Ancient monuments on the brink

Abstract

The coastline of Denmark has a total length of 7314 km. Due to isostatic subsidence and marine erosion of the coast, some of the country’s 32,000 scheduled ancient monuments are always in danger of being destroyed by coastal collapse. Then there are rivers and watercourses that, either in an original or in a restored state, create new courses or erode away the sides of river valleys where there are also ancient monuments. This risk has always existed and will continue to do so in the future – especially under the influence of current climate change. The scheduled ancient monuments that are primarily in the danger zone are, for example, megalithic graves from the Stone Age, Bronze Age barrows, churches and castle mounds from the Middle Ages, coastal defences from the wars of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries and more recent fortifications from the Second World War. Since 1937, scheduled ancient monuments have in general been covered by legislation that fundamentally forbids any change to their state and which has traditionally been applied in restrictive fashion. Exceptionally weighty grounds are required for permission to be granted for changes to or, more drastically, actual removal of a scheduled ancient monument. For example, the entire network of natural gas pipelines was established without a single scheduled ancient monument being affected, and the motorway network has sinuously avoided all scheduled barrows that otherwise stood in the way. Damage caused, for example, by agriculture, forestry and tourism is taken seriously, and on reinstatement – often at the perpetrator’s expense – efforts are made to preserve respect for ancient monuments and thereby preclude future destruction. It is therefore a paradox that well-preserved ancient monuments located along the coast have for decades slowly but surely been allowed to degrade without this unique source material being secured through archaeological investigation. There are several reasons – both formal and practical – for this situation. Until 1969, the costs of archaeological excavations were included in museums’ running costs and other activities or were met by grants from foundations and special funding arrangements. With a change to the Nature Protection Act of 1969, a modification was introduced whereby public contractors and the state were obliged to pay for the investigation of non-scheduled ancient monuments that would otherwise be destroyed by development works. As for scheduled ancient monuments, funding was only earmarked for restoration – not for archaeological investigation – as the intention was of course that these monuments should be preserved. In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, archaeological investigations were increasingly carried out at public expense and, because there was no provision in the legislation that permitted the financing of investigations of scheduled ancient monuments, these investigations were by and large not carried out when monuments were undergoing destruction due to coastal erosion. It was not until a change in the legislation in 2006 – in the form of the Museum Act – that it became possible for statutory public funds allocated to archaeological investigations also to be used for the investigation of scheduled ancient monuments. Even so, it is still not common for this action to be undertaken in the case of monuments threatened by coastal erosion. There are several reasons for this. One is that the degradation often takes place over many years and the situation is therefore not immediately perceived as being acute. Even though experience clearly demonstrates that the monument will, at some point, inevitably collapse into the sea, there is a major obstacle to the recognition of the problem in that other types of sites are seen to be of a more acute character. As a consequence, ongoing processes and an autumn storm can suddenly result in a situation where the monument lies so close to the coastal cliff that – in practical and safety terms – an investigation would involve technical problems that in turn increase the costs involved.