Roman Lincolnshire

I must have produced multiple versions of this over the years (somewhere I've got a more colourful version for use in presentations). This one appeared in the conference proceedings Rumours of Roman Finds that I put together a couple of years back. Ancient coastline based on The Fenland in Roman Times version with additions based on lidar surveys. Bannovalium is deliberate (Rivet and Smith have it as cognate to such as Luguvalium and nothing to do with vallum at all, despite the name of the local school). Despite Mackreth's strictures Durobrivae will probably ever be known as Water Newton for all that it actually falls in Chesterton parish.

Great Steeping and Firsby

Lidar plot of Great Steeping and Firsby on the northern margins of East Fen. Well-preserved medieval earthworks in and around the villages. Broader headlands (baulks?) evident more widely where the ridge and furrow is ploughed out, usual EA data source.

Apropos of nothing particular. Just the result of an afternoon spent realising that my pre-MapInfo 9 workaround (so that's going back quite a way) produced some nasty data holes (well, the data holes were already there, they just end up looking more obvious). Easily solved. Just adds something more to the to-do list.

English place-names (2)

Another in a similar vein. This time a search of the OS Gazetteer for places named 'something Green'. The striking pattern shows the contrast between the nucleated settlement of the 'central province' and the landscape of dispersed hamlets, farms and so on elsewhere ('something End' produces a similar effect). Roberts and Wrathmell produced a version of this in their Atlas of Rural Settlement in England. Although published in 2000, their (interesting and informative) maps appear of another age, hand-plotted if not actually hand-drawn (their Fig. 30 'Green' map references 1928 OS mapping as its source).
Same map base. Slightly different treatment of coast and sea. Labelling aside I think I prefer the earlier version.

English place-names (1)

Map of place-names in '-by'. Long recognised as an indicator of early Scandanavian settlement in the east and north of England. Experiment with the Ordnance Survey 1:50000 Gazetteer. The scatter of Welsh matches shows the downside to the approach, but the map does shows the main focus very well. Basemap from SRTM data reprojected to Ordnance Survey National Grid with application of colour ramp and hill shading. Labelling on the faint side but still experimenting with sea and coasts.

Holdingham 1796

Map of Holdingham, a small hamlet on the outskirts of (but now almost entirely subsumed within) Sleaford, Lincolnshire, home of Richard of Haldingham author of the Hereford Cathedral Mappa Mundi. This map was created as part of investigations into a middle Saxon settlement and 13th century manor house on the north side of the village. Really just a Photoshop job. Starting from a poor black and white photocopy, the end result is much more pleasing (although the canvas texture map may be a step too far).

Roman sites in the lower Nene Valley

First draft of a map showing Roman sites in the general area of our ongoing excavations at Oundle near Peterborough. Perhaps what many would call the 'middle' Nene (at least I'm sure the Middle Nene Archaeological Group would), though from my point of view once the river hits Peterborough and enters the Fenland it's a whole different story. Topographic mapping using the OS Panorama dataset. Sites of Roman villas etc taken from a variety of (paper) sources and in need of checking (the villa at Cotterstock was clearly in the wrong place when dropped onto the topographic background, so I have doubts about others). Revised version in due course. This may do for our open day on the 16th June.

Derwent Valley - Little Eaton

This is a Lidar plot of part of the Derwent Valley just north of the city of Derby at Little Eaton produced with Environment Agency data. I've just dug this out for a potential upcoming project. It was created for an external client some time back (to be honest I can't entirely recall for what purpose). Downstream is the site of the Roman fort at Littlechester, of which I probably do have an image somewhere. Here we see the river channels and levees of the Derwent and surviving areas of medieval ridge and furrow.

Mapping and Archaeology

Much of my day job as Project Manager for (Archaeological Project Services) Trent and Peak Archaeology (as of Feb 2014) involves the, often pretty routine, preparation of costing and specifications, wrangling of staff and equipment and trying to keep fieldwork projects running smoothly (and to budget!). Luckily, I don't have to do that all of the time (or it might have stopped being interesting a long time ago). One of my other roles (and one that grabs my interest rather more) lies in survey, mapping, CAD and GIS work, taking that archaeological information and displaying it in informative and (I hope) interesting ways. Time and again I find myself working up maps and images for very limited circulation and thinking I should really put these together somewhere. So now I will. Some of this will be new some of it may be quite old. But hopefully it won't just languish on my hard drive in future.