She was described by fellow medieval archaeologist Paul Ashbee as a "discerning systematiser of the great array of Anglo-Saxon grave furnishings".

[6] Sonia Chadwick excavated at Lullingstone Roman Villa (Kent) as a school girl, and at an early medieval site at Morgan Porth (Cornwall) from 1951 to 1953.

[4] The field of Anglo-Saxon archaeology developed significantly in the early 20th century with systematic approaches to data; Hawkes was part of a wave of archaeologists including J. N. L. Myres, Vera Evison, and Audrey Meaney who continued this trend, investigating cemeteries to explore the history of England in the early Middle Ages.

[6] The museum took over excavations at an Anglian cemetery in Fonaby, Lincolnshire; Chadwick was responsible for the finds and began indexing them – a project which was built on by Alison M. Cook and the finished product published more than two decades later.

[15] She left Scunthorpe Museum in 1959 to join the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, where Christopher lectured, as a research assistant.

[6] Christopher joined Sonia at Longbridge Deverill for the final season of excavation in 1960,[16] which Paul Ashbee described as a "honeymoon joint enterprise".

[8] A major piece of work on Late Roman zoomorphic belt fittings, "Soldiers and settlers", prompted much debate.

[4][7] At the time of her death, Hawkes had several unpublished projects, including a full write-up of the excavations at the early medieval cemetery at Finglesham.

Helena Hamerow, a professor of medieval archaeology and a former student of Hawkes, led a project to digitise the archive with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Römisch-Germanische Kommission.

In December 2001, the Institute of Archaeology dedicated a plaque and a 1937 lithograph by Paul Nash, Landscape of the Megaliths, to the memory of Christopher and Sonia Hawkes.