ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: It is now just 30 years since the discovery of an AD 5th to AD 7th century cemetery during aggregate extraction at West Heslerton, North Yorkshire, triggered one of the longest running and most extensive projects in fi eld archaeology in Britain, The Heslerton Parish Project managed by The Landscape Research Centre (LRC). The ad hoc discovery of this Early Anglo-Saxon or Anglian cemetery within what, at that time, appeared to be an archaeologically barren landscape, refl ected the reactive nature both of the archaeological record and of the archaeological response in Britain during the 1960s and 70’s. The research agenda developed during the late 1970’s and still underpinning the projects developed by the Landscape Research Centre, was driven from an environmentally deterministic viewpoint concerned with the relationship between humanity, the environment, the landscape and its many resources. The ongoing research programme combines many different rescue excavations and independent research projects, within a research framework which relies heavily upon the ability to integrate a wide variety of data from multiple sources at varying scales within a single data management and presentation environment. The distinctive contribution made by the work in and around West Heslerton, situated on the southern side of the Vale of Pickering owes most to the long term support of English Heritage, the scale of excavation and other research undertaken and the exceptional archaeological resource which has been the focus of the work. Incorporating nearly 30 Ha of open area excavation, intensive airborne remote sensing programmes covering more than 100 sq km, more than 1000 Ha of ground based geophysical survey and more than 400 Ha of subsurface deposit modelling undertaken to identify areas with well preserved stratigraphy beneath blown sands; the combined data-set is the most comprehensive of its kind in Britain.
