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The Landscape Research Centre Ltd.

The Landscape Research Centre was registered as a charity in 1980 (Registered Charity number 326710 - Registered Company number 01852824) to promote research into the evolution of the landscape from the Palaeolithic to the present, and to publish the results.

The main aims and objectives of the LRC are:

• To undertake primary field research into landscape archaeology, ecology  and landscape history.
• To publicise and publish the results of such research at popular and academic levels on paper, through digital media such as this web site, and through public lectures, lectures in schools, universities and at academic conferences in Britain and abroad.

Most work so far has been under the banner of the Heslerton Parish Project, a research framework established in 1980 to provide a research context for a series of large, seasonal, open-area rescue excavations undertaken ahead of mineral extraction in the Vale of Pickering in eastern Yorkshire.

The landscape in which we live is the product of thousands of years of human interaction with the constraints and opportunities created by geology, soil, climate and ecology. The past of the landscape is documented through the survival of such traces as pollen, insect and plant remains,  archaeological sites and monuments. This physical record is, however, fragile and finite. It is threatened with a fate akin to extinction as a result of development, mineral extraction, intensification of agriculture, the application of chemical fertiliser, drainage and pollution. 

The LRC is engaged in long term research directed at the identification, examination and interpretation of the archaeological record of landscapes without the constraints imposed by the boundaries of conventional historical periods. Through intensive investigation of landscapes we hope to inform and engender debate about ancient landscapes and environments, and the people who lived in them. 

The LRC is undertaking remote-sensing projects employing established technologies that include air photography and ground-based geophysics as well as new technologies such as thermal and multi-spectral surveys designed to identify the physical resources relating to human occupation of the landscape without physical intervention. In addition, the LRC carries out large scale rescue archaeology and smaller research projects, investigating sites threatened through mineral extraction, agriculture and drainage schemes which have a significant but less visible impact on the archaeological resource than for instance the redevelopment of our urban centres.

Over the last 26 years the LRC has earned an international reputation for research into the application of computing in field archaeology, for research into large scale excavation and recording methodologies and for the development of new approaches to data recording, integration and publication.

This web site incorporates  summaries and reports covering our current research and work undertaken in The Vale of Pickering since 1978.