Questions about Field Archaeology

Field Archaeology is a research atlas for England. It puts the Environment Agency's one metre LiDAR, historic Ordnance Survey maps and England's heritage records on one map, and names the publisher and licence of every source.

It runs in a web browser at app.fieldarchaeology.co.uk. You can go to a place, a postcode or a grid reference, read what is recorded there against the LiDAR and the old maps, make an area report, export the records for QGIS or ArcGIS, and copy a citation for each one. Its private pilot opened on 23 October 2026 and is by invitation.

People who study England's past and care for it: researchers, lecturers and students at universities and colleges, field archaeologists in commercial archaeology, and staff at heritage bodies, Historic Environment Records, museums and archives. Finds Liaison Officers, societies and independent researchers can ask for access too.

It is made for the work of reading a landscape: looking at the ground, checking it against the maps and the records, and writing it up with its sources.

Gitwix Limited, a software company in Manchester, registered in England and Wales with company number 15817715. The company's record is public at Companies House.

Field Archaeology is independent: no public body runs it or endorses it, and naming a source does not mean that the source endorses Field Archaeology. There is more about us on the About page.

No. Field Archaeology is a research atlas, a map you use in a web browser. It is not a journal, a society or an archaeological unit, and it is not connected with any organisation or publication of a similar name.

No. It brings national and open records together, but it is not a Historic Environment Record (HER) and it does not replace an HER search.

Every part of England has an HER, kept for its council or national park: the fullest list of its known sites, finds, excavations and reports, much of it on no national list. Most HERs are not published openly, so they are not in the atlas. Instead, Find the HER says which of England's 83 HERs covers a place, links to its online search where it has one, gives its charges as it publishes them, and drafts an email asking it for a search.

For a desk-based assessment, the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists' standard says that ‘the archaeologist should also contact the relevant HER before undertaking the assessment’. Our guide to desk-based assessment says more.

Yes, while the private pilot runs: it is free for the universities, archaeological units and heritage bodies we invite. There are no payments or subscriptions in the atlas.

Use Request access, which is also on the atlas's sign-in page. Tell us your name, your university or work email, where you work or study, your role and what you would use Field Archaeology for. We check every request ourselves and reply by email.

We can also invite you by email. If you are new, the invitation brings a one-time link to set up your account, which works for 30 days. You sign in with your email address and a password; there is no sign-in with Google, Apple or a university account.

Yes. Undergraduate, master's and PhD students can ask for access, and can name a supervisor or tutor on the request if they wish. A university email is quickest for us to check, but a personal email is fine if you have no other.

England. The map is held to England, with a margin so that the coast and the borders are not cut off.

Where the map reaches over a border, some national layers carry on, from Cadw, Historic Environment Scotland, Canmore and the National Monuments Record of Wales. The atlas is made for England, though, and leaves out the regional layers for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

From the public bodies, research projects and open communities that publish it. The atlas's Sources and licences page lists 32 datasets, each with its publisher, its licence and the layers that use it; 17 of them are under the Open Government Licence.

They include the Environment Agency's LiDAR; Historic England's National Heritage List for England, Aerial Investigation and Mapping and Heritage at Risk Register; Ordnance Survey maps from the National Library of Scotland; the British Geological Survey's bedrock geology; Natural England's designated sites; and research datasets such as the Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland and the Itiner-e atlas of Roman roads. The full list is on Data and licences.

The Environment Agency's LIDAR Composite DTM and DSM at 1 m, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The terrain model (DTM) is the bare ground, with buildings and trees taken out; the surface model (DSM) keeps them in. Hybrid LiDAR 3D also draws the trees, hedges and buildings from the Agency's classified point cloud, and where the map crosses the border the views read the Welsh and Scottish surveys.

The atlas shows the Agency's own hillshade as LiDAR relief and draws eleven more views from the Agency's data, among them Multi-light relief, Local relief, Sky view and Red relief, because a bank that hides in one light can show in another. How each view is drawn, with its settings and, where there is one, the paper it follows, is on LiDAR visualisations.

The terrain model gives a height for every square metre, and every survey in it had a vertical accuracy of plus or minus 15 cm (root mean square error). The Environment Agency made its 2022 composite from surveys flown between 6 June 2000 and 2 April 2022, and it covers about 99 per cent of England.

Where a survey was coarser than 1 m, the Agency resampled it to 1 m, so the detail you can see depends on the survey behind each place. A LiDAR download names those surveys, with their resolution and the dates they were flown.

The atlas draws its views on the 1 m grid from zoom 16 inwards, and on coarser grids further out: about 3 m at zoom 15, 6 m at 14 and 12 m at 13. Positions use the Ordnance Survey Helmert transformation, so a view can sit 1 to 4 m off the Agency's own hillshade. Nothing is added to the heights, and gaps stay empty.

Ordnance Survey maps of England from 1885 to 1961, from the National Library of Scotland: the one-inch with hills (1885 to 1903), the six-inch County Series (1888 to 1913), the one-inch of the 1920s to 1940s (1919 to 1947), the 1:25,000 first series (1937 to 1961), the one-inch seventh series (1955 to 1961) and the five-foot town plan of central London (1893 to 1896).

The library publishes them under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence, on condition that they are credited to the National Library of Scotland with a link to its website, maps.nls.uk. It notes that features on its georeferenced maps will not always line up exactly with where they are on the ground, so read a match with the LiDAR as close rather than exact. Each series is described on Historic maps.

The National Heritage List for England, the official register of nationally protected historic buildings and sites in England: scheduled monuments, listed buildings, registered parks and gardens, registered battlefields, protected wrecks and World Heritage Sites. With it come Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register and its Aerial Investigation and Mapping, archaeology traced from aerial photographs and LiDAR.

Beside them are Portable Antiquities Scheme findspots, to the 1 km square; hillforts from the Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland; Roman roads from Itiner-e and Roman sites from Pleiades; 8,353 of the places named in Domesday Book, positioned from Wikidata; antiquities named on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of 1888 to 1913, from the GB1900 gazetteer; and Devon's tithe fields of the 1840s.

Every record card ends with its source, its licence, the record's own number (linked to the original entry where the publisher has a page for it), its grid reference and a Cite button.

Some sources that matter for research are not in the atlas:

• most county Historic Environment Records, which are not published openly;
• unpublished fieldwork reports, the grey literature in OASIS and the Archaeology Data Service library;
• the Historic England Archive's aerial photographs;
• precise Portable Antiquities Scheme findspots, since the Scheme publishes them to the 1 km square, and hoard findspots, which are left out;
• LiDAR point cloud files to download, and the Environment Agency's surveys of the same ground in different years, side by side;
• a soils layer, since Cranfield University's Soilscapes map is licensed only by agreement.

Every area report also says what it leaves out, under What this report does not include.

Yes. Export this view, and the downloads of an area report, give the records as CSV, as a zipped shapefile, or as GeoJSON on the British National Grid (EPSG:27700) or in latitude and longitude, ready to open in QGIS or ArcGIS.

Every row carries its dataset, publisher and licence, with its record number, title, type, period, grid reference and, where there is one, a link to the original record; the CSV also has eastings and northings, and latitude and longitude. The shapefile comes with its .prj and a README on the licences and the accuracy. Eastings and northings are worked out with the Ordnance Survey Helmert transformation, which is usually within 2 m of OSTN15 and up to about 4 m out in the far south-west, so use OSTN15 where you need survey accuracy.

Your marks export as KML, and LiDAR heights download as GeoTIFF.

A report of everything recorded in the map view, or in an area or circle you have drawn, up to 20 km across, to print, save as a PDF, download or keep.

It has eight sections: designated heritage assets, listed buildings, designated wildlife sites, features mapped from the air, historic records, sites in the period layers, Domesday places and Portable Antiquities Scheme finds. It ends with the Historic Environment Record for the area, what the report does not include, and the sources and licences it drew on. It is a starting point for a desk-based assessment or a student project, not a Historic Environment Record search.

Yes, for an area up to 5 km a side. LiDAR heights (GeoTIFF) gives the Environment Agency's terrain model, its last-return surface model and, from the flights of 2016 to 2022, its first-return surface model, exactly as the Agency serves them: 1 m cells on the British National Grid, with heights in metres above Ordnance Datum Newlyn, in 32-bit floating point.

The files come in one zip with a README naming the surveys behind each file, the licence and the method notes, and they travel straight from the Agency's own service to your browser. The atlas also gives the Agency's WCS and WMS addresses for streaming the data into QGIS, and draws an elevation profile along any saved line up to 5 km long, with a height every metre.

Yes, at 1:1,250, 1:2,500, 1:5,000, 1:10,000 or 1:25,000, portrait or landscape, on A4, or on A3 when no MapTiler map is showing. Each print has the National Grid drawn and labelled, a scale bar, a north arrow, the layers shown, their sources and the LiDAR method.

The base map, the historic maps and the terrain shading come through MapTiler, whose terms allow prints of its maps for an internal purpose, up to A4. A print that shows them is for internal use only; ask MapTiler before you publish it.

Yes. With Your own data you can put CSV (with latitude and longitude, eastings and northings, or a grid reference column), GeoJSON, KML, GPX or a zipped shapefile on the map beside the records and the LiDAR, up to 50,000 features a file. Files are read on your device and are not uploaded unless you choose to save them to Your files.

Yes. It runs in a web browser on a computer, a tablet or a phone, and you can add it to your home screen like an app. There is no app in the App Store or Google Play.

It needs an internet connection, because the maps and the LiDAR load as you look; there are no offline maps. Large downloads, such as LiDAR heights for a wide area, are best done on a computer.

No. Field Archaeology has no API and does not offer whole datasets for download. Exports cover an area: up to 20 km across for a report and 5 km a side for LiDAR heights. For a whole dataset, go to its publisher; Data and licences names each one.

Cite the record, not the map. Every record card ends with its source, its licence and the record's own number, and Cite copies a reference in Harvard form with today's date and the grid reference. The authoritative entry is the one the number opens.

The reference gives the publisher, the year, the dataset, the record number and title, where the record is available and when you accessed it, then the licence and the National Grid reference. There is more on citing records, maps and LiDAR in How to cite.

Credit the heights to the Environment Agency with its attribution statement and the Open Government Licence v3.0, name the view, and give the date you used it; How to cite has the exact form. The Agency's attribution statement is: © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2022. All rights reserved.

How each view is drawn, with its settings and references, is on LiDAR visualisations. The same method text goes into the atlas's reports, prints and LiDAR downloads, so it can be quoted in a methods section.

Your account (email, name, university or organisation, department and role); the marks you save and the files you add to Your files, private to you; your place on the pilot's invite list (your email, your organisation and the dates you were invited and joined); and anonymous counts of sign-ins and of errors, with no name or email attached, so we can see when something breaks.

If you asked for access, we also keep your request: your name and email, where you work or study, your department and role, a supervisor's name and email if you gave them, your ORCID iD if you gave it, what you would use the atlas for and what you wrote about your work, with a scrambled form of your network address and the name of your browser, kept to stop abuse of the form.

We do not sell or share personal data, and there is no advertising in the atlas.

They are private to you: no other member can see them, and there is no sharing in the atlas at present. They are kept with your account, so they are there on any device you sign in on. Data you put on the map with Your own data stays on your device unless you save it to Your files, which holds up to 25 MB a file and 500 MB in all.

Yes, with two gaps for now. Under Your account, Download my data gives, in one file, your account details, your marks, the list of your files and your place on the pilot's invite list; each file in Your files downloads on its own. Delete my account removes your marks, your files and your place on the invite list, takes your name off your profile and closes your account, so it can no longer sign in.

Neither yet covers your record as a pilot member (your email, name, organisation, department and role) or an access request you sent. Write to us at admin@fieldfinders.co.uk for a copy of them, or to have them deleted. A record of each deletion is kept: when it happened, the email address and the device it came from.

Field Archaeology is not run or endorsed by the Environment Agency. It uses the LiDAR the Agency publishes under the Open Government Licence, which gives no right to suggest official status or the publisher's endorsement, and Field Archaeology claims neither. The Agency's LiDAR can be downloaded from the Defra Data Services Platform.

Field Archaeology is not run or endorsed by Historic England. It shows Historic England's open data, such as the National Heritage List for England, Aerial Investigation and Mapping and the Heritage at Risk Register, under the Open Government Licence. Each record from the National Heritage List links to its list entry on Historic England's website, which is the authoritative version. Scheduled Monument Consent and section 42 licences come from Historic England, not from Field Archaeology.

Field Archaeology is not part of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and is not endorsed by it. Its Recorded finds layer shows PAS findspots in England and Wales, to the 1 km square the Scheme publishes; it is not the whole PAS database, and hoard findspots are left out. A cluster of findspots shows where people have searched and reported as well as where material lies.

The Scheme is managed by the British Museum and Amgueddfa Cymru (Museum Wales). Finds are recorded with the Scheme itself, through its Finds Liaison Officers and its website, finds.org.uk; Field Archaeology does not record finds for it.