Along the rural borderlands connecting Oxford and Cambridge in eastern England, major civil engineering work has inadvertently opened a portal into a forgotten chapter of ancient history. Ahead of track construction for the ambitious East West Rail project, archaeological teams conducted an extensive heritage assessment across the counties of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.
Overseen by Historic Environment Lead Mike Court and Program Manager Jorn Pace, researchers systematically excavated roughly one thousand trial trenches across the countryside, with plans to survey an additional six thousand test pits in the coming years. Their goal was to evaluate and preserve historic artifacts before heavy machinery altered the landscape.
