These two volumes result from extensive developer-funded fieldwork innorth-western Northamptonshire, in the English midlands. Under the systemintroduced in 1990, local authority curatorial archaeologists assess theimpact upon archaeological remains of planning applications, and makerecommendations for any further investigative work. Developers are normallyresponsible for the costs of any archaeological evaluation or excavationwork necessary, and they award the contracts to commercial field units whobid for this work in a competitive tendering process. Since 1990, there hasbeen an enormous increase in the volume of such archaeological work inBritain and other European countries (Bradley et al. 2016), and these two volumes arerepresentative of many of the best and worst aspects of this system.