preservation or thrown to the wolves?

[1man1desk]

quoteon't let em build where there is archaeology, thats the only real answer!

Achingknees is dead right. Virtually the whole of the UK landscape and 100% of its townscapes is man-made, or at least altered, so it is all archaeology in one way or another.

So, you either stop all building of anything in the UK, or you have a system to decide the following:

• when the archaeology is so important that no building is allowed;
• when it can be allowed, subject to mitigation (and what mitigation);
• when the impact is so insignificant that it does not matter.

We do have such a system, albeit an imperfect one. However, no matter how good the system, you are never going to get universal agreement about where the cut-off points should be.



1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[deepdigger]

Fine, fully understand that its not going to happen, but theres building and then there's building. No-one's going to complain about the building of a new hospital and, if its in an inner city area then while we're doing it lets have a look and see what has been going on here before, if anything of interest is found then as Troll says why not make it a feature of the new building or at least accesable for future generations.
And then theres building on a new green field site simply to fill the pockets of some bloated house building company who only want to use greenfield site because its cheaper to build there and just ride roughshod over the archaeology in order to make more profit!
Greed over Need, since thatcher, who wins?

deep

[1man1desk]

OK, developers make money out of house building. But they only do so because we are willing to pay through the nose for houses, and we are mainly willing to do that because there aren't enough of them.

We all need to live in houses - there aren't enough suitable old houses in the right places, so we need to build new ones - and all houses need a bit of land to be built on.

If you go brownfield - you're generally in a town, so often there will be a risk of complex deep strat etc., plus risk of contamination etc. There is a limited number of such sites, and not all are suitable for housing.

If you go greenfield - all sorts of other environmental issues as well as archaeology.

If you say don't build new houses - more homeless people, more poor people with no hope of ever buying a home.

Pros and cons both ways. Mostly, it is not the developer that decides what land is available (whether green or brown), its the local authority in setting their local plan - a democratic process in which we can all get involved if we choose.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[sniper]

slightly ironic that the archaeologists who work on the sites in advance of construction of new houses are never going to be able to afford to buy one...

++ i spend my days rummaging around in dead people ++

[monitor lizard]

And if no houses get built we're all out of work...

ML

[troll]

Not just houses I`m afraid. Just how many multiplex cinemas/bowling alleys and shopping centres do we actually need?

..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)

[ladyjen]

enough to emoloy all the ex-miners and rover workers [:I]

[deepdigger]

And unempolyed archaeologists!!

deep