To understand the development of the whole landscape, it is essential that evidence is gather from across a wide area. In the late 1970s archaeologist began to scan the surfaces of ploughed fields for artefacts that might point to how the land was used in the past. Systematic fieldwalking was born. Since then the technique has become a standard procedure in all extensive landscape archaeology surveys. The results of these explorations had led to the total rethinking of the development of the historic landscape. We now have a much better understanding of the density of Roman rural settlements, for instance, and we have a much firmer idea about the timing of village nucleation and the introduction of open-field farming. We have been able to reassess the scale of arable farming at different periods and have been able to survival or demise of woodland cover. Originally used to identify 'sites', places of intense human activity, the technique is now also used to consider broader patterns of land management, for example the practice of manuring. A number of different collection strategies are currently used by archaeologists. They fall into two categories, grid walking and line/transect walking.

Grid walking

Using this method the field to be surveyed is marked out into square grids. Each grid is assigned a code (often an alphanumeric code (A1, D7 etc.) depending on its position in the field, and then the whole surface of the grid is scanned by a number of walkers and all artefacts collected and bagged up together. To retain consistency, it is usual for all grids to be scanned for a set period of time irrespective of whether they might be producing lots of material or none at all. Grids might vary in size depending on the quality of the spatial information that is required. Grids 10m x 10m, for instance, give greater positional information than grids of 20m or 30m side length. Often a larger grid is used for initial survey (it takes less time to set up the grid) since this always allows for a subsequent survey using small grids laid out over areas of interest to be carried out.

There are three main downsides to this approach. The first is that it is extremely time consuming and labour intensive. A properly undertaken grid survey will mean that the whole surface of a field will be scanned. Resulting from this is a secondary issue, that of the quantity of finds that such a survey will produce. This is again time consuming to 'process' (to wash and to mark), costly to have analysed by a specialist, and bulky for subsequent storage and later deposition in a museum. Thirdly, there is the quality of the data it produces. Aggregated finds from grids are generally plotted either by graded colour that fills the whole square (masking the fact that potentially finds may have been concentrated in a particular part of that square) or dot density. Both lateral and longitudinal spatial precision is therefore lost.

Line walking

Line walking is used to speed up the process of survey, since in essence it is a sampling technique. Rather than scan the whole field surface, only a proportion of the field is explored. The percentage covered depends on how closely the individual lines to be walked are. A base line is marked out with canes at measured distances (10m, 15m, 20m and 30m intervals are all commonly used). Lines of canes are then set out at right-angles from this base line, again at measured intervals, across the fields. Each line is given a code (usually alphabetic) and the space between canes along the line or transect numbered sequentially. Walkers are required to walk from cane to cane (a stint), scanning a width of between 1.5 and 2m. Finds made along this corridor are placed into a bag marked with the individual stint code. A new bag is then assigned to the next stint, and so on and so forth across the field.