ABSTRACT
Britain, with its long coastline and complex history of rise and fall in relative sea-levels, has a rich heritage preserved in both its inland and coastal wetlands. Sites and landscapes dating from the Early Palaeolithic to recent times have been preserved, to become the focus of an approach to wetland archaeology which is distinguished by its concern for past environments as well as people, and which exploits the extraordinary preservation of evidence in wetlands to enlarge our understanding of the past as a whole. Wetland archaeology includes the investigation of landscapes drowned by the rising sea, but not the investigation of things pertaining to the open sea, which is more properly the province of maritime archaeology and not covered in the present discussion. The following pages will trace the development of the British approach to wetland archaeology, concentrating on the events and influences and some of the classic excavations which have contributed to the present character and status of wetland archaeology in this country. It will become apparent that external matters such as the history of land drainage and of development have had a significant influence, alongside the dramatic archaeological developments in Switzerland in the mid-nineteenth century and developments within the discipline of archaeology as a whole.
