dench, and
Sir Laurence Olivier joined calls to save the 16th-century
playhouse. At 81, Dame Peggy Ashcroft was on the front
line blocking bulldozers. The builders wound up saving
the theater, spending $17 million more than planned.
To avoid future conflicts, in 1990 the country adapted a
“polluter pays” model for mitigating harm to cultural heri-
tage. Now developers must research potential discoveries
as part of their environmental-impact assessment, avoid
damaging historic resources, and fund the excavation and
conservation of significant sites and artifacts.
That tweak led to “vast changes” in the UK, says Timothy Darvill, an
archaeologist at Bournemouth University in England. “Just the sheer
number of projects that were undertaken increased manifoldly.” Accord-
ing to his research, thousands of digs occurred per year in Britain from
1990 to 2010, increasing tenfold from decades prior.
Other governments followed suit. Most European countries have
signed the 1992 Valletta Convention, a treaty that codified the practice
of preservation in the face of construction. Findings published by the
European Archaeological Council in 2018 show that developers now lead
as much as 90 percent of investigations on the continent.
Archaeologists have opportunities to uncover enormous swaths of his-
tory on sites that logistically and financially might have been inaccessible
before—especially in the course of major civil-engineering initiatives.
Infrastructure authorities have funded multimillion-dollar projects to
turn up mass graves on Napoleonic battlefields in the path of an Austrian
highway, and 2,000-year-old ruins under Rome during a subway expansion.
Before HS2 became Britain’s banner big dig, Crossrail was the nation’s
largest such program. Beginning in 2009, efforts ahead of the 73-mile train
line across London revealed thousands of gems at 40 sites: fragments of a
medieval fishing vessel, Roman skulls, a Tudor-era bowling ball, and 3,000
skeletons at the graveyard of the notorious Bedlam mental asylum.
To carry out all this work, many nations have competitive commercial
markets for research and excavation. MOLA, an offspring of the Museum
of London, is one of the largest British firms, and HS2 is one of its major
clients. Its field crew surfaces thousands of objects destined for cataloging
by a team of staffers on the other side of town.MOLA headquarters sits in an old wharf building on the edge
of a canal in East London’s Islington borough. The ground-floor loading
bay leads to a labyrinth of rooms of dusty 20-foot-high shelves packed
with dirt-caked finds trucked in from the field. Pallets and containers fullALL THAT REMAINS
An archaeologist
carefully cleans one
of the thousands of
bodies uncovered
in St. James’s burial
ground in London.OPENING^SPREADANDABOVE:^ ADRIAN^DENNIS/AFPVIAGETTYIMAGES