Aerial Archaeology in Ireland - The Heritage Council

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Earthen monuments are coming under increasing pressure.
Archaeological monuments set in pasture are most vulnerable.
• In general, the destruction of archaeological monuments can be linked directly to land improvements,
which are associated with more intensive farming.
• In some respects, and especially for the purpose of monitoring the destruction of archaeological
monuments, the information contained in the County Archaeological Inventories and Surveys is
considerably out of date.
Commenting on measures available to protect rural sites, O’Sullivan et al. (2001) observed:
‘By including Measure 7 in REPS, however, the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry has begun
to address the problem, stipulating that monuments of historical or archaeological interest must be
preserved. The advantage of REPS is that it requires the participating farmer to manage the landscape,
including the archaeological landscape, in a way that meets the requirements laid down by the Department
of Agriculture, Food and Forestry. Each participant in the scheme farms according to a five-year agrienvironment
plan prepared in consultation with an agri-environment advisor. In return, the farmer is
given an annual grant to subsidise the measures needed to meet the requirements of the plan.
At the time of writing, approximately 40% of all farmers in the country now participate in REPS, so in
theory, the archaeological monuments on their land are protected. The difficulty is that, in general, they
appear to represent the agricultural sector which is least threatening to archaeological monuments.’
This report has been criticised for various aspects of its methodology and the assumptions underlying its statistics, which have
been challenged in subsequent survey work commissioned by NMS. One of the shortcomings of the AFAR survey was that it
did not itself use aerial archaeology, or address issues relating to its use and its potential contribution to understanding the
archaeological resource. This raises a number of issues:
• The status of cropmark sites is not clear in the AFAR report or, apparently, in many RMP entries. In terms of agricultural
improvement to upstanding earthworks, they might be regarded as damaged or even ‘destroyed’ in terms of their
visibility from the ground. The subsoil remains, however, could still be of very substantial importance and would
certainly not be regarded as ‘destroyed’ in relation to quarrying or other truly destructive agencies.
• Consideration of the contribution that can be made by aerial archaeology as discussed earlier in Chapter 3 suggests
that the Record of Monuments and Places and the County Inventories are only starting points for assessing the whole
historic environment of a land holding. In addition to known sites, it can be anticipated that thorough examination of
existing aerial photography and/or new reconnaissance of an area are likely to reveal significantly more sites.
• Aerial archaeology can also result in a much richer, more holistic perspective on the historic character of the landscape
in terms of both extant and relict features, including field patterns (Barrett 1997b, 1997/8).
• The quality of low-level aerial photography used to illustrate the County Inventories and research projects like Tara
(Newman 1997) and High Island (Marshall and Rourke 2000) indicates the potential for monitoring the condition of
archaeological sites from the air (Figures 19 and 51).