The SOAG Goring Heath Landscape Study began in early 2020 in response to the Chilterns Conservation Board’s (National Lottery Heritage Fund funded) ‘Beacons of the Past’ Project.
The BotP project recently (2019) completed a high-resolution LiDAR survey of the AONB, and has as one of it purposes to kick start Citizen Science projects, using the Lidar maps as the starting point, and the provision of initial local support.
This is a landscape-based, multi-period survey of the archaeology and history of Goring Heath Parish (selected because it is located in SOAG’s core area, still fairly open and fairly free from recent urbanisation, and at face value from the LiDAR images having a landscape shaped from pre-Roman to WW2). The study includes:
- interpretation of the LiDAR images and other resources comprised in the BotP project dataset.
- research of other public document archives
- search of SOAG’s own document archives most notably SOAG Bulletins and SOAG Messengers from the last 50 years (which are available in searchable digital form).
- Online forum and analysis sessions (‘Mapathons’) to share and review information and ideas.
The intended output of this part of the Study was twofold:
- to bring the resulting ‘citizen records’ of potential archaeological features into a form consistent with the Project’s own database
- to prepare a report compiling the results of our research which will hopefully be an interesting study in landscape archaeology in its own right but also form the platform for further investigations as and when the current public health restrictions are lifted.
Further phases of the study could include research into library and other archives that require physical examination, field excursions and field walking – and perhaps also leading on to more substantial fieldwork.
The study also has made use of the results of earlier surveys undertaken by SOAG. Some of these older reports may be found on the “Other Publications” page.
For more information about this project contact: goringheath@soagarch.org.uk
Some external links
The section provides links to some of the resources available to SOAG participants in the Study
- Chiltern AONB Beacons of the Past: Hillforts in the Chilterns Landscape website
- Chilterns AONB Beacons of the Past LiDAR Portal
Acknowledgements
- Dr Ed Peveler, leader of the Chilterns AONB Beacons of the Past project for hs permission to use some of the project’s materials in this website
- The National Heritage Lottery Fund for funding the BotP project.