New Iron Age discovery threatened by potatoes
Submitted by vicky on Sunday, 16 November 2003 Page Views: 4584
Iron Age and Later PrehistoryThe largest geophysical survey done in Britain has found an entire prehistoric, Roman and Anglo-Saxon landscape where none was previously known. However, archaeologists fear for its protection due to intensive potato growing in the area, encouraged by a local chip factory.By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Anglo-Saxon settlements, lost for a thousand years, together with evidence of Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman ribbon-development up to 12 miles long have been found using the latest imaging techniques in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorks.
English Heritage said the discoveries meant that the archaeology of the settlement of Britain would have to be rewritten.
However, urgent action would be needed to ensure that the site and others were not destroyed by intensive agriculture. The Pickering site is worked by farmers being urged to grow potatoes.
David Miles, chief archaeologist with English Heritage, said that the finds, on sandy soils on the south side of the Vale of Pickering, showed the scale of what could be found in fields in other parts of Britain using the latest geophysical techniques.
Archaeologists are now involved in a race against time to buy the Pickering site, which covers an area of more than 2,000 acres, because a McCain's chip factory in Scarborough is encouraging farmers to grow potatoes on land where only shallow ploughing occurred before.
Potato growing uses deeper ploughs and harvesting from sandy soils is known to lead to erosion of up to 15 centimetres of soil a year and quickly erases fragile archaeology.
Researchers using the latest magnetometry equipment, which measures differences in the local magnetic field, walked 500 miles in the course of surveying fields between two villages.
Mr Miles described the finds as "fantastic". He said: "There were probably more people living there then than there are now.
"What it shows is that you have these enormous landscapes which are still unknown to us. There is enormously more to be found than we had expected. These new techniques are enabling us to see what we have never seen before."
He said the earliest of the discoveries - pre-historic field systems marked by pits and mounds for reasons yet to be explained - dated back 4,000 years.
Dominic Powlesland, of the Landscape Research Centre in the Vale of Pickering, said that until the survey the remains of only one Iron Age (300 BC-100 BC) settlement had been found in the vale. The survey found nine.
"The results were jaw-dropping - both from the point of view of the density of archaeology actually there and because we are only now realising how big is the destruction caused by new agricultural techniques."
"Rather than the odd Iron Age settlements there is continuous ribbon settlement, pretty much like present day settlements along a road."
Mr Powlesland said the area was sand covered with a layer of loam which had protected the prehistoric developments but if deeper ploughs cut into the loam "archaeologtical mayhem" would be caused. Action was needed urgently to protect what had been found.
Modern farming was more destructive because of bigger machines and the cultivation of places that had not formerly been cultivated.
"We are not trying to stop progress but to find ways in which farming can continue in ways whereby the past can be protected," said Mr Powlesland.
Contacts have been made with McCains, potato industry sources and local farmers who are said to be very anxious to find ways by which the discoveries can be safeguarded while allowing farming to continue.
News of the discoveries emerged at the launch of English Heritage's State of the Historic Environment Report, its first report on the overall historic environment including the landscape for the first time.
It said that in 1995, 32 per cent of all archaeological field monuments were being damaged by arable farming.
Source: The Telegraph 26/11/02
Note: Update on this story reported last year - In a bid to halt the site's destruction, talks have been set up between English Heritage and the Department for the Environment. See comment below.
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