Recorded sites exist at Ashwell, Norton, Pirton, among others. Unfortunately too, changing economic fortunes, landowner decisions and disease sometimes led to settlements becoming depopulated and deserted, although often a village might be reduced to a farm, such as Broadfield, Caldecote, Chesfield, Minsden, Stagenhoe and Wandon. It might be thought that from the Medieval period it is all history, but it is not, because much of the information about people's life-styles and livelihoods, buildings, diet, health, economy, and more besides, may come only from archaeological data, since it was never recorded in contemporary documents or the written record has not survived the ravages of time. Today's archaeologists are interested in obtaining unwritten information from all periods of history, right down to very recent times, to aid everyone's understanding and enjoyment of their past. People have been always interested in their past, their origins.
People like to have roots.
So earlier societies often invented myths to explain their origins, and there is plentiful evidence that early peoples were as fascinated by artefacts left by their predecessors as modern generations are, for example, Roman coins deposited in Anglo-Saxon graves. Modern people take a scientific and acadernic approach to the archaeological study of past societies. Often the results are popularised in books and television programmes. Only the other day, Ken Bruce on Radio 2 said, to paraphrase, 'it seems that some of the most popular programmes these days involve gardening, cooking and archaeology'. The modern scientific study of archaeology began in the Renaissance and after, with gentlemen antiquarians recording sites such as Avebury and Stonehenge, and going on the Grand Tour in the lands of the classical Greek and Roman empires, and collectors digging into burial mounds for artefacts for their cabinets of curios.