The Roman sites in Colne Fen were excavated due to the expansion of Hanson's Earith gravel quarry. The existence of the sites was already known. Roman pottery had been collected from the surface, and some very small-scale excavations took place in the 1920s and 1970s. Much larger scale excavations were now needed to fully understand the sites. The Langdale Hale site was excavated in 1999, followed by the Camp Ground in 2001. The topsoil was stripped off using mechanical diggers to expose the archaeology. The remains could then be dug by hand.

Excavations also took place at other sites in Colne Fen, that dated to the Iron Age, the time before the Roman conquest. These were small farming settlements, dotted along the edge of the Fen. The people lived in round houses, grew cereals and kept livestock. The two Roman sites were very different. People now lived in rectangular houses, and their settlements were laid out in new ways.

The Langdale Hale farm was made up of several rectangular ditched enclosures, arranged either side of a roadway leading towards the Camp Ground. Two of the enclosures contained wooden farmhouses. There were also storehouses, work buildings, 60 kilns for drying grain, wells for getting water, and numerous rubbish heaps. Several burials were also found, six of which were placed in a small cemetery alongside the road. One large enclosure at the south of the site was largely empty and was probably used for keeping animals. The people who lived at Langdale Hale would mainly have been farmers and craft-workers. Crafts included weaving clothes and making items out of pottery, leather, wood and iron. Probably no-one was very rich. Few expensive objects were found and the houses were mostly quite simple. However, a writing stylus does show that someone educated and able to write lived here.

The settlement at the Camp Ground was a much larger village with over forty buildings placed in ditched enclosures with streets between them. Although study of this site is not complete, it was probably a market place and an important centre for the local area. Coins are more common than at Langdale Hale. Signs of wealth include some large, impressive buildings and a stone tomb decorated with a carving of the Roman god Jupiter.