Over the course of three years we undertook a series of evaluations and large-scale excavations in an area along the southern bank of the Humber Estuary in North Lincolnshire as a condition of planning consent for the construction of manufacturing and logistics facilities to support the offshore wind industry. In 2012 we began a programme of evaluation trenching, auger survey, fieldwalking and earthwork survey. Following on from the completion of these works, we successfully tendered for the next stage of investigations, comprising open area excavations, further evaluation trenching, test pitting and photographic survey of structures associated with a World War Two barrage balloon complex.

An area totalling 12ha, across 11 sites, was stripped and hand excavated to reveal a series of small, isolated Middle Iron Age enclosures followed by a more complex pattern of Late Iron Age enclosures and open settlements that extended across a large area of the Humber foreshore. Many of the large earthworks constructed during the later Iron Age were later used to form a part of an extensive Romano-British field system. These were associated with much larger, estate-like settlements that included aisled buildings, grain stores, metalworking areas and much more. Tens of thousands of pottery sherds were recovered together with a Late Iron Age sword, a rare early Romano-British oak ladder and many finely detailed objects such as carved bone, coins and glass bangles.

The works took place in what were often challenging conditions, but provided the ideal situation to test AAL’s digital recording capabilities, developing a method which resulted in site recording taking place more quickly and to a greater degree of accuracy than was possible before. The advances also enabled us to ensure highly accurate time and resource management whilst on site. This has reduced the time needed in post-excavation analysis.