Tailbacks in time, East Anglia

Abstract

This article explores the braiding of timelines and timespans in roadworks along the A14, a major road in east England. Superimposed on a Roman road and skirting the subsiding Fens, recent construction reveals the conditions of a very different environmental past. Attention to the time-depth of the terrain beneath the A14 reminds us that the landscape is not a static container onto which we can project certainty, but exists in flux. This is a road being built for a future whose environmental conditions may be substantially different to those of the present.