HISTORIC SEASCAPE CHARACTER: OUR COASTAL AND MARINE HERITAGE

 Intertidal exposure of late Neolithic peat deposits, St Mary’s, Scilly. © Dave Hooley   As on land, impacts from millennia of human cultural activity have played a major role in shaping our present coastal and marine environment. Beneath our seas and along our coasts lies a very rich heritage. Sea level rise after the last glaciation submerged vast areas of inhabited land. Many such former settlement areas survive well with associated environmental evidence and Deposits from previous inter-glacial periods include the earliest north European evidence for human occupation.

London Docks - 1965 © English Heritage/NMR Considerable numbers of wrecks and other debris bear testament to varied maritime activity since the prehistoric period, reflecting developing technological capability and its impact on the scale of England’s relationships, culminating in the rapid growth of trade, military and imperial power as England became a major player on the world stage.

Along our coasts, substantial areas bear distinctive imprints from fishing, wildfowling, coastal grazing, warfare and military defence, and, most recently, the leisure and tourism industries, to name but a few. The scale and intensity of these impacts are accelerating too from natural resources extraction, wind and wave power generation, port development, shipping-channel dredging and strengthening of our coastal sea defences.
 

Windfarm under construction off Norfolk Coast. © English Heritage/NMR  Besides such direct traces and impacts from human activities, many expressions of our coastal and marine ‘natural environment’ are also shaped by human activity, defining many aspects of the deposits, landforms and marine biodiversity that we encounter today. Since prehistory, huge quantities of silts and other materials have been transported into our seas from land-based activities including agriculture and mining. These deposits have redefined as cultural artefacts the shape and forms of many of our coastal and estuarine areas and the ecological communities that they support. The same is true on a broader, even global, scale in the impacts from extensive human modification of key parts of the food chain from fishing, dredging and dumping, along with our effects on sea-water temperature, chemistry and ecology from global warming.

Diver approaching a cannon on the wreck of HMS Colossus off the Isles of Scilly. Image courtesy of K. Camidge.  In recognising the historic environment as a dimension permeating the whole environment, seascapes characterisation can provide an understanding of inter-related historical and cultural processes which have shaped our present seas. That is essential to inform perceptions and debates that will determine the sustainable management of change affecting our seas for the future.