CBA-East Fieldwalking Conference

Wednesday 24th September 2025

This conference in Grantham will examine the achievements of fieldwalking, take stock of its use today and ask what future it has as a tool for prospection.

More specifically, did fieldwalking privilege certain types of evidence, like flint scatters? Does the decline in fieldwalking mean that flint scatters and the activities they attest are less likely to be detected? What is the relationship between the decline in fieldwalking and the rise in metal-detecting (which by its nature emphasises the later periods of archaeology)? Why do many commercial archaeologists no longer practise fieldwalking?

The conference will aim to highlight past successes of fieldwalking, but also to address its limitations, and explore whether it still has a value as a method of archaeological prospection.

Booking