The British Environmental Secretary Owen Patterson has taken a leaf out of the Historic Environment Mismanagement book. Just as the latter sees the artefact patterns that make up cultural landscapes fit for dismembering, and actually encourages the scattering of the decontextualised "portable antiquities" into new personal assemblages, he apparently reckons Britain can do the same with ancient woodland. Rescue's letter regarding protection for ancient woodland, explaining why one is OK and the other not has been published in today's Telegraph. You can see it here. (Oh, by the way, Rescue do not actually explain why they are not bellyaching about ripping the artefacts out of cultural landscapes, perhaps they should).
Vignette: Trees are sexier than finds scatters, "can this disappear? asks an article. That thousands of sites are disappearing from the archaeological record, trashed by artefact hunting alarms nobody.
1 comment:
I must say damage due to removal of woodland that dates prior to deep ploughing is exactly the same as detecting on undisturbed pasture and deserves exactly the same degree of condemnation.
As for biodiversity offsetting, it's a pretty cynical bit of whitewashing but at least there's a token bit of replacement of trees or wild flowers. In contrast to artefact hunting which leaves gaps that will never be filled.
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