A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire Improvement Scheme: Digital Archive for Archaeological Works

MOLA-Headland Infrastructure (MHI) were commissioned by the A14 Integrated Delivery Team (IDT), on behalf of Highways England, to undertake the archaeological mitigation for the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon Improvement Scheme. The A14 Improvement Scheme is designed to improve the A14 trunk road in Cambridgeshire between Ellington (on the western outskirts of Huntingdon, TL 189 747) and Milton Junction (on the Cambridge Northern Bypass, TL 409 612). The A14 excavations are among the biggest and most complex ever undertaken in the UK, revealing important archaeology of prehistoric, Roman, Saxon and medieval date. The archaeological mitigation followed a programme of geophysical survey and trial trenching across the whole scheme. Areas of archaeological interest were defined as either Targeted Excavation Areas (TEAs; expectation of dense archaeological remains) or Strip Map and Sample Areas (SMS; expectation of less dense archaeological remains). This totalled over 228ha and included areas along the proposed road line itself, new local access roads, borrow pits, flood compensation areas, compound areas, and soil storage areas. For the post-excavation work, all 26 areas have been labelled as TEAs. Archaeological investigation was carried out across these sites between October 2016 and June 2018. Some archaeological work, in areas which were not accessible, continued past this date (eg TEA 7C, TEA 10, TEA 15, TEA 30, TEA 49, and Section 6 (TEA 48). For the analysis phase of work, the Targeted Excavation Areas (TEAs) have been grouped into eight separate landscape blocks. This was primarily based on the nature of the archaeology, their geographical position, and, in some cases, their geology/topography. These landscape blocks form the basis of this digital archive.