StrataHistory underfoot

The library of ground

Every place Strata has dug, assembled from its sources and filed by locality and era. A place is reviewed again whenever the ground beneath it is dug afresh.

563 places · 222 localities · last reviewed 9 November 2026
United States Mount PleasantTwo towns share this name and little else: a Utah settlement forted up in 1849 and reborn after the Black Hawk War's end, and a Texas county seat founded in 1848 on old Caddo and Cherokee ground. Together they hold fire, flood, treaty and a cemetery lane. 4 digs
50 records
A quiet lane in Titus County Kathryn's Court · 1821–1971
Portugal LouresLoures gathers traces from Upper Paleolithic hunting camps to a Roman farming estate and villa, through a parish first named in 1118, shaken by earthquakes in 1531, 1551 and 1755, and still marked today by civic life along Rua da República. 2 digs
27 records
A road crew found a Roman town buried under Loures · 39800 BC–1910
Spain BarcelonaThis record gathers two corners of Barcelona's Eixample district: Carrer de Sardenya, beside Gaudí's workers' schoolhouse, and Carrer del Consell de Cent, home to the city's oldest surviving public library. Fire, war and rebuilding mark both streets across more than a century. 3 digs
36 records
A long Eixample street Carrer del Consell de Cent · 21081 BC–2024
United States Salt Lake CitySalt Lake City grew from a Mormon settlement on the valley floor into a seat of mining fortunes, railroads, temples and government offices. Its ground has held a war's peace talks, a lynching, a failed 26-acre development, and streets later redrawn around suburban cul-de-sacs and shopping malls. 20 digs
195 records
The mansion where Utah made peace with the army sent to crush it Devereaux House · 1857–2024 The village that became a shopping center West Valley City · 1000 BC–2022 A bungalow built in 1929 was picked up whole and carried across town Joseph E. and Mina W. Mickelsen House · 1818–2018 The trap on the Jordan River 2810 West · 1877–1994
United States HighlandHighland, Utah, grew from farmland and the old lake bed of Lake Bonneville into a city of platted subdivisions, incorporated in 1870. Its record is one of farmland sold for building, houses raised by the same handful of developers, and families who bought, mortgaged and passed the ground on. 8 digs
66 records
An address, and nothing else on record West Horizon Drive · 2004–2025
United States American ForkAmerican Fork, Utah, incorporated in 1850, grew from a Ute homeland into a city of farmland, parks and a single-spire temple. State-owned parcels passed to the city through the late twentieth century, while its cemetery holds both a congresswoman and a physicist who measured the electron. 5 digs
58 records
Land held by the city 860 East · 1847–2010
Spain MadridMadrid gathers here as a city rebuilt and reopened in layers: a royal park turned public garden, a banking palace turned hotel, a street widened in the nineteenth century, a restaurant open since 1865, and ground marked twice by bombing, in 1974 and 2006. 6 digs
62 records
A bank-and-palace corner in central Madrid Calle Sevilla · 1483–1983
Portugal CascaisCascais grew from scattered Roman farm estates and a Visigothic burial ground into a chartered fishing town, then a royal resort after the 1870s, a wartime refuge for exiled kings in the 1940s, and finally the museum-filled, hotel-lined coast recorded here today. 31 digs
399 records
A seafront fortress above the old town Avenida Dom Carlos I · 2870 BC–1920 Roman farmland above the coast Sao Domingos de Rana · 100 BC–now Open coastal ground near Cascais · 100 BC–1992 The wave that drowned All Saints' Day Chalet Ficalho · 3008 BC–2018 A 19th-century summer house, now a small hotel Chalet Ficalho · 2870 BC–2025 A 19th-century summer villa, now a hotel Chalet Ficalho · 2870 BC–2023 A 19th-century summer villa, now a small hotel Chalet Ficalho · 3008 BC–2023 A pocket of grand 1900s villas Chalet Ficalho · 2870 BC–1992 Open ground on Portugal's Lisbon coast Alcabideche · 100 BC–2025 A 19th-century lighthouse, now a museum Farol de Santa Marta · 2870 BC–2007 A seaside mansion built as a wedding gift Casa de Santa Maria · 2870 BC–2004 A sea chasm on the Cascais coast Vigia do Facho · 3008 BC–1987 A seaside fortress, now a hotel The flight of ICARUS · 2870 BC–2014 The cave where the dead were buried with shells · 3008 BC–1967 The researcher who dug up forty forgotten rabbis · 1364–2025 The kings who fled to a Portuguese fishing town · 4000 BC–2016 A hole where the sea comes in to kill Vigia do Facho · 2870 BC–1992 The man who faked his own death in a sea cave · 2870 BC–now Rebuilt for a king, disarmed within a year · 4000 BC–now A castle built for show became a gift to strangers Forte de Nossa Senhora da Luz de Cascais · 2870 BC–2000
Portugal SintraSintra gathers a dolmen-studded hillside, a Moorish hilltop fortress, royal palaces that held both a king's birth and his imprisonment, a town jail turned post office, and a dictator's summer house where a decade of planning led to power, into one record of ground held by farmers, friars, Moors, monarchs and resort-builders in turn. 35 digs
456 records
A farm colony for vagrants became a modern prison Avenida de Cascais · 1200 BC–1980 An avenue above the Atlantic coast Avenida Eugene Levy · 3022 BC–2015 A friars' convent built into bare granite Convento dos Capuchos · 2200 BC–2025 A medieval royal palace, now a museum Fonte da Diana · 1200 BC–1949 A Moorish hilltop fortress, now a ruin Castle of the Moors · 2835 BC–2013 Wooded hillside outside Sintra · 1154–now A wooded hillside in the Sintra hills · 5000 BC–1953 A Neoclassical palace garden, now a hotel Jardins de Seteais · 5000 BC–1982 Open ground near Linhó · 1200 BC–2025 A Dutch consul's mansion in Sintra Seteais Palace · 4500 BC–1966 A tomb older than Rome · 5000 BC–1966 The politician who plotted his comeback here · 3500 BC–1903 Sintra's neo-Manueline town hall Câmara Municipal de Sintra · 9222 BC–2011 Where the dead were laid under stone · 100 BC–2025 The stones nobody could explain · 100 BC–now The king locked in his own family's house · 9222 BC–2016 The dolmen farmers spent a century stealing Casal de Cambra · 4500 BC–2024 Sintra's town hall, built in a royal style Câmara Municipal de Sintra · 4000 BC–2011 A former prison, now a post office Praça da República · 2835 BC–1979 A fire and rescue training ground · 1200 BC–1974
Portugal LisbonLisbon's ground holds a Moorish siege of 1147, the earthquake of 1755 that flattened its churches and palaces, and forty years of secret police headquarters that ended in gunfire on 25 April 1974. Kings, poets and reclaimed riverfronts share the same streets, each layer recorded where it stood. 26 digs
341 records
Lisbon's 14th-century city wall, now in fragments Fernandine Wall · 6379 BC–1908 The city that starved for a king it never chose Igreja de Santa Luzia · 6379 BC–2013 The bridge that gave a battlefield its name Alcântara-Mar railway station · 1755–2008 The knight who blocked a closing gate with his body Painel de Azulejos "Conquista de Lisboa" · 6400 BC–2012
United States West Santa ClaraWest Santa Clara gathers an unincorporated stretch of the Santa Cruz foothills above Cupertino, where limestone mining at Permanente Quarry grew into a major cement operation under Henry Kaiser, and Congress Springs Road, cut by Chinese laborers for loggers, once led to a mineral-water resort before fire and county purchase changed its course. 2 digs
19 records
A mountain toll road in Santa Clara County Congress Springs Road · 3999 BC–1942
United States BakerBaker, Nevada sits at the foot of the Snake Range, where a Fremont village of pit houses and granaries stood from about 1220 to 1295 CE. The peak above carried a Shoshone name before a soldier renamed it for Jefferson Davis in 1859, and the ground now lies within Great Basin National Park. 1 dig
9 records United Kingdom ChillinghamChillingham, in Northumberland, grew up around a border fortress that began as a monastery and became, by 1344, a licensed quadrangular castle with walls up to 12 feet thick. Kings, an earldom, wartime barracks and a film crew have all passed through it since. 1 dig
12 records Italy RomeRome gathers its past on a scale few towns can match: a Forum where Caesar's body was burned and a temple later raised over his ashes, an amphitheatre built on Nero's drained lake, baths broken by Gothic siege, and squares that still trace the shapes of a buried stadium and bathhouse beneath Baroque fountains and churches. 15 digs
201 records
A 3,300-year-old Egyptian obelisk in a Roman square Obelisco Flaminio · 1290 BC–1980 Rome's market square and former execution ground Giordano Bruno monument · 1219 BC–1889 An oval baroque square built inside a Roman stadium Piazza Navona · 1219 BC–2014 The killing that ended the Republic Chiesa di San Nicola de Calcarario · 1219 BC–1929 Sixty senators cornered Rome's dictator here Fortuna Huiusce Diei · 1219 BC–1929 The rider who filled the hole with himself Rostra ad Divi Iulii · 1000 BC–608
Czechia PraguePrague's Old Town Square has held people since at least 4400 BC, witnessed executions of Hussite captains and Bohemian leaders, given the city its astronomical clock since 1410, and now houses the registered office of the European Association of Archaeologists, founded in 1994. 1 dig
14 records France ParisParis grew from a besieged island fortress in the Seine into a capital rebuilt by kings, revolutionaries and Haussmann's planners alike. Its streets hold a demolished medieval castle, toll gates turned into grand squares, wartime executions and liberations, and theatres, cafés and cabarets layered over Roman and Eocene ground. 39 digs
404 records
A courthouse built on a royal palace Quai de l'Horloge · 2843 BC–2018 Paris's largest public square Obélisque de Louxor · 1289 BC–2024 A judicial island has held prisoners, kings and corpses alike Siege of Paris · 500–1972
Ireland DublinDublin's ground carries siege, rebellion and civil war in close company: a royalist army turned back at its walls in 1649, a British admiral's pillar stood and fell on O'Connell Street, and a gaol on Inchicore Road held and shot the men who tried to remake it. 3 digs
39 records
The pillar Dublin argued about for 157 years Spire of Dublin · 377 BC–2003
United Kingdom Berry PomeroyBerry Pomeroy, in South Devon, grew from a manor named 'Berri' in the Domesday Book of 1086 into a castle raised by the Pomeroy family in the late fifteenth century, then an Elizabethan mansion built by the Seymours within its walls, left to ruin after 1688. 1 dig
12 records United Kingdom AltarnunAltarnun gathers its history on Bodmin Moor around Jamaica Inn, a stone coaching inn built in 1750 on ground where an inn had stood since 1547. It served Cornish smuggling routes, sheltered Daphne du Maurier in 1930, and now keeps a museum of smuggling and her work. 1 dig
13 records United Kingdom InvernessInverness holds Culloden Battlefield, the open moor where the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart was defeated by government troops under the Duke of Cumberland on 16 April 1746, a day that ended Highland clan life as it had existed for centuries. 1 dig
14 records United Kingdom Barley-with-Wheatley BoothBarley-with-Wheatley Booth sits beneath Pendle Hill in Lancashire, a sandstone summit worked by named tenants from 1323, shaken by the 1612 witch trials, and later marked by George Fox's 1652 vision that founded the Quakers. 1 dig
13 records United Kingdom LancasterLancaster's story gathers on the hill above the River Lune, where a Roman fort gave way to a castle raised by Roger the Poitevin around 1093. Held by the Duchy of Lancaster, it served as prison and court for centuries, closing as a jail only in 2011. 1 dig
15 records United Kingdom LondonLondon is a city of layered ground: a Roman bathhouse beneath a Shadwell monument, a cholera pump traced by John Snow in Soho, a Norman fortress begun by William the Conqueror, and a square of Saxon knights. Plague pits, prisons, markets and cemeteries sit beneath its pavements still. 18 digs
263 records
A Victorian burial ground, still open for burials Colonnade · 2200 BC–2021 A 1960s market hall with the largest concrete dome in Europe West Poultry Avenue · 2800 BC–2000 A dying Edinburgh preacher's church became Europe's first Coptic church Prince of Teck · 1610 BC–now The Father who walked into the cholera ward Roman Bath House · 1508 BC–1983
United States DonnerDonner, near Truckee, California, holds ground long used by the Washoe before it became the winter camp where the Donner Party was trapped by snow in October 1846. The site later became a tourist attraction, a memorial park, and a place still marked by the region's railroad and Chinatown history. 1 dig
14 records United States Fall RiverFall River holds one recorded piece of ground so far: 230 Second Street, where Andrew and Abby Borden were killed with a hatchet in 1892. Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted, and the house later became a bed and breakfast and murder museum. 1 dig
14 records Portugal GrandolaGrândola, in Portugal's Setúbal region, joins a market town whose name became a revolution's password with the older ground around Melides, where burial sites by the coastal lagoons predate any village by thousands of years. Between them runs a line from Mesolithic graves to a song broadcast at midnight in 1974. 2 digs
16 records
A stretch of ancient burial ground near a lagoon Melides · 2500 BC–now
Portugal MatosinhosMatosinhos is a coastal municipality near Porto, settled since Paleolithic and Mesolithic times and anchored by an Iron Age hillfort. Granted its own municipal standing from 1514, it later gathered forts, a wine house turned architecture centre, and a seafront square holding a modern net sculpture. 1 dig
13 records Portugal Torres VedrasTorres Vedras grew from a ridge above the Portuguese coast where Copper Age communities raised shared tombs long before any town stood there. Across later centuries it became a municipality, home to clergy, a future empress, a bishop, and soldiers, its ground holding burials from the Chalcolithic to the Liberal Wars. 1 dig
15 records Portugal Santiago do CacemSantiago do Cacém, in Setúbal district, grew into a market town amid open farm country that includes land near Abela, where a Bronze Age stone marker and the nearby Celtic and Roman town of Miróbriga mark older settlement, while farming continued across the surrounding parishes. 1 dig
4 records Morocco CasablancaCasablanca grew from the ancient city of Anfa into a port shaped by bombardment, colonial rule and later independence, bearing hospitals, churches, a mosque and a courthouse from different eras, and, near Al Fida – Mers Sultan, a refuge founded in 1985 for mothers rejected by their families. 1 dig
12 records Spain EsteponaEstepona's ground carries a long sequence of change: stone tombs from 3000 BC, Roman settlement and cemetery, a shift from Christian to Islamic burial rites, and the town's seizure by Henry IV's forces in 1457, when its mosque became a church. 1 dig
14 records Portugal AlbufeiraAlbufeira, on the Algarve coast, has held Phoenician and Carthaginian sailors, Roman villas and salting tanks, a medieval necropolis, and a town largely erased by the earthquake and tsunami of 1755. Its freshwater springs at Olhos de Água still rise through the sand regardless of who has governed above them. 1 dig
13 records Ireland BandonA church tower three streets from you once turned news of an execution into a coronation. 1 dig
14 records Portugal LouleLoulé's coast turned from pine-fringed beach to fishing parish to resort town. King Denis granted Quarteira a charter on 15 November 1297; centuries later, banker Cupertino de Miranda founded Vilamoura in 1966, close to the Roman ruins of Cerro da Vila. 1 dig
10 records United States PinedalePinedale, Wyoming, sits near Fremont Lake in Sublette County, ground marked by ancient hunting sites and a modern memorial alike. A 1993 federal phytoplankton survey of the lake, dedicated to biologist Robert C. Averett, shares its waters with the buried evidence of a 1980 family murder. 1 dig
7 records United States AlbuquerqueAlbuquerque's ground holds two quieter stories beneath its streets: a 1716 land grant held by a soldier's widow, and a farming settlement called Los Griegos. Railroad platting and the city's expanding grid reduced both to street names, one of which no longer even carries its original name. 2 digs
18 records
A village that became a number then vanished Colleen Avenue Northeast · 1909–2003 A grant faded into a grid of streets Lafying Street Northeast · 1909–1988
United Kingdom North LeighNorth Leigh carries an Iron Age fort, a sixty-room Roman villa, a vanished medieval village at Tilgarsley, and a Georgian hunting lodge rebuilt as Eynsham Hall. Saxon burials, a chantry chapel endowed by a grieving widow, and a wartime maternity ward all mark ground later turned hotel and private club. 5 digs
71 records
A mansion that became a maternity ward Estelle Manor · 4000 BC–2025
United Kingdom BicesterBicester grew up around an early Christian cemetery, a Saxon church tower, and a medieval priory that drew pilgrims to a saint's relics and held a countess among its dead. Nearby, Roman Alchester and Akeman Street marked older passage, and a highwayman's ambush on the Bicester road in 1818 left its own grim record. 1 dig
12 records Portugal Salvaterra de MagosSalvaterra de Magos grew around a royal hunting lodge built in the 1500s, where a royal marriage contract was signed in 1383 and the Portuguese court gathered through the 1700s. Fires in 1817 and 1828 and an 1858 earthquake destroyed the palace, leaving its chapel and falconry standing near today's bullring. 1 dig
9 records
A record of ground, not a magazine.

Nothing here was commissioned. Each place is assembled from its own sources, published at the resolution of the ground rather than the point, and reviewed again when the record changes. No page reports a person.