Historic England commended the team for revealing “new and exciting sites spanning over 10,000 years of our past”.
But building HS2 has changed the landscape along its route, cutting into fields and communities, and dividing opinion.
Critics, such as Greg Smith, MP for Mid Buckinghamshire, say soaring costs, delays, abandoned villages and damage to the natural and historic environment mean that it is not worth building.
“It should not have cost the taxpayer tens of billions of pounds to build a railway that no-one wants and brings so much destruction,” Smith says.
HS2 said in response: “Chief Executive Mark Wild has been clear that overall delivery of HS2 has been unacceptable and he’s committed to ending the project’s cycle of cost increases and delays.”
“Our specialist archaeology team and contractors have carefully excavated numerous sites and have shown care and respect throughout this work.”
“Whether HS2 is a good or bad thing is debatable, but I tell you what, if they built the railway and they didn’t do the archaeology that would be more tragic,” said historian Graham Evans, who chairs the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society.