A systematic combination of aerial and subsequent geophysical surveys over the six years of the ‘Settlement Patterns in Prehistoric Bohemia’ project yielded much new and often surprising information about the nature of archaeological sites, features and locations in the agricultural lowlands of Bohemia. Newly discovered and verified large ditches represent a group of very diverse and often, in Bohemian archaeology, atypical linear features. The results of large‐area magnetometric surveys aided in mapping locations more precisely and in the overall separation of linear features, as well as in choosing among probable archaeological interpretations of the sites. Future archaeological verification of more of these identified atypical situations by test trenches would provide more precise dating, and perhaps unambiguous interpretations of prehistoric sites. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.