16th November 2009, 01:59 PM
Understanding plough damage
Edward Vaizey (Conservative MP for Wantage) put a parliamentary question to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on 20 March to ask ?what estimate her Department has made of the number of designated monuments that have been damaged by agricultural cultivation in the last ten years??. Back, via Culture Minister David Lammy, came the answer: ?my Department does not hold such information. However, English Heritage is currently undertaking a programme of regional Scheduled Monuments at Risk studies which will help to quantify the number of Scheduled Monuments under continuous or periodic cultivation, and the proportion of these considered to be at risk of damage. The outcomes of this research will be published by English Heritage later this year.?
:face-kiss:For once this is no brush-off:face-kiss:: The Archaeologist has an article explaining how English Heritage and DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) are working together on research to understand better exactly what happens to monuments under cultivation. These partners have in turn commissioned Oxford Archaeology to construct simulated archaeological features ? buried walls, pits, ditches and postholes ? which researchers at Cranfield University?s Soil Science Department are then cultivating using different techniques to understand what happens to sub-surface features and whether changes in farming practice can help.
This is a five-year project, but the results are clearly of great importance given the commitment in the Heritage Protection White Paper to provide better protection for scheduled monuments under cultivation:
Edward Vaizey (Conservative MP for Wantage) put a parliamentary question to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on 20 March to ask ?what estimate her Department has made of the number of designated monuments that have been damaged by agricultural cultivation in the last ten years??. Back, via Culture Minister David Lammy, came the answer: ?my Department does not hold such information. However, English Heritage is currently undertaking a programme of regional Scheduled Monuments at Risk studies which will help to quantify the number of Scheduled Monuments under continuous or periodic cultivation, and the proportion of these considered to be at risk of damage. The outcomes of this research will be published by English Heritage later this year.?
:face-kiss:For once this is no brush-off:face-kiss:: The Archaeologist has an article explaining how English Heritage and DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) are working together on research to understand better exactly what happens to monuments under cultivation. These partners have in turn commissioned Oxford Archaeology to construct simulated archaeological features ? buried walls, pits, ditches and postholes ? which researchers at Cranfield University?s Soil Science Department are then cultivating using different techniques to understand what happens to sub-surface features and whether changes in farming practice can help.
This is a five-year project, but the results are clearly of great importance given the commitment in the Heritage Protection White Paper to provide better protection for scheduled monuments under cultivation:
Reason: your past is my past