Archaeology & Wetlands

 Wetlands are precious, extremely fragile, bio-diverse environments comprising, landscapes such as mires, lakes, rivers and their floodplains, estuaries and coasts. The excellent preservation of organic materials within waterlogged deposits provides infinitely more evidence of past societies than dry-land sites.

Without wetlands, there would be no Lindow Man, no Sweet Track, no Flag Fen, no Dover Boat, and no Seahenge. Wetlands also contain extremely valuable palaeoenvironmental information providing a continuous record of past environments and enabling understanding of long-term landscape and climatic change.

Research into Monuments At Risk in England's Wetlands (MAREW) commissioned by English Heritage from the University of Exeter shows:

• At least 50% of the original extent of lowland peatland has been lost during the last 50 years
• An estimated 2,930 wetland monuments have been totally destroyed, and some 10,450 are likely to have suffered damage, desiccation, and partial destruction in the same period.
• The main causes of this widespread destruction are drainage, water abstraction, conversion of pasture into arable, peat wastage, peat erosion, peat extraction, and urban and industrial development.
• 72% of local authorities have no policy for the identification, assessment, preservation, or management of wetland archaeology.

The archaeological potential of wetland areas has now been shown to be very high and it is essential that we develop effective mitigation strategies as soon as possible if we are to avoid the large-scale destruction typical of previous decades.

English Heritage have now developed a high level strategy which establishes a framework for a coherent approach to the conservation and management of wetlands. The strategy document is available in PDF

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 Introduction to EH Wetlands Strategy

For almost thirty years English Heritage has supported a long-term strategy of survey and research of the main lowland wetlands areas of England (the Somerset Levels, the Fens, the raised mires, basin, and valley wetlands of North-West England, and the Humber wetlands). Unlike free-draining soils, wetland landscapes preserve both organic archaeological remains (especially wood) and natural palaeo-environmental material. These landscapes possess a uniquely important component of our cultural heritage. In the early 1970s, it was apparent that wetlands were under severe pressure from peat extraction, intensifying agricultural exploitation, and natural erosion.

The primary aim of the four wetland projects was to identify and record the archaeological potential of each area. This would underpin the development of a pro-active management strategy to help conserve areas of high archaeological potential and significance. The ambitious survey programme will be completed this year with the publication of the final reports of the North-West Wetland Survey Project and the Humber Wetland Project, and was celebrated at a conference held by the British Academy on the subject of Wetland Landscapes and Cultural Responses. This coincided with publication of a special wetland issue of Current Archaeology (sponsored by English Heritage).

It is now time to look to the future, and English Heritage has developed a high-level strategy which sets out the general approach we will take to encourage the more effective conservation, protection, and management of England's wetlands. This strategy builds on the results of the four survey projects, the Wetland Management Project, and a desk-top assessment of Monuments at Risk in England's Wetlands. Implementation of this strategy is a key component of our Monuments at Risk agenda.

The Need for a Strategy

Wetland landscapes and the monuments they contain are a critical natural and cultural resource under severe threat of erosion and destruction. Unless firm action is taken in the very near future to develop positive conservation and management strategies, the cultural heritage component of wetlands will disappear largely unseen and unrecorded, and England's remaining wetlands will only survive as natural and semi-natural features and landscapes.

There is much common ground in the biodiversity and historic environment of wetlands. Both depend on maintaining these special places, since their destruction removes both the natural and the cultural heritage. Even though some wetlands can be created or rehabilitated to restore, at least in part, their ecological values and features, once a wetland is destroyed or drained, its cultural and historical features are lost forever. Decision makers and managers of the natural and the cultural features of wetlands are, however, not always fully aware of the benefits of working together jointly to safeguard this heritage.

English Heritage is committed to the conservation and good management of this most important and most fragile part of the historic environment, and will work to extend the co-operation and understanding between the historic environment and nature conservation disciplines that has begun so fruitfully in recent years.