By location
Archaeology by Cambridgeshire location
Archaeological cost and programme are set by landscape, not by postcode. These pages explain what each of the county's main development landscapes means for a development budget.
Cambridgeshire
Named development locations
Fen edge, gravel terrace, chalk downland, boulder clay and deep urban deposits each behave differently. Find the one your site sits in.
Waterbeach
Waterbeach combines a former barracks site, fen-edge landscape and substantial planned growth — three things that each change the archaeological requirement.
Claylands and fen fringe, former airfieldNorthstowe
Northstowe is delivered in phases across a large site with a former airfield component, which makes archaeology a programme question as much as a cost question.
West Cambridgeshire boulder clayCambourne and Bourn Airfield
The Cambourne and Bourn Airfield area carries large-scale housing delivery on West Cambridgeshire clayland, a landscape long assumed to be archaeologically quiet and repeatedly shown not to be.
Former airfield on gravel and clayAlconbury and Wyton
The former airfields at Alconbury and Wyton support large employment, logistics and housing schemes where archaeological scope is dominated by sheer area.
Gravel terrace and chalk, south CambridgeCambridge Biomedical Campus
Laboratory and clinical development in south Cambridge combines deep foundations, tight sites and fixed occupation dates — a combination that makes archaeological programme risk unusually expensive.
Isle of Ely and surrounding fenEly
Ely sits on an island of higher ground within the fen, and that geography concentrates long-term settlement into a relatively small area.
Great Ouse gravel terracesSt Neots
St Neots development sits largely on the Great Ouse gravel terraces, some of the most consistently archaeologically productive ground in the region.
Fen island and marginsSoham
Soham sits on a fen island with growth allocations on its margins, where the archaeological method can change significantly over a short distance.
Chalk downland and river valleysSawston and the A1307 corridor
South-east of Cambridge, chalkland and river valley development sits in a landscape with well-recorded prehistoric and Roman activity.
Multiple geologies within a single schemeA428 and A10 growth corridors
Corridor schemes — road, utility and cable routes — raise a different archaeological problem from sites: they cross several landscapes and several authorities at once.
Major allocation
North East Cambridge
The brownfield growth area needs a different approach from the county’s greenfield locations: previous disturbance, made ground, utilities and contamination all affect archaeological design.
Project review
Tell us where the site is and we will tell you what to expect
Location, site area and depth of disturbance are usually enough for a useful first view of archaeological risk and programme.