Mapping findspots in your parish

People field-walking outside Aylesbury looking for artefacts on the ground surface

A findspot is a place where an archaeological artefact has been found. By looking at findspots we can sometimes work out where ancient settlements, pathways or industrial sites were.

 

To map the findspots in your parish:

  1. Go to the Advanced search on Buckinghamshire’s Heritage Portal.
  2. Find your parish in the pull-down parish list.
  3. In the Site Type box, type findspot.
  4. Press the search button. 

When you get your results up, click on Map at the bottom of the page. This will display all your findspots for the parish on a map. You can choose to show the findspots on a modern map, a historic map or aerial photographs. You can then print this off. If you want to, you can then label your map with details of each of the findspots, such as the date or find type.

Sometimes people find things in the upcast soil from animal burrows

This is the type of thing that is often found, an animal bone

 

 

 

 

You can then draw copies of these maps and mark one with all the Roman finds, another with Saxon and so on. By doing this you can see where the main concentration of findspots is for each period. Are there any areas where you think there was an ancient settlement or other site?

 

 

If you want to see how this can be done, look at the example Waddesdon findspots page.