ABSTRACT
In England, archaeological sites which are considered to be of ‘national importance’ can be protected by ‘scheduling’; that is, by adding the sites to the ‘schedule’ (i.e. list) of ‘monuments’ protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. Through time, the process of scheduling sites has not kept pace with the increase in knowledge about the extent of archaeological resource or with the changing perceptions of what is nationally important. Accordingly, English Heritage has embarked on a programme of work called the Monuments Protection Programme (MPP). Initially this had the limited aim of bringing this schedule up to date but its scope was soon widened in order to respond to both the limitations of the existing legislation and the complexity of the archaeological resource; the relationship between these two issues has received little formal recognition in the archaeological literature.
