This two-volume report presents the results of an 18-year project, which began in 1993, to investigate a 3 km by 3 km landscape block centred upon Hayton village. The report complements two previous volumes dealing with Late Iron Age and Romano-British settlements and landscapes in this part of East Yorkshire: at Holme on Spalding Moor (Halkon and Millett, Rural Settlement and Industry: Studies in the Iron Age and Roman Archaeology of Lowland East Yorkshire (1999)) and Shiptonthorpe (Millett, Shiptonthorpe, East Yorkshire: Archaeological Studies of a Romano-British Roadside Settlement (2006)). The work was largely conducted by university-based teams, but also incorporates the results of relevant development-led investigations within the study area. While the project's fieldwork had set parameters, framed by an iterative research design, the conclusions are considered in the much broader regional context. The full range of investigative techniques was employed, but the project particularly benefits from the inclusion of thousands of metal-detector finds, principally coins and diagnostic brooches, which have proven invaluable as general indicators of chronology and activity areas in the landscape.

Hayton's first appearance in the archaeological record was as the site of a short-lived Flavian fort midway between Brough and York. The evidence from the small-scale excavations carried out in 1975 (Johnson, Britannia 9, 57–115) is reviewed in the light of the new evidence, especially with respect to the dates of the fort's occupation and how it may have influenced the development of the adjacent settlements. The volume's main contributions are focused on the roadside settlement at Bridge Farm and, particularly, the more rural settlement at Burnby Lane. The morphology of the former, 0.5 km to the east of the fort, has largely been deduced from a range of remote-sensing techniques, supported by the results of small-scale excavations and watching-briefs. The evidence overall provides an insight for understanding the effects of the new Roman road on settlement shift and realignment, as well as an organic development that incorporated an earlier settlement enclosure. Like Shiptonthorpe, the Hayton roadside settlement is seen as having fulfilled an important economic role for travellers on the main route from Brough to York.

The more detached Burnby Lane site, 0.6 km to the north-east of the roadside settlement, was the focus for seven years of fieldwork and has produced the majority of the reported finds, excluding those from the Neolithic phase, which are published elsewhere (Halkon et al., Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 82, 31–57). The evidence reveals a process of continuity and change that saw the enclosed roundhouses of the late Iron Age gradually replaced by rectangular structures in modified enclosures. The later Roman phase is notable for a stone bath-house and an associated well, the upper fills of which produced inlaid timbers from an oak cupboard. The bath-house and furniture are acknowledged to be at variance with the more lowly status suggested by the bulk of the evidence, which is indicative of a settlement geared to arable and livestock farming. Burnby Lane contains significant numbers of infant and animal burials, often in spatial association with particular structures within certain areas of the settlement. This has allowed Millett to advance his ideas on the social rules governing infant disposal, namely that these are age-specific funerary deposits, interred close to associated burnt animal remains (special deposits) that are regarded as the remains of feasting prior to ritual deposition of both animals and infants. The arguments are compelling and are pitched firmly against those who argue for infanticide (see Millett and Gowland, Britannia 46, 171–89). An account of the development-led excavations in Hayton village is important for the additional evidence it provides for burial traditions, especially the well-organised late Roman cemetery and a possible Anglo-Saxon chest burial, but is equally significant in providing further evidence of the transition from an Iron Age farmstead to Romano-British roadside settlement.

A feature of this report is the different levels of synthesis and discussion provided throughout, culminating with ‘Broader perspectives on past lives’, where M. provides personal thought-provoking perspectives on how the Hayton data challenge previous thinking, how far they might reasonably be extrapolated and the research objectives they present for future work. Hayton lay within a ‘Romanised’ road corridor that is untypical of its immediate hinterland and of much of East Yorkshire and the Vale of York generally. Nevertheless, the findings and the depth of analysis undertaken will be invaluable towards formulating and refining research agendas for future investigation and interpretation of the rural Romano-British landscape in the Yorkshire region and beyond.