The Historic Landscapes of the Severn Estuary Levels

The deep alluvial sequences that make up the Severn Estuary Levels comprise a series of stratified landscapes dating from early prehistory through to the present day. Most of these landscapes are deeply buried, and, whilst exceptionally well-preserved, are largely inaccessible and so ill-understood. It is only with the 'historic landscape', that lies on the surface of the Levels, that we can really start to reconstruct and analyse what these past landscapes were like. However; although the enormously diverse historic landscape is itself an important source of information, its full potential is only achieved through its integration with associated archaeological and documentary evidence. This presents many challenges and whilst much has been achieved in the last ten years, there is a long way to go before we can write a comprehensive history of the Severn Levels. Two techniques are vital. Historic landscape characterisation focuses on the key character defining features of different landscapes and can suggest the processes that may have led to their creation. This is almost invariably a complex story as most landscapes combine features from a number of different periods, though retrogressive analysis can disentangle this palimpsest. In the past ten years, both techniques have been successfully applied to various of the Severn wetlands, although attention has focused upon the wholly cultural process of reclamation: the potentially significant role played by certain features of the natural environment, including the belt of sand dunes that fringe much of the Somerset coast, has been neglected. Elaborate models have also been constructed, based largely on landscape morphology, and there is a desperate need to test these hypotheses through fieldwork. Above all there is a need to move beyond simple landscape charcterisation towards more detailed palaeogeographies.