Urban exploration: Revealing Roman and medieval York through ground-penetrating radar

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