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 programme 

  1. Around 1.35 square miles (350 hectares) of archaeology is being investigated – equivalent to around 800 small football pitches! 

  1. Over 17 miles (28 kilometres) of exploratory trenches were dug before the main excavations even began 

  1. More than 40 separate excavations are to be completed by summer 2018 

  1. Around 25 settlements, dating from prehistoric to medieval periods have been uncovered so far with: 

  • 40 Roman industrial pottery kilns along Roman roads 

  • 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 

  1. 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 

  2. Over 140 tonnes (154 imperial tons) of environmental soil samples have been taken – that would fill almost 5 shipping containers 

  1. More than 250,000 individual site records will have been made by the end of the project 

  1. Since starting the project tens of thousands of person days have been worked 

  1. On our MOLA Headland Infrastructure programmes 24 trainee students, graduates and some local non-graduates have been coached and mentored in fieldwork skills 

Explore some of our A14 excavation photos below.

An archaeologist digging in a circular ditch An archaeologist moving environmental samples An archaeologist machine watching An archaeologist excavating a Roman kiln An aerial photograph of the A14 excavations A group photographs of archaeologists standing in a large group An aerial photograph of archaeologists excavating An archaeologists holding a chicken shaped brooch

The archaeological programme for the Cambridge to Huntingdon National Highways scheme was carried out by A14 Integrated Delivery Team on behalf of National Highways. Find out more about the A14C2H improvement scheme 

MOLA Headland Artefacts Excavation A14

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