The Fenland Project: from survey to management and beyond

Abstract

The English Fenland, a million acres of drained wetlands in eastern England, is on the doorstep of Antiquity's present office. But no local excuse is needed to report once more on work in a classic region; from large-scale survey the focus has moved to assessment of what survives, and now to managing for its better future that discouragingly small proportion of its old archaeological wealth which is still with us.

Environment, Archaeology and Landscape: Papers in honour of Professor Martin Bell

“…The nearby discoveries of the waterlogged settlements of Glastonbury and Meare 'lake villages' by Arthur Bulleid retained that focus into the mid-20th century (Bulleid & Gray 1911, 1917, 1948Gray 1966;Gray & Bulleid 1953). In the 1950s and 1960s Sir Harry Godwin was the first to provide the palaeoenvironmental background to these prehistoric structures (Godwin 1941(Godwin , 1948(Godwin , 1955(Godwin , 1960(Godwin , 1981 and in the 1970s and 1980s the Somerset Levels Project, under the direction of John Coles and Bryony Orme (later Coles), conducted extensive rescue excavations of the prehistoric trackways in the peat cuttings and reinvestigated the lake villages , providing the blueprint for the subsequent investigations of the other major wetland areas in England, funded by English Heritage (Coles & Hall 1997;Hall & Coles 1994;Hodgkinson et al 2000;. This paper focuses on the work in the Somerset wetlands since the ending of the Somerset Levels and Moors Project.…”