About

The English Landscape and Identities project

Welcome to the EngLaId blog. The EngLaId (‘English Landscape and Identities’) project analysed change and continuity in the English landscape from the middle Bronze Age (c. 1500 BC) to the Domesday survey (c. 1086 AD). Funded by the European Research Council (ERC) at the University Oxford, the project started in October 2011 and ran until the end of 2016. Working in close partnership with Historic England (HE), the British Museum, the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), Historic Environment Records (HERs) and the Archaeological Data Service (ADS), the project combined a mass of existing artefactual and mapping data from – amongst others – HE’s National
 Mapping Programme (NMP), the PAS, the ADS and HERs.  This was the first time since the onset of developer funded archaeology in 1990 that landscape and archaeological features, together with finds, were analysed on such a comprehensive scale over such an extended time period. It provided an excellent opportunity to understand the development of the English landscape and the identities of the people who inhabited it over a long-term perspective.

The project team comprised:

• Chris Gosden – Principal Investigator
• Tyler Franconi – Roman (2014 onwards) / Zena Kamash – Roman (up to 2014)
• Letty ten Harkel – early medieval
• Anwen Cooper – prehistorian
• Chris Green – GIS / database specialist
• Laura Morley – administrator / research coordinator
• Miranda Creswell – artist
• Dan Stansbie – DPhil student (assemblages and food)
• Sarah Mallet – DPhil student (isotopes and food)
• Victoria Donnelly – DPhil student (grey literature)
• John Pybus / Xin Xiong – databases (up to 2013)

Chris Gosden, the project’s Principal Investigator, carried out the archaeological analysis together with Tyler Franconi, Anwen Cooper and Letty ten Harkel.  The scope of the project 
meant that it used large amounts of data. For that reason, Chris Green was employed as the project’s GIS and database specialist. Laura Morley, the Project Administrator, provided general administrative support. The project artist Miranda Creswell recorded the team’s innovative ideas and working methods through drawings and images that focused, on one level, on the themes of connecting ideas (for example through note taking and conversations) and, on another level, on more specific landscape projects.

The project team also included three DPhil students, two of whom were exploring aspects of diet (Dan Stansbie [assemblages] and Sarah Mallet [isotopes]) and one who looked into the nature of grey literature in archaeology (Victoria Donnelly).

Scholarly output of the project will include a monograph, an atlas, and additional academic papers and conference presentations, as well as a project website with searchable content.

Project visual blog by artist, Miranda Creswell:  http://visualenglaid.wordpress.com/

Project twitter account: @englaid_oxford