A dry summer in much of England this year may not have been good for farmers, but it has produced a bumper crop of archaeological finds. According to English Heritage, over sixty discoveries have been made in recent weeks, including a Roman camp in Dorset and a fort in North Yorkshire.
The dry weather has created hundreds of cropmark sites – the process where crops grow at a different rate over buried features – to be seen from the air. A Roman camp near Bradford Abbas, Dorset, was found after three sides appeared in parched barley fields. 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 south west of England.
Meanwhile at Newton Kyme, near Tadcaster, in North Yorkshire, a 2,000-year-old Roman fort was found through photographs taken from an airplane. The images revealed stone walls up to three metres thick and a ditch 15 metres wide.
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,” he added.
Source: English Heritage
