ABSTRACT
Planning regulations, notably the introduction of the principle that developers should ensure that a record is made of any archaeological remains that their work destroys, has led to an upsurge in discoveries wherever ground is disturbed – in towns and the countryside, in gravel-pits and quarries, and along the routes of new roads, railways, and pipelines. The last 30 years has also seen the continuation of an upsurge of interest in specific areas of study, reflected in the expansion of journals such as Vernacular Architecture and Castle Studies Group Bulletin. New outlets for publications on the Middle Ages include Early Medieval Europe and Journal of Medieval History. The Staffordshire hoard was an assemblage that no-one had even conceived of as having once existed; the chamber-burial excavated in Essex was something that could have been imagined, but was something that no-one expected ever to have survived to be recovered.
