General

Eindhoven and Helmond have a population of almost 300,000. That is almost the same number as the entire population of western Europe some 12,000 years ago. The earliest traces of habitation in this region date from that period. People have been living here on and off for thousands of years. First there were groups of hunter-gatherers and then, from about 7,000 years ago, farming communities. Eindhoven and Helmond were established about 800 years ago, with a hinterland of villages, hamlets and isolated farms.

A great deal of information about the lives of the former inhabitants is preserved in the ground. This may be colour nuances in the earth and a variety of discarded, lost or intentionally buried objects. Together these form the archeological record. Archeologists are as careful as possible to conserve this information and would prefer to leave it intact in the ground. Then future archeologists, with ever more advanced techniques and knowledge, will be able to extract even more information from it.

There are some 125 archeologically important sites in Eindhoven and Helmond. Many of these are threatened by continuous building activity. In such cases an excavation is carried out before building starts so that the archaeology can be precisely recorded.