Dry weeks make 2010 vintage year for excavation

The dry early weeks of this summer have already made 2010 a vintage year for archaeology, English Heritage said yesterday.

“Full advantage” has been taken of the conditions which allowed hundreds of cropmark sites to be photographed from the air.

The marks are produced when crops growing over buried features develop at a different rate from those growing next to them.

A Roman camp near Bradford Abbas, Dorset, was revealed in June after three sides became visible in rain-parched fields of barley.

The lightly-built defensive enclosure would have provided basic protection for Roman soldiers while on manoeuvres in the first century AD and is one of only four discovered in the southwest of England, English Heritage said.

The dry conditions also allowed well-known sites to be photographed in greater detail.

Newton Kyme, near Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, was shown to not only be home to a Roman fort dating back 2,000 years but also a larger, stronger defence built in AD 290.

Stone walls up to three metres thick and a ditch 15 metres wide were revealed by an image taken from a Cessna light aircraft.

Dave MacLeod, an English Heritage senior investigator based in York, said: “It’s hard to remember a better year.

“Cropmarks are always at their best in dry weather, but the last few summers have been a disappointment.

“This year we have taken full advantage of the conditions. We try to concentrate on areas that in an average year don’t produce much archaeology.

“Sorties to the West Midlands and Cumbria, together with more local areas such as the Yorkshire Wolds and Vale of York, have all been very rewarding.”

Flights over the Holderness area of the East Riding proved particularly productive with around 60 new sites, mainly prehistoric, found in just one day including livestock and settlement enclosures.