Faxton: excavations in a deserted Northamptonshire village, 1966-1968

The film The Dig has shown that public interest can be engaged by a vintage excavation, and this book likewise recounts the results and evokes the mood of three seasons of digging, in this case in the 1960s. We cannot compare the spectacular finds at Sutton Hoo with the everyday pots and post-holes of a deserted medieval village, but both excavations attracted the attention of leading archaeologists, and both sites required difficult decisions to be made in adverse circumstances. The Faxton excavations take us back to the age of ‘rescue’ archaeology. In the 1960s, sites were being destroyed everywhere, but a particular crisis arose in the rural Midlands because agricultural policy