Landscape Hist 24

A wide variety of ring-ditches and other monuments including two cursuses, together with extensive areas of trackways and field boundaries appear as cropmarks in this valley between Essex and Suffolk. Following publication of a Regional Research Framework for the Eastern Counties, and building on the work of the National Mapping Programme, a GIS-based synthesis of the cropmarks has been prepared. This has clarified the variety and complexity of the cropmarks and enabled the relationship of monuments, field systems, the river, and valley topography to be explored. It is intended to use this work as a platform from which to enhance long-term management of the cropmarks and to promote further fieldwork.

This paper discusses the problem of the origin of nucleated villages using a series of case studies from south Cambridgeshire. It also identifies a particular form of dispersed rural settlement which was arranged around large oval basins of meadow land and that appears to pre-date the villages. The wider implications of this are examined.