Farming vs. archeology

Not exactly news, but. . .

Thousands of archaeological sites are being damaged by farmers, English Heritage has warned. Ploughs had damaged or destroyed valuable sites, including Neolithic long barrows, Roman villas, Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and medieval field systems. . . "Modern intensive ploughing has arguably done more damage in six decades than traditional agriculture did in the preceding six centuries". . .

Since 1945 many sites, including some of the oldest visible monuments, have been destroyed or are being seriously damaged, ploughed up or degraded by increasingly powerful farm machinery and ever more intensive cultivation, English Heritage said. . .

The character of whole landscapes has also been damaged by intensive cultivation as in Padbury, Buckinghamshire, where medieval ridge and furrows, well preserved in the 1950s, hedgerows and field trees have been destroyed. . .

The English Heritage report says nearly 3,000 nationally important monuments are today under cultivation. Although legislation gives protection to these monuments from most threats, in many cases it permits them to be ploughed, even though it can cause damage to fragile and irreplaceable archaeological remains.

Posted by David on July 25, 2003 3:04 PM