In July 1995, the national survey, based on a questionnaire designed to examine the contents of sites and monuments records across England, was completed. The field survey and central research programmes have also been completed, and attention has now turned to completing the aerial photographic interpretation programme and preparing materials for dissemination. Clear implications for the management of the archaeological resource are emerging at a strategic level. This will help to direct local resources, raise awareness of the measured effects of a wide variety of impacts, and generally assist the process of archaeological resource management in regional and local contexts. The national and field survey programmes have been designed to quantify the recorded and extant elements of the resource, the latter by means of a sampling strategy and the former through counts and cross counts of all sites and monuments record entries.
It is estimated that by the year 2,000 there will be 1,000,000 known items recorded in local authority sites and monuments records. Figures based on sampled data will be revised by further statistical testing during final analysis but show that of the current total, approximately 76% of all items are recorded as monuments, the remaining 24% are described as stray finds, mobiliary, urban areas, archaeological landscapes or, miscellaneous records. Since their establishment, sites and monuments records have also undertaken work to enhance the scope and content of individual records through various means. A provisional sampling exercise conducted with data for those sites subjected to MARS field survey shows that 18% of monuments known today were already recorded by 1940.
A unique record comprising elements of individual sites and monuments records, the National Monuments Record, original fieldwork, and original aerial photograph analysis has been created for over 15,000 monuments visited between September 1994 and March 1996. In due course, these records can be cross-related back to original data sources and will form the basis for forthcoming analysis of the state of the extant archaeological resource and how it has changed over the last 50 years. An indication of the current state, however, is given by the land use context in which monuments survive and the associated activities which may lead to either amelioration in condition or damage to a monument. The range and extent of land-uses has been recorded, and differential conditions observed in cases of multiple land-use; in due course, cross-tabulation of differing useages will help to show how this relates to monument condition. After completion of air photograph interpretation the changing state of 15,000 monuments can be quantified. The project has set out to establish the impact of these various land uses and will estimate the level of potential damage or risk to which monuments are now prone.
The range of grants, controls, stewardship incentives, and conservation measures offered to land owners and managers over the last 5 decades have in various measures determined the character of both the countryside and townscape and in turn, these have also affected survival of the archaeological resource. Data collected during the course of the project will be related original to a wider study of these measures and more generally, the nature of decay in particular situations (eg Longbarrows). Clearly the picture here cannot represent the situation for all long barrows in England, however, since monument form is related to the rate of decay, such a model is useful in highlighting thresholds where archaeological information is either lost completely or is not worth recovering. Further investigation will be made of excavated examples across a range of single monument classes as well as distinctive landscape types to establish patterns in archaeological survival or decay. This work will also support the more general field survey and aerial photographic programmes. The dissemination of data and analysis in the form of core datasets, and summary reports is scheduled for 1997, and interim publication of the early results is now in hand. A World Wide Web site is available at http://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/consci/text_mars/marsint.htm.
