11th August 2008, 04:07 PM
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RedEarth - two good points for discussion here.
Areas likely to have important Roman remains may be within a conservation area, but at the moment this would be due to coincidence rather than design. However the draft Heritage Protection Bill indicates that it would become possible for conservation areas to be designated on the basis of special archaeological and artistic interest as well as the exisitng criteria of special historic and architectural interest (see para. 278 of the Explanatory Notes regarding the sections of the Bill not yet drafted).
what about greenfield sites where a potential developer pays for a detailed pre-planning evaluation, then gets scared by the results and asks the landowner or tenant farmer to undertake some deep(er) ploughing in order to lose much of the archaeology. The application could then describe how the archaeological potential indicated by the evaluation is now much diminished.
Beamo
First point - indeed it would only be a coincidence at the moment, but it would be quite likely at present that in an urban situation any areas of likely Roman potential would be in a conservation area. If this improves with the new bill that can only be good.
Second - deliberately ploughing an area sterile would certainly do the trick! Although there's something a bit dodgy about the expression 'plough me sterile!' Sorry!
I suspect the reason a lot of these things don't happen is simply the hassle of doing it, the cost, and the fact that the county could still ask for further investigation on the basis that supposedly removing all of the archaeology doesn't really mean that there is nothing there. Then they would be forced to pay someone to excavate a load of backfill/ploughsoil, which would make them think twice. Not much good for the archaeology, but in the long term perhaps effective. And besides, I have known of sites where work was supposed to have happened and never did because they forgot to get anyone to do it or whatever. It is also likely that any archaeologists doing pariticularly sub-standard work would be stoppable, but probably only once they had trashed a couple of sites! Either way, some archaeology would be lost but for the greater good - or is it wrong to say that?