The Carlisle Millennium Project was a legacy of the Carlisle Archaeology Limited, which had worked on five different sites from 1998-2001 within the central range and the southern quarter of the Roman fort, and had also examined a large section through the huge ditch that separated the medieval castle from the city.
Carlisle was so important because it was one of the primary forts established by the Romans as they incorporated the north of England into Britannia, and it remained in occupation pretty much continuously to the end of Roman Britain (well into the 5th century). The fort site was reused for a major royal castle from 1092 (the date of the Norman Conquest in these far-off lands), guarding the western end of the border with Scotland. The south-eastern end of the site, though, lies in a slight hollow, and was always wet, meaning that the organic survival of both Roman timber buildings and the material within the medieval ditch is unrivalled, at any rate in the north of England. The publication divides into three volumes, two in ‘hard copy’ – the stratigraphy and the finds – and the third an electronic volume to accompany the finds.