Is archaeology being used to make HS2 look good?
As a rare Roman settlement is discovered along the HS2 route in Northamptonshire, Rory Sullivan investigates the relationship between the controversial train line and the archaeology industry
On a cold and blustery December morning, archaeologists dotted the land, trowels in hand, gingerly unearthing finds from Roman Britain. They wore luminous orange high-vis jackets and vests and gave the drab landscape of rolling fields and sheep a rare splash of colour. This excavation at Blackgrounds, in south Northamptonshire, is one of roughly 100 that have taken place along the London to Birmingham HS2 line, the first phase of a rail project beset by public criticism over its environmental impact and spiralling costs.
Taken collectively, the HS2 excavations form the UK’s largest ever archaeology project. After hundreds of potential sites were surveyed along the route, work began at some of the locations, resulting in the recovery of objects and human remains dating from the Neolithic to the Victorian era. The best discoveries made so far include a striking pair of Roman statues found beneath a Norman church in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, a hoard of unusual Iron Age coins that came to light in Hillingdon, west London, and a vast burial site disinterred next to the capital’s Euston station.
British archaeology is a chronically underfunded sector, which has struggled of late, losing around 15 per cent of its labour force after Brexit. But HS2, whose fieldwork between London and the Midlands is nearing its conclusion, has offered the industry a lifeline.
This is apparent at Blackgrounds, which is seen as one of the biggest successes of the government’s high-speed rail venture so far. At this farm near Banbury, named for the colour of its earth, a group of 70 archaeologists uncovered a Roman village, just metres from the roundhouse imprints of an earlier Iron Age settlement.
Although parts of a Roman villa were detected nearby in the 19th century, those leading the excavation were amazed by the sheer amount of material discovered – 300 coins and 2,500 other artefacts to date. “In my 10 years of being an archaeologist, this is the most amazing site I’ve ever worked on,” says James West, who manages the operation for Museum of London Archaeology (Mola). “It’s a surprise to find this much here.”
West and his colleagues have no problem enumerating their discoveries and bringing the village to life. They start with the paved 10-metre-wide Roman road, which bisects the settlement, move on to domestic buildings and ditch-side burials, before finishing at the industrial zone, where bread was baked and metal was forged.
Crucially, the foundations of the houses here are made of stone, with the top level presumed to have been constructed from wattle and daub. This was not always a given in rural locations after the Romans invaded Britain in AD43. “Roman archaeology in this part of the country generally doesn’t survive because it was made out of wood,” West says. Wood, unless in perfect and usually extreme conditions, decays over time, leaving little trace.
Fulford acknowledges that such progress is necessarily tied to destruction. Blackgrounds will soon have to make way for a section of the new rail line
The archaeological record at the site shows a significant spike in wealth between AD250 and 350. This is reflected in the levels of coinage and decorative artefacts found from this period, a short-lived high which preceded Blackground’s decline following the end of Roman occupation in Britain in AD410.
Michael Fulford, one of the country’s foremost Roman archaeologists, visited the site and concluded the settlement was an estate village, which serviced the adjacent villa. The University of Reading lecturer says such large nucleated sites “have very rarely been investigated in the past”. The focus instead was on wealthier locations such as villas. This changed when constructors were obliged by law to consider the historic environment from the 1990s.
Published in 1990, the government’s Planning Policy Guidance required planners to pay for excavations if they intended to disturb archaeological remains that could not be kept in situ. “Since planning policy guidance was implemented in the 1990s, it’s the peasantry of Roman Britain that has come into the picture. Before, it was the great villa owners who were so obviously in our minds,” Fulford says.
This leap in archaeological knowledge would not have been possible without the money poured into excavation work by construction. It is therefore difficult to imagine the Blackgrounds site happening as an academic project. “It’s a great undertaking. One, I think, that you could only contemplate doing in the context of something like HS2,” Fulford says. “As an academic, I could never have mustered the resources. It’s an interesting product of particular circumstances.”
Fulford acknowledges that such progress is also necessarily tied to destruction. Blackgrounds will soon have to make way for a section of the new rail line. In the profession, this approach is called “preservation by record”, as the site will be lost but objects from it will be saved.
Advances in archaeological practice mean the picture that emerges – and which will stand as its “proxy” when the physical site disappears – is more detailed than ever. Archaeologists now use GPS to geolocate objects rather than recording coordinates manually. Along with other information, these references are uploaded straight to cloud storage by archaeologists in the field, at a speed and accuracy unimaginable a few decades ago.
However, some people think that “preservation by record” is flawed. Penny Gaines, who chairs the Stop HS2 campaign, holds this view. “Once the site is damaged or destroyed, it’s damaged or destroyed forever. They’re [HS2] destroying the possibility of coming back to look at these sites,” she says.
“If that site wasn’t destroyed, in another 50 years we could gain more information from it,” Fulford admits. However, he largely talks of the benefits in knowledge gained by uncovering a site that otherwise would, most likely, not have been dug at all.
Chloe Duckworth, an archaeologist at the University of Newcastle, believes that partnerships with the construction sector are essential and complement academic and community archaeology. “It’s an industry that largely depends on construction,” she says. “When it’s done ethically and responsibly and all the other factors are taken into account, development can be great.”
To highlight what archaeology stands to gain from building, she lists some of the finds which would have remained buried were it not for construction-funded programmes. “We’ve now got Roman cemeteries, Bronze Age burials, a Medieval bakery, children’s First World War-era graffiti. There are so many examples.”
On HS2’s work specifically, Duckworth, who presents The Great British Dig on More4, says: “It’s extraordinary. It has to be looked at as an opportunity to improve our archaeological knowledge.”
Citing the Hillingdon hoard, a collection of more than 300 Iron Age coins discovered on another HS2 site, Duckworth notes that rare artefacts like these are often found by metal detectorists, who pull them out of the ground without wider investigation. “As we don’t have the archaeological context, we can’t say much about them. Whereas when they’re discovered in a thorough archaeological excavation, we’re going to get all that contextual information.”
David Connolly, the founder of the British Archaeological Jobs Resource (BAJR), an industry platform which has 10,000 members, sees HS2 archaeology broadly as a force for good. But he acknowledges the paradox presented by it. “HS2 has been an interesting concept for archaeologists because we have to look at our own ethics in what is happening,” he says. “It’s not too great a leap to realise that most archaeologists are going to be slightly left of centre, and we do like being outside and we do like ancient woodland and we do care about the countryside.”
Asked whether HS2 could be construed as the archaeological equivalent of greenwashing, Connolly replies: “I’d be lying if I didn’t say archaeology made HS2 look good.”
I’d be lying if I didn’t say archaeology made HS2 look good... It’s been a remarkable opportunity. Archaeology has learned quite a lot, because it’s such a massive project
However, the veteran archaeologist, who joined the profession in the early 1980s, is grateful for HS2’s knock-on effect. He has not worked on any of its digs himself, but friends who have only say “good things” about it. “It’s been a remarkable opportunity. Archaeology has learned quite a lot, because it’s such a huge project. It’s taught us how to work together, it’s brought about new innovation,” he says, referring to the improved digitisation of records.
In the 1990s, the profession was fragmented, according to Connolly. But now it is much more connected, in part because different archaeological firms have had to work together on HS2 projects, he says. Blackgrounds is a case in point, as it is a joint operation between Mola and Headland Archaeology. The HS2 excavations have also employed a sizeable percentage of British archaeologists, who now number around 7,000 – far more than when Connolly started. “It’s gone from being a rich man’s sport to being a very mainstream one.”
That is not to say everything is looking rosy for British archaeology. Duckworth is also the co-founder of Dig For Archaeology, an initiative which raises awareness about issues within the sector. She says that archaeologists are still “woefully underpaid” and archaeology departments at universities like Sheffield and Worcester face closure.
In this context, HS2 appears to be playing an important role in promoting the value of archaeology to the public, which lies in how much it can reveal about the peoples who came before us and their ways of life.
With Duckworth and Connolly’s words in mind, I headed to an industrial estate on the outskirts of Northampton in January to see some of the best finds from Blackgrounds. Guided around the collection by a cluster of Mola archaeologists, I first stopped at the flotation tank, which sieves soil samples from sites like Blackgrounds to leave small items such as animal bones and seeds. From this residue, a lot of information can be gleaned about the food people ate and the nature of their economy.
Pointing to a table full of goods recovered from the site, Owen Humphries, a senior registered finds specialist at Mola, extolled the opportunity presented by Blackgrounds. “For a rural site especially, it’s been atypical. If you work in London, you may get a few small finds like this a day. But in most rural sites, you’re six months in and you find half a broken tile, and you feel like you’ve got the holy grail.”
The finds include a coin commemorating the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of Rome; a bronze wine strainer; a snake-headed bracelet; a lead Roman dice; and a small copper head, which would have been used as a counterweight. High-end Samian pottery, manufactured in Gaul, was also discovered but was not on show.
“Archaeology’s about all of us, I suppose,” says Duckworth. “It’s that ability to go and connect with a real person, and not just kings and queens, people who get written about in the history books. It’s about social history and it’s told through actual objects and the process of discovery.”
While many of the artefacts speak of leisure and the local population’s adoption of Roman technologies, a pair of ankle fetters tells a gloomier picture. Although shackles were sometimes used as punishment by the Romans, this particular set is more likely to indicate the presence of slave labour, Humphries says.
Upstairs, Chris Chinnock, a Mola osteologist, laid out one of the 50 or so skeletons recovered at Blackgrounds. He says the remains were of a man aged between 20 and 35 who lived in the third or fourth century AD. His right femur has a noticeable curve, a sign of a fracture in earlier life that had not been set properly.
His genetic origin is unknown, but this could change with isotope testing. Something that is harder to answer is why the man was decapitated after death, a grisly detail shown by cut marks to his neck. Was it part of a funerary tradition? Or was it in punishment? We just don’t know, Chinnock says. “We’re dealing with scraps. It’s a bit of an art to piece together a cohesive narrative from such evidence.”
For all the objections one could legitimately raise against HS2 – its destruction of ancient woodland, its expected £100bn price tag and the questionable suitability of a high-speed railway in an age of working from home – it seems archaeology, at least, has gained.
Sally Horwill, who has recently swapped a career in theatre for archaeology, was in her element at Blackgrounds in December despite the temperature. “It’s been amazing,” she says. “The sort of archaeology that we’re seeing is so rare to get. So, I feel a little bit like a kid in a sweet shop.”
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