12th February 2014, 12:03 AM
Well, IF the waters ever recede, we'll be looking at a real mix of interventions. There's your ditches and banks, as well as the inevitable repair trenches for services, rebuilding of roads and seafronts, etc. Then once damaged buildings get pulled down their replacements will cause fresh disturbance.
I reckon the immediate repairs to infrastructure will largely get ramrodded through without any archaeology due to pressure to get society working again. Longer-term repair/replacement of damaged homes might be a different story. And of course there's all the "preserved" stuff in deeply flooded fields that'll get mashed to bits by cattle and tractors as farming returns to still-squidgy ground...
But then again, we might be looking at the sea permanently reclaiming the Levels. Curiously the money and troops denied the Somerset folk magically get rolled out when the Thames stock-broker belt gets wet...
Personally I think this is another of those evolutionary pressure-points, where humanity will start growing gills!
I reckon the immediate repairs to infrastructure will largely get ramrodded through without any archaeology due to pressure to get society working again. Longer-term repair/replacement of damaged homes might be a different story. And of course there's all the "preserved" stuff in deeply flooded fields that'll get mashed to bits by cattle and tractors as farming returns to still-squidgy ground...
But then again, we might be looking at the sea permanently reclaiming the Levels. Curiously the money and troops denied the Somerset folk magically get rolled out when the Thames stock-broker belt gets wet...
Personally I think this is another of those evolutionary pressure-points, where humanity will start growing gills!