Our cover feature represents a powerful and poignant project investigating the frequently overlooked lives of ‘pauper apprentices’, children as young as seven who were taken from urban workhouses and sent to labour away their often short lives in rural textile mills and farms. Recent research centred on cemetery evidence from Fewston in North Yorkshire is helping to bring their experiences to light once more.
Another story that deserves to be better known is that of Ballynahatty in County Down, where the remains of an intriguing Neolithic timber monument were excavated between 1990 and 2000. The full report of this investigation has only recently been published, and the findings are fascinating.
Our next feature showcases an ambitious aerial-survey project focused on almost 200 square kilometres of the South Downs National Park, which has documented archaeological features spanning the Neolithic to the Cold War. We then turn to Hadrian’s Wall to learn how fortification of the Roman frontier sparked strikingly different settlement patterns on either side of the boundary.
Finally, we bring you an update on a burial that first featured in CA 339. This was the grave of an early medieval woman, discovered near Conington in Cambridgeshire during road improvement works on the A14. Unusually, she had been interred face-down, and now analysis of this enigmatic individual’s remains has allowed archaeologists to piece together clues about her life and why she may have been treated differently in death.