Stringbags to Star Wars: an archaeology of airfields

‘Are you sure airfields are archaeological sites?’ came the inevitable challenge from a member of the audience at a recent talk that I gave. It is a fair enough question, one that I have been asked many times over the last two decades. Here’s why I think they are. If you took a flight above the United Kingdom, it would not take long to recognise one of the biggest types of landscape feature from the modern age. Airfields, especially those built during the Second World War, took in substantial tracts of land. Even if your feet are firmly on the ground, a cursory look at an Ordnance Survey map is likely to have at least one example of an ‘Airfield – Disused’ on it somewhere.