It Has Been A Dry Summer In England,

which has brought to light many unknown archaeological sites,

as the ground dries and reveals what lies underneath, like this one, the prehistoric ceremonial landscape near Eynsham, Oxfordshire, buried remains of later Prehistoric (c. 4000 BCE – 700 BCE) funerary monuments, together with a settlement (photo by Damian Grady, copyright Historic England), so it has been a busy year for Historic England, a group tasked with preserving historical buildings and monuments, in addition to advising the central and local government, these patterns in crops and grass “reveal thousands of years of buried English history.” Using aerial photography, archeologists create maps that help them determine the importance of different buried remains. “This has been one of my busiest summers in 20 years of flying, and it has been very rewarding making discoveries in areas that do not normally reveal cropmarks,” Historic England Aerial Reconnaissance Manager Damian Grady said, Helen Winton, who is Historic England’s aerial investigation and mapping manager, pointed out that hot weather like this hasn’t occurred since 2011, when they discovered over 1,500 new archeological sites, below are just a few with their credits,

 Roman Farm, Bicton, Devon. The central enclosure may have contained farm buildings, and then more fields and paddocks were attached to the central area. This form of settlement probably dates to the Roman period (photo by Damian Grady, copyright Historic England),

 Iron Age square barrows, Pocklington, Yorkshire. The cropmarks of four squares indicate the distinctive remains of Iron Age burial sites on the Yorkshire Wolds. These cropmarks represent the ditch surrounding a burial mound (photo by Emma Trevarthen, copyright Historic England),

prehistoric Settlement, Lansallos, Cornwall. The inner ditch may have surrounded a settlement from the Bronze Age or Iron Age. The outer ditch may be later in date and may have been used as part of a system to manage livestock (photo by Damian Grady, copyright Historic England), amazing that there are so many unknown sites, and I guess there will still be so much of our history that we still have to discover.