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The A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme is one of the largest archaeological programmes ever undertaken in the UK. The team are revealing amazing stories of thousands of years of human life and settlement in the Cambridgeshire landscape. We are over half way through excavating sites where new roads and structures will be built, so we thought we’d share our top 10 amazing facts about this massive archaeological project:

  1. Nearly 250 archaeologists from the UK, Europe and all over the world are working on the archaeology programmeArchaeology team on A14C2H (c) A14C2H courtesy of MOLA Headland Infrastructure
  2. Around 1.35 square miles (350 hectares) of archaeology is being investigated – equivalent to around 800 small football pitches!Around 1.35 square miles of archaeology is being investigated on A14C2H (c) A14C2H courtesy of MOLA Headland Infrastructure
  3. Over 17 miles (28 kilometres) of exploratory trenches were dug before the main excavations even beganMore than 40 separate excavations are to be completed by summer 2018 on A14C2H (c) A14C2H courtesy of MOLA Headland Infrastructure
  4. More than 40 separate excavations are to be completed by summer 2018Thousands of kilogrammes of artefacts have been excavated on A14C2H (c) A14C2H courtesy of MOLA Headland Infrastructure
  5. Around 25 settlements, dating from prehistoric to medieval periods have been uncovered so far with:
    • 40 Roman industrial pottery kilns along Roman roads (one is pictured here)
    • 7 prehistoric burial grounds (barrows and cremation cemeteries)
    • 8 Iron Age to Roman supply farms, some with wells
    • 3 prehistoric henge monuments (ceremonial enclosures)
    • 2 post-medieval brick kilns
    • 1 Roman distribution farm with military finds
    • 3 Saxon settlement sites, one with royal connections
    • 1 deserted medieval village occupied from 8th to 12th century
  6. Thousands of kilogrammes of artefacts such as pottery (7 tonnes), animal bone (6.5 tonnes), building materials (over 1 tonne) and small finds (over 7,000 in total) are expected to have been uncovered
  7. Over 140 tonnes (154 imperial tons) of environmental soil samples have been taken – that would fill almost 5 shipping containersThousands of environmental samples have been taken and analysed from A14C2H (C) A14C2H courtesy of MOLA Headland Infrastructure
  8. More than 250,000 individual site records will have been made by the end of the project
  9. Since starting the project tens of thousands of person days have been workedAround 25 settlements have been discovered on A14C2H (c) A14C2H courtesy of MOLA Headland Infrastructure
  10. On our MOLA Headland Infrastructure programmes 24 trainee students, graduates and some local non-graduates have been coached and mentored in fieldwork skillsArchaeologists at work on A14C2H (c)A14C2H courtesy of MOLA Headland Infrastructure

Join us on our journey

  • @A14C2H #A14Archaeology
  • facebook.com/A14C2H/ #A14Archaeology
  • Come to one of our community archaeology events
  • Find out more about the A14C2H improvement scheme here

The archaeological programme for the Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme is being carried out for A14 Integrated Delivery Team on behalf of Highways England.

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