The sites that the volunteers excavated were identified by aerial LiDAR surveys.

This page explains a little about how LiDAR works and provides information for reports such as The Forest of Dean archaeological_survey_stage_1 . We also look at the work that Jon Hoyle did in identifying 1700 new sites around the Forest.

The surveys revealed features in the landscape that may otherwise have been missed so the volunteer groups went out to investigate (“ground-truth”) and sites mapped below were selected for excavation.