English Drought Is Revealing Ancient Sites, Settlements

The narrow straight, green line in this recent aerial photo from Great
Britain is from an old Roman temporary camp. The more curvy green
lines are ancient natural waterways that no longer exist. 

It's been a strangely hot, dry summer in what is usually damp old England.

Droughts are bad news, of course, because of the crop failures, water shortages and other problems such dry weather creates.

One good thing to come out of the British drought is the discovery of archaeological sites.

The dry weather has turned farm fields across Great Britain brown. However, people flying over these rural areas can see patterns of green -- lines, circles, etc amid all the brown stubble.

These green lines are often ancient ditches, moats, culverts and drainage ditches. The soil stays moist in these former features, so the plants over them stay green as everything else around them dries out.

The green cirtcles in this drought-stricken British farm field are
ancient burial sites, probably from the Iron Age  

The BBC says the recent dry weather has unveiled lots of new finds, including Iron Age structures and a temporary Roman camp in southern Scotland.

The patterns in the drought-stricken landscape do take detective work.

Are the straight lines of green the remnants of a drainage ditch that was created five years ago and subsequently covered up? Or were these ditches created hundreds or even thousands of years ago? Archeologists are trained to sniff out such differences.  

Archeologists are continuing to fly over the countryside looking for more ancient patterns, but they'd better hurry. It will rain soon, and the fields will turn fully green again, once again hiding these ancient artifacts.

Rain was already moving into western Great Britain as of Sunday.