Across eastern and central England, excavations of Roman sites have uncovered rows of parallel trenches which are usually interpreted as remains of cultivation systems. Their use is disputed. This project gathered a large sample of excavation reports, and analysed the trenches’ characteristics, contents and relationships to other contemporary Roman features. The project team identified 52 sites—over twice as many as the most recent survey. While these features show characteristics of house garden beds described by Roman authors, they are much larger, capable of supporting hundreds of people with vegetables. One possible interpretation is that the planting trenches might have been established to support the Roman army during the first century of the Roman occupation, and positioned close to roads in order to provision troops on manoeuvre.

The project ZIP file contains a PDF report and an Excel spreadsheet containing a summary of individual sites' data.