Prior to the onset of developer-funded archaeology in 1990, the landscape of the southern fen edge and Lower Ouse Valley had received relatively little intrusive archaeological attention, or at least little that had been formally published. Since then the wider Cambridgeshire region has become one of the most intensively investigated parts of the country with a number of huge scale excavations, arising primarily from increased housing and mineral extraction. This two-volume set presents the results from one of these massive projects with investigations spanning ten years (1997–2007), while also including summary results from a number of previously unpublished investigations in the vicinity, including the highly important Roman nucleated settlement at Fen Drove, Earith, excavated in 1974.

The two volumes have been separated chronologically into prehistoric and Roman, with an emphasis on the latter where there is a huge amount of associated data. The prehistoric volume is broken down by period and area of investigation, with chapters on the wider changing landscape (in terms of geology and environmental succession), human agency in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, with evidence for landscapes of pits, ring-ditches, field systems and ‘low density’ settlement, and then finally more defined areas of enclosed Iron Age settlement. The extensive evidence for Iron Age settlement is perhaps treated a little more summarily than other periods, being confined to a single chapter, though it is generally discussed with full reference to the existing detailed published report on the nearby Iron Age settlement at Haddenham, which in many ways provides the structural and inspirational genesis for the Colne Fen volumes.

The Roman volume is mainly divided between two major settlements – a farmstead at Langdale Hale engaged with production, including ironworking, hide processing and large-scale crop processing, and a nucleated settlement at Camp Ground interpreted as an inland fenland trading port, spread over 7.4ha and containing evidence for more than sixty timber buildings. Both volumes are very explicit about the often innovative methodologies employed in producing the archaeological record (for example, the systematic survey of ploughsoil finds assemblages) and include detailed discussion on the wider ‘contextual landscape’ zone of 695ha around the main quarry excavations, as well as widening the scale of discussion further to incorporate much of the southern fenland edge. Although the writers are at pains to stress that the volumes take an ‘against narrative’ stance, much of this discussion presents a chronological account from early Neolithic to post-Roman (of which there is scant evidence), which could be viewed as a narrative of sorts, albeit one which is firmly based on using specific trends in the data to identify broad long-term processes on a landscape scale.

At all levels, the methods and scale of field investigation and post-excavation work is impressive. Attempting to distil such massive volumes of information deriving from a longstanding programme of archaeological investigations over 60ha into a meaningful publication is a tricky business. It would be very easy in some ways to overload the reader completely with huge printed volumes packed with dense data tables, which generally have the effect of divorcing the archaeology from any kind of integrative interpretation. On the other hand, there are now increasing numbers of excavation reports that contain only highly synthetic summaries, with all the data confined to digital media (usually now an online data repository), which ultimately has the same effect of separation. These volumes follow a third path in taking an integrative approach between the data and its wider interpretation, but at the same time having – for the most part – sufficient specialist quantitative and qualitative information to satisfy most of the needs for inter-site comparison. This specialist information is spread throughout the two volumes in the relevant site / period chapters, which generally works well for the most part, having fairly detailed catalogues and good levels of interpretative analysis. There are, however, some issues, for example with some incompatibility between the two pottery reports for the Roman sites in volume two, and the (as yet) lack of any more technical data that we are told are accessible in the University of Cambridge D-Space digital archive. Yet, on the whole, they are clearly presented and add suitable richness and context to the main discussion; it is also very useful to see specialist data included from some of the earlier excavations.

A great strength of these two volumes is that overall levels of analysis and interpretation, on both a micro and macro scale, generally go well beyond what would normally be expected in a typical excavation report. There are, for example, detailed architectural and functional analyses of the Roman buildings and extensive levels of intra-site finds and environmental analysis, occasionally interspersed with ‘inset’ boxes on matters such as personal adornment in the Bronze Age, the ethnography of wetland houses and the internationalisation of representation on material culture. Some of the interpretation may seem somewhat fanciful and even a little contradictory, such as the treatment of four post-structures, which are accepted fairly uncritically as granaries in prehistoric contexts yet suggested as mills in the Roman settlements, for the most part due to their perceived rarity in this period. However, it is this degree of lateral thinking that elevates these volumes above most ‘standard’ excavation reports. There is no doubt that the sites investigated here are of considerable importance on a regional, and in some cases arguably a national level, but it is the account of innovative excavation methodologies, multiple scales of analysis and thorough systematic landscape interpretation that should see them have a considerable impact on wider archaeological research.