A digital aerial archaeology tool from Historic England will allow people to discover previously unknown details about local landscapes, including prehistoric hill forts, Roman settlements and cold war military installations, through virtual flights over England.
From an article in The Guardian by Harriet Sherwood.
The virtual map is like a “huge archaeological jigsaw puzzle,” according to Historic England, the agency that looks after the country’s historic environment.
The Aerial Archaeological Mapping Explorer contains thousands of sites identified on half a million aerial photographs covering more than half the country. Further archaeological remains have been identified using airborne laser scanning technology known as lidar (light, detection and ranging), which creates 3D images of the Earth’s surface.
“This new aerial archaeological mapping tool lets people fly virtually over England and drink in its many layers of history,” said Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England.
“It will allow everyone to explore the hidden heritage of their local places and what makes them special. We hope it will give people a springboard to further investigation, whether for research purposes or simply to satisfy curiosity.”
Every site that has been mapped has links to full online records held by Historic England. The agency is continuing to map and analyse other areas of the country not yet covered by the explorer tool.
The earliest sites date to approximately 6,000 years ago, and include long barrows, flint mines and causewayed enclosures of the early Neolithic period. The most recent sites belong to the 20th-century cold war period.
There are also bronze age round barrows,iron age hill forts, Roman camps, settlements and field systems representing several millennia of activity.
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