This volume reports on the 2014 excavation by Cornwall Archaeological Unit of a c. 375 m length of a 15 m-wide road scheme as part of the Newquay Strategic Road Corridor on the eastern side of the town. The work reported in this volume forms part of a range of archaeological assessment, geophysical survey and evaluation over large areas on the southern and eastern sides of Newquay, prompted by the town's ongoing expansion. This investigation, as well as comprehensive aerial mapping undertaken between 1994 and 2006, provides a picture of a rich archaeological landscape that includes early Bronze Age ceremonial monuments, Iron Age hillforts and cliff castles, and a high number of later prehistoric to Roman settlement sites, most often enclosed ‘rounds’.

The site has a long chronology with structural phases spanning the middle Bronze Age (a roundhouse), the middle and late Iron Age (structures and boundaries) and Roman periods (structures and fields), while residual Neolithic flint and two early Bronze Age Beaker pits indicate still earlier use of the site. The book's 12 chapters are structured in the typical manner of such reports, with a concise background to the project and an account of the excavated sequence followed by chapters detailing the specialist analysis of artefacts, environmental remains and radiocarbon dating. The writing is clear and uncluttered, and the period-by-period description of the archaeological features and deposits carefully integrates salient points of the artefactual and environmental data. The volume is well illustrated and the use of colour on the site phase plans, which is slowly becoming the norm, is very welcome and makes rapid assessment of the stratigraphic sequence a much easier task for the reader. One minor frustration is the lack of illustration showing the locations of the ‘evaluative’ strips of geophysical survey; one cannot properly understand the results if there is not a clear indication of the areas surveyed.

The site's archaeology may initially seem unimpressive, but the careful excavation and interpretation of these ephemeral and often incomplete structural remains by a regional team whose expertise lies in this type of archaeology, enables a robust discussion to be presented. Importantly, the site adds to the corpus of known sites with ‘working hollows’, in both the late prehistoric and Roman periods, and of rectilinear structures, in a landscape where there remains a misconception that most buildings were circular in plan. There are tantalising glimpses of specialist industrial activities (e.g. pits with heavily burned bases and sides, selective wood charcoal and plant macrofossil assemblages, and iron ore), although these do not occur together in a way that enables easy interpretation. The iron ore, for example, occurs in the ditches of an early Roman enclosure, although there is no comment as to whether it was roasted in preparation for smelting. There are hints of landscape transformation with the onset of the Roman period, with the emergence of large rectilinear fields for cultivation and grazing away from the ‘core’ of smaller enclosures where animals were penned. One hopes that the growth of Newquay along this new arterial road will create further opportunities to investigate adjacent areas. The specialist reporting is comprehensive, with chapters on the ceramics, stonework, flints, plant macrofossils and charcoal, each offering important site-based narratives and regional comparisons. Quinnell's chapter on ceramics provides a particularly useful up-to-date summary of regional late Iron Age Cordoned Ware.

It is still the case that many published reports of commercial excavations, particularly where focused on remains of prehistoric to Roman date, do not consider the upstanding historic landscape – the pattern of fields through which these development schemes cut. In this case the Newquay Strategic Road Corridor sits within a historic landscape characterised by Cornwall Council as ‘Medieval Farmland’, with a loose rectilinear framework of fields present by the late 19th century. The site sits directly adjacent to a very distinct form of field pattern derived from the enclosure of medieval strip cultivation south of Trencreek; that there were no traces of medieval ditches within the excavated area is important as it shows that these historic landscapes have different functional and probably chronological origins.

The striking feature of this volume is its excellent concluding chapters which place the site's archaeology within local, regional and, in places, national theoretical contexts. Whilst not all readers may share the same degree of enthusiasm for ritual deposition and ritualised behaviour in apparently mundane contexts, the lengthy consideration of ‘structured’ or ‘special’ deposits and deliberate or ritualised abandonment of structures is convincing, and the author ably demonstrates the continuation, if not increase, of such practices into the Roman period.