The Dorchester Aqueduct, located to the north-west of Dorchester (Durnovaria) in Dorset, is arguably the most famous and well-examined Roman watercourse in Britain. The aqueduct has been intermittently investigated over the course of the last 100 years, but most extensively during the 1990s. The upper stretches of the aqueduct and its source have, however, eluded archaeologists, with multiple routes and water sources being suggested. A new programme of geophysical and topographic survey, combined with targeted investigation together with a reappraisal of the excavations from the 1990s, has provided additional evidence for the route of the aqueduct, extending its course for a further two kilometres to Notton on the River Frome.

The discovery of a major archaeological complex at Faughan Hill, County Meath, was first reported on in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society in 2015. Comprising a series of large hilltop enclosures, probable burial sites, and associated features, the character and scale of the complex marked this out as an important focal centre in a region populated with some of Ireland’s largest and most spectacular monument ensembles, not least at the Hill of Tara, 15 km to the south-east. A more complete picture of the site has since been revealed through further geophysical survey followed by test excavations by the Discovery Programme’s Tara Research Project. Two trenches excavated across the hilltop enclosures in 2017 yielded evidence of four discrete phases of activity spanning some 3000 years, from the mid-4th to mid-1st millennia bc. During the Middle Neolithic the hilltop was encircled by a fenced enclosure (3635–3380 cal bc) possibly associated with the production of stone tools. At 250 m in projected diameter it is one of the largest enclosures of the 4th millennium known in Ireland. This was superseded in the Late Bronze Age by a far more substantial, 400 m diameter multivallate enclosure (1280–920 cal bc) representing the only excavated hillfort of its type in Meath. The hill was the focus of renewed activity during the Early Iron Age (800–520 cal bc) and later became central to the political ambitions of aspiring, early Uí Néill kings of Tara, achieving particular reknown as the burial place of their eponymous ancestor, Niall of the Nine Hostages. Developments at Faughan are illuminated further by a wealth of prehistoric settlement and ritual sites in the surrounding area, as well as early documentary sources, and, collectively, speak to a regional centre and gathering place with long-lived social, symbolic, and political significance.

This article presents current research on cooking stone pits in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia and examines their function and interpretation. It focuses on recent findings at the site of Mang de Bargen in northern Germany, which contained pit arrangements in various configurations, including a new circular one. The latest 14C dates from Mang de Bargen suggest that the circular formations constitute the earliest evidence of cooking stone pits known so far. A supra-regional comparison, concentrating on the distribution and dating of cooking stone pits in northern Europe, and an analysis of their content, arrangement, and topographic location allows the author to propose how they may have been used.

Common assumptions about the ephemeral archaeological signature of pastoralist settlements have limited the application of geophysical techniques in the investigation of past herding societies. Here, the authors present a geophysical survey of Luxmanda, Tanzania, the largest-known settlement documented for the Pastoral Neolithic era in eastern Africa (c. 5000–1200 BP). The results demonstrate the value and potential of fluxgate gradiometry for the identification of magnetic anomalies relating to archaeological features, at a category of site where evidence for habitation was long thought to be undetectable. The study provides comparative data to enable archaeologists to identify loci for future investigations of mobile populations in eastern Africa and elsewhere.

This contribution presents the first overview of an integrated remote-sensing survey undertaken across Harpham Roman Villa, East Yorkshire, and its wider landscape setting. The survey revealed one of the largest Roman courtyard complexes in northern Britain, nestled within an impressive crossroads system that formed part of a multiphase ‘ladder settlement’. The paper considers the impact of the results on both our understanding of this unique landscape and broader methodological approaches to the study of rural settlement in Roman Britain.

The Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site, Ireland is best known for its megalithic monuments, in particular the great developed passage tombs of Knowth, Dowth, and Newgrange, and its abundance of megalithic art. However, our understanding of the wider Brú na Bóinne landscape has changed beyond all recognition in the last decade owing to the application of modern, non-invasive survey technologies – in particular LiDAR and large-scale geophysical survey – and most recently as a result of the hot, dry summer of 2018 which revealed a series of remarkable cropmarks between Newgrange and the River Boyne. Despite a lack of excavation it can be argued, based on their morphological characteristics, that many of the structures revealed belong within the corpus of late Neolithic ritual/ceremonial structures, including earthen henges, square-in-circle monuments, palisaded enclosures, and pit/post-alignments. These display both extraordinary diversity, yet also commonality of design and architecture, both as a group and with the passage tombs that preceded them. This paper provides an up-to-date survey of the late Neolithic and presumed late Neolithic landscape of Brú na Bóinne. It provides new evidence and new insights from ongoing survey campaigns, suggesting parallels within the British Neolithic but also insular development within some monument classes.

Most earthen burial mounds of eastern North America have been destroyed—or have they? We review geophysical methods for assessing whether leveled mounds retain intact deposits or features. Magnetic survey holds promise for locating and evaluating leveled mounds because it is rapid and sensitive to magnetic variations associated with anticipated features such as pits and deposits of mound fill. As a case study, we discuss our magnetic survey of the Gast Farm site (13LA12) in eastern Iowa. The survey covered 8.64 ha, encompassing loci of one previously reported mound and possible geometric earthworks as well as Middle and Late Woodland habitation areas. Interpretation of survey results incorporated quantitative differentiation of magnetic anomaly types using GIS techniques, along with standard visual inspection. We found no evidence of geometric earthworks but identified at least six leveled mounds. Displaced mound fill appears to account for the earthwork-like features. We conclude that leveled mounds are detectable and may retain subsurface integrity. Their associated features, including burials, may be identifiable even when above-ground evidence has disappeared.

Our understanding of Roman urbanism relies on evidence from a few extensively investigated sites, such as Pompeii and Ostia, which are unrepresentative of the full variety of Roman towns. This article presents the results of the first high-resolution GPR survey of a complete Roman town—Falerii Novi, in Lazio, Italy. The authors review the methods deployed and provide an overview of the results, including discussion of a case-study area within the town. They demonstrate how this type of survey has the potential to revolutionise archaeological studies of urban sites, while also challenging current methods of analysing and publishing large-scale GPR datasets.

A magnetometry survey of the Roman fort at Lake Farm, near Wimborne Minster in Dorset, first discovered in 1959, has upgraded the status of this site to a full legionary fortress: a major base of the legio II Augusta during the subjugation of the Durotriges and other tribes of south-west Britain. The interior layout of the fortress was identified for the first time, together with the original road and river connections, extensive areas of extramural activity and evidence for an earlier phase of the site as a marching camp.

Borre in Norway is famous for its Late Nordic Iron and Viking Age (AD 400–1050) monumental burial mounds. Recently, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys have revealed three large structures close to the mound cemetery. Their unusual layout and size, and location within such a prominent burial site, suggest that they were halls—high-status buildings mentioned in the Nordic sagas. The authors present the GPR results, discuss the buildings’ typological classification and provide a preliminary chronological framework. The latter suggests that the buildings coexisted with some of the burial mounds, and raises important questions about the significance of such buildings in Nordic mound-building societies.

This article presents data obtained in the first geophysical survey undertaken in the Decapolis city of Gerasa (Jerash) in northern modern Jordan, and reflects on the value of openly sharing data in the academic community.

For over 120 years, the shell middens of western Scotland and the series of open-air sites on Oronsay have been the focus of debate in European Mesolithic studies. This paper challenges the significance of Oronsay in light of results from the geophysical survey and test-excavation of a new limpet and periwinkle shell midden dated to the late 5th or start of the 4th millennium cal bc at Port Lobh, Colonsay that offers fresh evidence to re-evaluate critically the role of Oronsay and coastal resources in island settlement models ahead of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition. Test excavations recovered a marine molluscan assemblage dominated by limpet and periwinkle shells together with crab, sea urchin, a fishbone assemblage composed mainly of Gadidae, some identifiable bird and mammal bone, carbonised macroplant remains, and pumice as well as a bipolar lithic assemblage and coarse stone implements. Novel seasonality studies of saithe otolith thin-sections suggest wintertime tidal fishing practices. At least two activity events may be discerned, dating from the late 5th millennium cal bc. The midden could represent a small number of rapidly deposited assemblages or maybe the result of stocastic events within a more extended timeframe. We argue that alternative research questions are needed to advance long-standing debates about seasonal inter-island mobility versus island sedentism that look beyond Oronsay to better understand later Mesolithic occupation patterns and the formation and date of Oronsay middens. We propose alternative methodological strategies to aid identification of contemporaneous sites using geophysical techniques and lithic technological signatures.

The Canterbury Hinterland Project (CHP) has combined aerial photographic and LiDAR analysis, synthesis of HER and other data across east Kent with targeted survey south and east of Canterbury. We present possible hillforts, temples, large enclosures, a major trackway, linking paths, burials and high-status Roman-period complexes and argue that people organised the landscape to communicate meaning in two main ways: a ‘public’ face oriented towards the Dover–Canterbury road and expressions of ritual and remembrance for local groups. The character of this rural population has traditionally been understood in terms of its relationship to the civitas capital and villas; we look beyond this to examine a more detailed vision of possible social interactions.

New investigations at the coastal settlement of Unguja Ukuu in Zanzibar have demonstrated the effectiveness of magnetometry as a survey method. The early occupation of this Swahili port, from the sixth century AD, presents a unique opportunity to develop our understanding of the growth and development in settlement and trade along the East African coast. The geophysical survey has allowed the size of this important site to be reassessed and an industrial component to be identified. It also offers an insight into the role that early Islamicisation may have played in helping to establish the settlement as a key port during the growth of the Indian Ocean trade network.

A massive tenth-century AD ring fortress was recently identified at Borgring, south of Copenhagen in Denmark. The combination of high-resolution LiDAR mapping, geophysical survey and targeted small-scale excavation has demonstrated that the site belongs to a rare class of monuments—the Trelleborg-type ring fortress. Borgring is the first such monument to be found in Denmark in over six decades, and provides an opportunity to investigate a type-site of Viking Age military organisation and conflict. The authors argue that Borgring complements a varied group of fortification structures in late Viking Age Denmark, part of a military network close to contemporaneous European ideas of military kingship and defence.

Landscape geophysical survey around the small upland ‘henge’ at Yarnbury, Grassington, North Yorkshire revealed few anthropogenic features around the enclosure but did identify a small rectangular structure in the same field. Sample trenching of this feature, radiocarbon and archaeomagnetic dating proved it to be an earlier Neolithic post and wattle structure of a type that is being increasingly recognised in Ireland and the west of Britain. It is the first to be recognised in the Yorkshire Dales and it is argued that the Dales may have been pivotal in the Neolithic for east–west trade as well as pastoral upland agriculture.

This paper explores how geophysical survey, undertaken in conjunction with landscape and historical analysis, is contributing to a deeper understanding of prehistoric focal centres and landscape organisation in the wider ‘hinterland’ of the Hill of Tara, Co. Meath. Arising out of the Discovery Programme’s ‘Late Iron Age and ‘Roman’ Ireland’ (LIARI) Project, the present investigations targeted a number of prominent hilltop sites in the Meath–north Dublin region suspected, on the basis of archaeological, topographical, and early documentary evidence, to have been important ceremonial/political centres in later prehistory. Foremost among these are the Hill of Lloyd (Co. Meath), the location of a prehistoric enclosure overlooking the early monastic foundation at Kells; Faughan Hill (Co. Meath), the traditional burial place of Niall of the Nine Hostages; and Knockbrack (Co. Dublin), whose summit is crowned by a large, internally-ditched enclosure with central burial mound. The discovery through this multi-disciplinary study of additional large-scale enclosures, burial monuments, and other significant archaeological features serves to further corroborate the deep historical importance of these sites, and opens up new avenues for exploring such themes as territoriality, social organisation, and identity in the wider Tara region.

Mesolithic hunter-gatherer settlements generally leave ephemeral archaeological traces and are notoriously difficult to detect. Nowhere is this more so than on the northern coast of Spain, despite a long tradition of Mesolithic research. In this project, evidence of Mesolithic activity together with the geomorphological and topographical suitability of particular locations were used to select areas for large-scale geophysical survey. The results demonstrate the potential of the new methodology: magnetometry survey at El Alloru revealed the very first Asturian open-air settlement site to be discovered.

Neolithic ditched enclosures appear to be widely distributed across Central and Western Europe, and from the Mediterranean area to Scandinavia. They have been known in areas of Europe for a long time, but particularly in the last 25 years studies on British, French, Central European, and Scandinavian ditched enclosures have flourished. In line with this, a number of international meetings occurred in the last three decades. In southern Iberia, by contrast, ditched enclosures only began to be known in the 1970s, and even then methodological deficiencies and lack of funding hampered their characterisation. As a consequence of this, Iberian Neolithic and Copper Age ditched enclosures were largely unknown outside Portugal and Spain. They were not represented in any of the international meetings above, nor included in any of the syntheses made about the topic. Not only that, for decades, Spanish and Portuguese archaeologists were not aware of the potential analogies themselves, and the research that was being carried out elsewhere in Europe had almost no influence on the way ditched enclosures were surveyed, excavated, and interpreted in the peninsula. The main objective of this article is to advance the recognition of the southern Iberian evidence by other European researchers and the integration of the Iberian conversation into the general discussion. The focus will be on how these sites have been studied by several generations of Iberian archaeologists, in an attempt to explain why it has taken Portuguese and Spanish archaeologists so long to realise that Iberian enclosures should not be understood in isolation.