For the last quarter of a century, geophysical surveys over deserted Roman sites have become almost commonplace, revealing entire cities and forts beneath now-rural landscapes. But what about those that did not fail, but continued to thrive until the present day, and now lie beneath the streets of their modern successors? Can geophysics untangle millennia of construction and see metres beneath the soil – and, more challengingly, beneath tarmac and concrete – to reveal underlying archaeology? Several projects are currently trying to see how far we can push these boundaries; here, we will share the results of a recent attempt in York.
Since the 1980s, heritage management has fiercely protected the city’s archaeology, meaning that few large-scale, deep excavations have happened in the centre since the underpinning of York Minster (see CA 17) and the discoveries of Viking Coppergate (CA 58) in the 1970s. Our AHRC-funded project, ‘Roman York beneath the streets’, sought to investigate this settlement’s origins, looking afresh at antiquarian material alongside the findings of more recent (albeit small and fragmented) excavations and evaluations. We also undertook some new fieldwork, carrying out ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys across the city, which really brought home the potential and limitations of this technology.
Towns are not obvious places for large-scale GPR surveys. It is easy to think of urban environments as dense and impenetrable, but it is remarkable how much space is still available there. In the centre of York, only 40% of land is covered with buildings; the rest includes rather-more accessible roads and pavements, parkland and parking spaces, and private gardens and yards. For our project, we chose to investigate three different settings: the streets, the Museum Gardens, and the Minster Precinct. All three presented their own research questions about the city’s Roman archaeology – and their own logistical challenges – and we knew that we were inevitably going to encounter medieval and early modern features, too, during our work. So, what did we find?
The 22nd Indo-Pacific Prehistory Congress