This publication presents the results of archaeological fieldwork undertaken over a period of several years in advance of the development of a new 116-hectare campus for the University of York. Known as Campus East, the site is located adjacent to the existing 1960s campus at Heslington, to the south-east of the City of York. This was formerly a greenfield site on the outskirts of modern settlement, just within the A64 Outer Ring Road. A low-lying area within the Vale of York, it is bounded to the north by an east–west glacial moraine, which facilitated movement across the Vale from at least the Neolithic period onwards. Also lying within the hinterland of Eboracum, the Roman fortress and colonia at York, it is not surprising that this rural site produced significant remains of prehistoric to Roman-period activity, including settlement, agriculture and burial. This is the largest area of such material investigated by modern techniques on a landscape scale in the Vale of York.

Such techniques included a range of evaluation and mitigation fieldwork employed in a phased approach, utilising a combination of geophysical survey, fieldwalking, trial trenching and open-area excavation, alongside focused watching briefs as development proceeded. The opportunity was taken to involve a programme of student training and community archaeology, the latter funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, in addition to the commercial investigations undertaken by a number of local organisations.

The authors have successfully combined the results of these many and varied aspects of the fieldwork into the final publication. Taking an atypical, thematic approach to the presentation of the results, they have eschewed a simple chronological narrative in favour of one which centres around different aspects of human engagement and activity across the landscape. Chapters are focused on landscape resources, boundaries, food production, specialist manufacture, structures and household activities, consumption practices and ideological practices (human burial, monumentality and other specialised deposition), which read well. In their introduction, the authors acknowledge that the sequence of development across the site does not fit neatly within conventional period-based chronological divisions. Their approach avoids having to categorise the evidence purely in terms of these traditional period-based frameworks, although the concluding chapter presents a chronological overview and discussion of key aspects of transition in the rural landscape over time.

Indeed, such transition is not always evident; for example, the picture is one of continuity in some areas between late prehistory and the early Roman period, evidenced by the persistence of a series of rectilinear field systems and enclosures. The site made international news headlines in 2008 upon the discovery of brain tissue in a decapitated skull within an Early Iron Age ditch to the west of the site; waterlogged conditions enabled the survival of what may be the best-preserved ancient brain in the world. This decapitation was linked to the development of linear boundaries on the site, a process further evident in the Roman period.

There is no real change on the site until significant landscape re-organisation just before the start of the third century a.d. Several ‘military’ finds may indicate army connections with the site at the time these changes were taking place; the site lies within walking distance of the fortress at York. An enclosed area of the site may have functioned as a ritual compound. In the late third century, a structure interpreted as a possible tower-tomb mausoleum was constructed along one side, founded on a 7 m by 5 m rectangular unmortared cobble base, which survived just below the ploughsoil. Reused stonework from the lining of one of the wells on the site, displaying evidence of the opus quadratum technique, may have been recycled from the dismantling of this monumental structure. Its function as a mausoleum is suggested by the presence of nearby inhumations displaying the unusual rite of large nails driven into the earth immediately adjacent to the skulls. The insertion of five Black Burnished Ware jars beside the hypocausted room of a nearby high-status, late third-century building with opus signinum floors is interpreted as further evidence for ritual activity of some kind. A quantity of ‘Anglian’ ceramics from a midden close to this ritual enclosure could suggest a focus of post-Roman activity on the site.

This beautifully illustrated and very readable publication is further enhanced by being made freely available as an open-access digital publication and is produced in tandem with a digital archive available via the Archaeology Data Service, a publication model which is to be much applauded, facilitating ready access to the raw data and thus enabling future reuse and reinterpretation of the evidence.