The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

The past in the present
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general public have an increasingly strong voice in these discussions too, as the case of the Rose
Theatre in London illustrates very clearly.
The Rose Theatre is one of four Tudor/Jacobean playhouses known to have existed on London’s
South Bank, its exact site being well known. In 1988, the local planning authority granted planning
permission for the development of the site as offices, with a voluntary agreement between the
developers and the Museum of London to allow and fund two months’ excavation before
development commenced. However, once the remains of the theatre were uncovered and found
to be in reasonably good condition, public pressure to preserve the site became intense, with
groups of well-known actors and others staging protests, lobbying Parliament to schedule the
remains, and forming the Rose Theatre Trust to pursue legal actions through the courts to prevent
development. English Heritage stepped in with temporary measures to preserve the remains
while a solution was found, and helped develop a long-term preservation scheme which involved
the redesign of the building on new foundations and the creation of a sub-basement in which the
remains of the theatre could be protected and conserved (Biddle 1989; Wainwright 1989).
What the Rose Theatre case highlights is, firstly, the intensity of public interest and concern
for the archaeological heritage, and, secondly, the fact that even when the proper procedures
have been followed there are no easy answers to satisfy everyone. An important element of
archaeological resource management has become the skill of finding ways of satisfying more
than one demand at a time, balancing competing interests. The tools available to do this comprise
what are called ‘management options’. These can be deployed either in series or in parallel for
maximum effect, the full range of such options being very considerable, and expanding. Broadly,
however, they fall into three groups: protection, conservation and exploitation.
• Protection. This involves minimizing or guarding against the adverse affects of some kind of
identifiable threat to the archaeological resource. The main source of such threats comes
from disturbance of the ground in which ancient structures and deposits lie.
In urban areas, construction works such as the excavation of basements, foundations, soakaways,
drains and lift-shafts are all common causes of such disturbance, as too is the laying of
pipelines or groundworks connected with the creation of level surfaces for car-parks and
playing fields. These can be anticipated and a balance achieved between the economical
construction of buildings and the constraints (archaeological and otherwise) of the site. There
are a number of ways in which the preservation of archaeological deposits can be achieved,
many of which require an engineered solution to the problem of supporting large structures
on small but strong foundations.
In the countryside, the main threats are from agriculture and extensive land-use such as
forestry. Here protection can be provided either by creating local micro-environments for
recognized monuments, for example by taking them out of cultivation, or by fencing and
marking them (Figure 17.6). Intensive threats in the countryside, from quarrying, mineral
extraction and road construction, for example, require similar protective measures to those
used in urban areas, and here again engineers are becoming increasingly imaginative in what
can be achieved.
Protection, however, is a static response. The threat needs to be anticipated, and in developing
ways of averting damage, other inadvertent consequences sometimes emerge.
• Conservation. This, by contrast, is a dynamic response and involves establishing a positive
relationship between processes of change and the maintenance of the archaeological resource.
Typically this involves the adoption of land management regimes that promote the stability of
buried or upstanding archaeological deposits, and keeping in check any events that might