The Northamptonshire Archaeology Unit was established within Northamptonshire County Council in the mid-1970s. As a single service it contained the county Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) and by the late 1970s there was a permanent digging team. Early successes include major excavations at the Anglo-Saxon church and cememtery at Furnells, Raunds and at Ashton Roman Town. By the mid-1980s the Raunds Area Project had been set up, in partnership with English Heritage, to investigate threatened archaeology in advance of a new road, quarrying and housing projects.
The Northamptonshire Archaeology Unit carried out the Raunds Area Survey, involving the systematic fieldwalking of an area of 40ha, and excavated the prehistoric landscape and overlying deserted medieval hamlet at West Cotton, Raunds, with further extensive excavations within the town of Raunds. The series of monograph reports presenting the results of this major landscape study are under final editing.
The issuing of Planning and Policy Guidance 16 (PPG16) placed the responsibility for funding archaeological works on the developer, and the new financial basis of developer funding and competitive tendering made it necessary to separate the service into curatorial and contracting sections. Northamptonshire Archaeology was formed in 1993 as an independent commercial contracting organisation within Northamptonshire County Council, to complement the continuing role of the curatorial section, Northamptonshire Heritage, now the NCC Historic Environment Team.