Northamptonshire offers a delicious slice of English archaeology from prehistory to the present day. Its central location and its fertile soils mean that it has been settled on, fought over, and travelled across for millennia, and Current Archaeology’s coverage over the years reflects this richness.
Prehistoric pictures
CA 49 (September 1975) is an excellent starting point for examining the archaeology of Northamptonshire: it includes one of the magazine’s earliest mentions of the county, along with two of its oldest sites: Hunsbury Hill, a hillfort, and Briar Hill, a causewayed enclosure. Both were being examined at this time, revealing an array of evidence from the Neolithic to Anglo-Saxon eras. CA 58 (September 1977) returned to these locations, where extensive open- area fieldwork was undertaken for eight to nine months of the year for several years in a row, and CA 71 (April 1980) followed up exclusively on the latter site. Delightfully, CA 381 (December 2021) then reported that both places were featured in new displays at the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, which had been redeveloped at this time in the best traditions of local museums bringing local history to life.
Another good example of this continuity of knowledge then comes from nearby Rainsborough Camp, a hillfort which features twice in the pages of Current Archaeology: first in CA 20 (May 1970) in comparison to similar such prehistoric sites further south in Oxfordshire, and then again 45 years later in CA 301 (April 2015), in comparison to similar sites across the Midlands. This is a textbook example of the best practices in British archaeology – the steady accumulation, and comparison, of knowledge held by local societies, researchers, and curators who understand and love their patch.
