VOLUNTEERS will be trained to analyse radar images as part of a major project to unearth the underground activities of the region’s Roman invaders.

The three-year archaeological project will cover 300sq km and is the first major examination of how Roman lead mining and farming 2,000 years ago affected the landscape of Alston Moor, west of the County Durham-Cumbria border.

Using volunteers as researchers, it will use new techniques including radar imagery to collect evidence to help set conservation priorities.

The North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) partnership, based in Stanhope, County Durham, has teamed up with English Heritage to carry out the work.

Project manager Stewart Ainsworth, from English Heritage’s research department, said: “The impact of mining on the landscape from the Roman period onwards has never been systematically researched by archaeologists.

“The moors and fields of the area are littered with abandoned structures, humps and hollows, which provide ghostly reminders of the industrial past, but only a few scattered earthworks and finds have remained from times before the large-scale changes imposed by lead mining in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

“This major new project will deliver much better understanding of the development of the landscape, settlements and buildings we see today and help to identify issues which threaten their survival.

“It will include the development of new archaeological methods for discovering, recording and investigating ties and identifying threats to them. Volunteers will be trained in a full range of archaeological techniques including analysing radar images collected from aircraft and satellites.

The landscape has already been radar-mapped in 3D, and sites of interest will be surveyed from the ground.

Volunteers will begin work in April.

Paul Frodsham, from the the AONB partnership, said: “We want local people to play an active role in the archaeology of the North Pennines, helping to research and celebrate what is, after all, their heritage.”

To volunteer, call 01388-528801 or email fordham@northpenninesaonb.org.uk