Dear all

The government have released a consultation paper on HERs, it is a joint
initiative with English Heritage and ALGAO

it can be found at

http://www.culture.gov.uk/global/consultations/2003+current+consultation
s/her_consultation.htm

I think FISH should respond to this and I would like to see how you all
feel about this and at the next meeting mayhap we should draw up a
response as no doubt FISH has a part to play especially in
interoperability.

I would like to draw your attention to one particular issue within the
document on page 7 under scope

please see extract and my comment

Scope

The current Government approach is to move towards consideration of the
historic landscape as a whole, rather than as a collection of individual
features.  In addition, there is an increasing emphasis on the
integrated management of natural and historic features and landscape
through mechanisms such as agri-environment schemes.  In future,
Historic Environment Records will need to reflect this.

Jason's Comment

This is perhaps the most controversial and problematic proposal. I think
there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Historic Landscape
is. It is of prime importance to ensure that we record the Individual
elements of the landscapes. You cannot understand a landscape as a whole
without understanding the constituent parts that make up the landscape.

Many queries we receive are on such things as "give me all burial mounds
in this area as I am interested in burial mounds". A move to not record
individual features as this appears to suggest would mean that such
questions could not be answered and would represent a step back in the
use fullness of the resource.

Indeed for The National Trust to move to this would mean we would no
longer be able to manage the remains within our properties or highlight
or manage interesting remains such as a burial mound or civil war
encampment.

There is the potential this could over emphasis some remains over others
within an area while missing some of the other remains. The landscape as
a whole is temporal in nature there will be prehistoric remains, there
will be modern remains all of which are important as the other and form
and shape the Historic Landscapes we live in. Each has its place ...

This could result in one aspect being over empathised over another a
good example of this is many years ago archaeologists ignored post
medieval remains as they did not class it as archaeology and excavated
through such remains to get to the "interesting Medieval or Roman
remains". This is an extreme example but such a broad-brush approach is
a step back from what we are doing now. The current Individual features
should be augmented to form the picture of the historic landscape
allowing people to peel away temporally and by type allowing flexible
use by all levels of users.

What do you think?

Many Thanks

Jason A. Siddall
FISH Forum Convenor
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gallons of water and enough energy to heat the average home for 6 months
- recycle more!

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