On Track The Archaeology of High Speed 1 Section 1 in Kent

High Speed 1 (HS1) is the first new railway to be built in Britain for over a century and is the UK’s first
high speed railway. The publication of this volume celebrates the immense scale and award-winning
quality of the archaeological and historic building investigations that resulted from the construction of Section
1 of the rail link in Kent.
The project encompasses some truly exceptional individual discoveries, such as the Early Neolithic longhouse
at White Horse Stone, one of only a handful known in Britain and the most thoroughly dated example.
Extensive excavations at Thurnham Roman Villa and Pepper Hill Roman cemetery have contributed greatly
to our understanding of Roman Kent, while the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries at Cuxton and Saltwood Tunnel
are immensely important additions to the corpus of Kentish cemeteries. Perhaps the most important
contribution of HS1 Section 1 lies in the extent to which a range of ‘ordinary’ rural sites have been exposed
and investigated across a broad range of landscape zones. The sheer number and scale of sites studied within
a consistent research framework has offered a unique opportunity to examine change and continuity in this
long-inhabited corridor from the Thames Estuary to the Channel coast.
This book provides a synthetic overview and critical analysis of the HS1 Section 1 archaeological results
by a group of leading regional and period experts, placing the investigations within the context of current
frameworks of archaeological understanding at a regional, national and international scale.
Underlying this volume is a large body of digital site and specialist reports and data, which is available from
the Archaeology Data Service website. ADS 2006 Collection: 335 doi:10.5284/1000230
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/projArch/ctr