The Wetlands of Shropshire and Staffordshire

The lowland wetlands of Shropshire and Staffordshire are rich, diverse and fragile. Their unique properties of archaeological preservation and environmental sequences provide a crucial resource for charting landscape change and human activity within the region over the last 10,000 years.This volume describes the archaeological and palaeoecological studies undertaken in and around the wetlands of the two counties during 1994-96 as part of the North West Wetlands Survey. This project was established by English Heritage in 1989 to survey and assess the archaeology and environmental history of north west England, an area from Cumbria in the north to Shropshire and Staffordshire in the south.No comprehensive survey of the wetlands of the two most southern counties of the study area had been carried out before. What work had been undertaken was both piecemeal and site specific. Indeed the archaeological fieldwork detailed here represents the most extensive exercise of its kind ever attempted in the two counties - the project has literally trod new grounds.

The result is an important synthesis and overview of current knowledge, and a major contribution to our understanding of the human exploitation of these wetland areas. New discoveries and research provide some fascinating insights into previously little understood aspects of the wetlands story. In Shropshire for instance, the finding and recording of prehistoric lithic assemblages has provided valuable information on the earliest phases of human activity in and around the wetland fringes. For the more recent past, historical research has been demonstrated the diversity of human activity within wetlands from the Middle Ages onwards and it has documented the important but much neglected subject of their demise and destruction. The report highlights the fragility and vulnerability of our wetland environments, while at the same time presenting a firm foundation on which to devise a long-term framework for their future investigation and management. In so doing it has issued a challenge to all those involved in the curation and management of the wetland resource of our two counties.