Work this year was largely focused on review and consolidation, nevertheless we still met the 'headline' target of 1,800 scheduling recommendations to the Department of National Heritage. The Schedule now stands at 16,500 monuments, of which over 40% is documented to modern standards. The year also saw progress with the primary task of reviewing the resource, notably by continuing our principal programme of national evaluation.
The first reports on 20th-century defence sites were completed and will provide an invaluable aid for the Defence of Britain project, as well as allowing development of policy for the management and protection of the best surviving examples. In the industrial archaeology programme, work has started on scheduling selected examples of the coal and lead mining industries. Basic reports on shortlists of sites ('Step 3' reports) have also been completed for the other metal extraction industries (tin, arsenic, copper, zinc, and other metals) and we plan to proceed to consultation and policy definition for these during 1996-97. Work on other industries has also commenced, following the preparation this year of national overviews for stone quarry, lime burning, and the water supply industry.
The medieval settlement project carried out by Durham completed its first stage, and is currently entering the next stage leading to more formal publication. Results have already begun to be released, however, and we are beginning to schedule medieval settlements using this national framework of regional and local diversity. We have also publicised its methodology and results at a series of conferences and seminars during the year.
The year was also the start of a period of reflection and review, as the Monuments Protection Programme approached the end of its first 10 years of operation. Much has changed in archaeology, conservation, and the wider world since the Programme was first conceived in the wake of the review 'England's Archaeological Resource'. There remains a pressing requirement to continue to up-date the Schedule, but greater emphasis needs to be put on the broader task of evaluating the whole of the archaeological resource, in order to inform planning, conservation, and research decisions in a wider arena than that of the Schedule. Dissemination of the methods and results of this review of our archaeology, and of the conservation theory which underlies it, is just as important as protecting a proportion of the resource by scheduling. During 1996-97, therefore, we will be discussing with our partners how the Monuments Protection Programme should be constituted for its second decade, bearing in mind future resources which may be available and the wider conservation context in which we will be operating.
