4.1 Historic landscapes (3 of 3)
It is too early to say much about other projects currently underway although the benefit of complete Historic landscape Assessment maps for a region as large as Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Avon, and the Cotswolds, (if Warwickshire can be included to fill the gap) scarcely needs stating. In addition, each project to date has generated new ideas and the methodology is continually advancing. Of the two most recent projects, Hampshire was the first local authority to use consultants rather than its own staff on the main project, which is closely linked to the countryside character map. A project planned for East Anglia, on the other hand, would bring a much closer integration of English Heritage's national settlement map regions, and will also be the prelude to a landscape-scale Monuments Protection Programme evaluation of field systems and their archaeology in this part of the eastern dispersed settlement province.
All these projects, whether completed or just beginning, have confirmed that the Historic landscape Assessment methodology as pioneered in Cornwall following the English Heritage Historic landscape Project is a practical method within reach of available resources, technology, and levels of knowledge. It extends understanding and interpretation of the landscape, but because it takes a sensible broad-based approach that emphasises analysis and understanding rather than fact', it does not call for a greater amount of data than already exists; nor does it require extensive field-work or data collection. The resultant map, however, provides a context for all existing and future data whether site-specific or landscape, it helps us to understand the limitations of present knowledge, and most importantly almost automatically poses questions about the historic landscape that can generate future research agenda and strategies.
It is also abundantly clear that the maps, while normally produced by archaeologists, are easily accessible to other professions (eg planners) or indeed to the general public. In Cornwall it has proved its value in underpinning concepts of regional and national identity, and in integrating people's awareness of local character and origins. In the Peak National Park, it is proving to be a good vehicle for spreading awareness of the historic dimension and origins of the Park's well-known landscape, and in particular for linking up with habitat-based ecological mapping. In Hampshire, the Historic landscape Assessment project is designed from the outset to provide time-depth and historical characterisation in a format suited to be used in direct conjunction with the county's own landscape character areas (which in turn are directly related to both the Countryside Commission's countryside character areas and English Nature's Natural Areas), and to more detailed landscape areas defined at district level. Finally, experience in several counties has demonstrated the general flexibility of the Historic Landscape Characterisation approach, its ability to achieve multiple objectives, and its sensitivity to local needs, notably the ability to adapt to local circumstances by employing different typologies.
At the same time as English Heritage's work has been progressing and with some help from English Heritage, the Countryside Character Programme has produced a national characterisation of the present landscape using a wide range of factors and variables. The national characterisation of cultural attributes, most notably those recording the density and pattern of fields, and the impact on the present landscape of earlier large-scale industrial activity, will open new areas of work. An even greater impact will be produced as the wide-ranging results of the Monuments Protection Programme's settlement project start to be applied as a framework for broader historic landscape assessments. Some of the insights it affords into regional spatial patterns and chronological trajectories of landscape development will be particularly significant. This is already happening, for example, in work on the archaeology of open field farming in the East Midlands, which has demonstrated that the structure or pattern revealed by the subdivision of England into major zones of nucleated settlement/cleared land and dispersed settlement/woodland, with its many more local subdivisions, probably has very early origins; these results will sit very usefully alongside the more detailed, and more holistic, county Historic Landscape Assessment maps.
The work summarised here has involved many individual archaeologists, and local authorities, and has taken about five years to achieve. Even at the low level of detail used by the method, any ambition to extend Historic Landscape Assessment to the whole country (and eventually to revisit and strengthen the maps of counties already assessed) will be a daunting one, even if greater availability and increasingly sophisticated GIS can help. On the other hand the ultimate benefit a simple, easily explained, locally-sensitive interpretation of the historic dimension of the present-day landscape of England (out of which grow improved management of change, more focused influence on land use, greater public awareness and support, and an ever-growing understanding of the country's archaeological resource) is an aim well worth pursuing.
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