Climate change is threatening to destroy treasures buried in the UK as the soils that protect them dry out.
A Roman toilet seat, the world’s oldest boxing glove, and the oldest handwritten letter by a woman are some of the extraordinary objects discovered in at-risk British peatlands.
It means climate change could undermine our understanding of our past, say archaeologists.
About 22,500 archaeological sites in UK may be in danger.
The problem is that changing weather patterns are drying out some peatlands – the waterlogged soils that cover about 10% of the UK.
Because peat contains very little oxygen, organic materials like wood, leather and textiles do not rot. They can survive for thousands of years, preserved by the stable anoxic chemistry of the soil.
But if the soils dry, oxygen can enter the system, kick-starting the process of decomposition. If that happens artefacts can, quite quickly, rot away.
Excavating these potentially huge sites could cost hundreds of millions of pounds and take decades, by which time they may have been badly damaged.
The trustees of Magna, a Roman fort alongside Hadrian’s Wall, fear the process is already under way at the site.
The warnings come as celebrations for the 1,900th anniversary of the start of construction of the wall begins this week.
The land at Magna has subsided by up to a metre in places in the past decade. It is evidence of “desiccation” – the drying of the peat layer – fears Dr Andrew Birley, the chief archaeologist at the site.
It means “an historical time capsule” is at risk, he says, because only a tiny part of the site has so far been excavated.
“This place has the potential to be quite frankly, amazing,” Dr Birley believes. “Pretty much everything the Romans used here for 300 or 400 years could have been preserved in more or less the same state it was thrown away, which is an incredible opportunity.”
While an archaeologist working at a “dry” site might find 10% of what was once there, at a peatland site they may find as much as 90% of the material culture of ancient communities, say archaeologists.
“The loss of peatlands would have big implications for the understanding of the country’s history but also for our climatic history and our environmental history,” says Dr Everett.
That’s why she believes there should be greater efforts to protect them.
Dr Birley agrees. “If we lose places like this, we lose that direct connection to the people who lived in this island 2000 years ago,” he says.
“We lose the chance to learn as much as we can about them. And we lose part of our own heritage and part of our own history.”
Source:
BBC
