The Wolds Research Project

Research Objectives: Introduction

The Wolds landscapes east of York have been a region of archaeological interest for an extended period of time, at least from the 19^th century when J. R. Mortimer and other antiquaries focussed on its round barrows and linear earthworks ('dykes'). Subsequent research interests went on to consider other periods and themes: the prehistoric components studied by Brewster, Dent, Manby and Stead; the Roman elements of Corder, Kirk and Kitson-Clarke, later followed up by Herman Ramm; the long term work at Wharram Percy, to which this Department was linked, which spread from its initial focus on the medieval village to eventually comprise one of the first attempts to grasp 'landscape archaeology'.

This formative research has provided the background for various ongoing projects. The dedicated work of Dominic Powlesland at West Heslerton, on the northern fringes of the area, took the landscape approach to its logical conclusion. The project was one of two in the country recently lauded by David Miles, at a conference on future directions in Roman archaeology, as offering a unique opportunity to develop archaeological techniques and interpretations. Equally, the large-scale excavations at Wetwang Slack and Welton Wold are both currently under analysis and, once published, will provide comprehensive understanding of these zones in several periods. In sum, many aspects of the Wolds landscape are well-known, archaeologically, and so provide a sound basis for the formulation of more detailed research objectives.

Further exploitation of the research potential of the Wolds is now desirable for both positive and negative reasons. On the one hand, the Royal Commission's 1997 publication of aerial photographic evidence for the area, under the authorship of Cathy Stoertz, has made a huge archival resource far more accessible to academic research than hitherto. Indeed, the availability of this evidence is one of the reasons why important contributions to landscape studies are now appearing, for example work on aspects of later prehistory. Given this clear advantage, together with its relatively accessible and uncluttered nature, its susceptibility to not only aerial but also geophysical investigation, and the nature of current landuse, the Wolds represent a research opportunity which it is difficult to parallel in the country, or even beyond.

Paradoxically, on the negative side, the process which has enhanced visibility of archaeological sites from the air is the same as that which is dooming shallow sites to destruction. Wolds agriculture has intensified steadily since WWII, augmented in the last two decades by the development of new crop strains and changes to European agricultural subsidies. The latter have produced a vastly accelerated rate of erosion of landscape features. This erosion, which made the aerial photographic evidence so productive in the 1980s and 90s, now means that even the 1997 survey has been considerably superceded in nearly every part of the landscape as soil degradation continues apace. A further result of the changes to farming practices is that large-scale agribusinesses increasingly dominate the Wolds landscape, their directors now living outside the region. Hence farmhouses are becoming redundant in increasing numbers, ripe either for demolition or for drastic alteration to accommodate incoming, non-farming, communities.

The pull of archaeological potential and push of increasing threats can be set beside a series of factors related to the recently-changed position of this Department to make a Wolds research project based here seem both desirable and timely. These factors comprise:

an influx of new staff with an interest in developing research in the York region;
a number of older staff finishing other projects, and thus willing and able to take up research work closer to home;
a general desire amongst all parties to work together in a multi-period, multi-faceted project in order to provide a focus for Departmental activity;
the need for departmental research to have a regional context. This arises from both an increased emphasis on devolution in governmental thinking and, more specifically, in the light of the practical need to organise viable fieldwork training on a large scale in term time for our undergraduate and postgraduate students - and the wish to do so in such a way that their work explicitly contributes to the overall research energies of the Department, rather than comprising training for its own sake.

Given the above contexts, the form of research undertaken on the Wolds must necessarily be wide-ranging in its scope, period emphases and geographical focus. The general aim of this programme can be simply stated: the archaeological investigation of the complex interaction of human settlement and natural processes in the landscape from the Iron Age until the present day, a period of about two-and-a-half thousand years. Our focus will therefore encompass the ways in which the natural resources and settings of the Wolds have the influenced the positioning and development of settlement. Conversely, it will consider how human decisions made in the course of social and economic development have impacted on that landscape on every scale, from geomorphological changes right across the region, to the micromorphology of site formation processes within more specific localities, settlements, and even particular features.

Yet the aim outlined above clearly comprises far too huge, and nebulous, an agenda to allow a coherent research strategy to emerge. Hence, below this umbrella, this document will attempt to define a series of more focussed themes, generated by following the sequence:

to flag up perceived weaknesses in current models;
to develop a series of three, chronologically-defined specific research areas, each with its own aims and objectives, which seek solutions to these suggested faults;
to distil from the above four general themes within which the programme will operate;
to outline what is required for the implementation of the programme in terms of immediate objectives, resources required and potential collaborators;
to provide a preliminary list of some expected outcomes.

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This site was last updated on March 2nd 2004 at 14:35 GMT.