One of the least edifying aspects of the recent debate about the Stonehenge tunnel has been the implicit (and in some cases explicit) denigration of the standards of development-led excavation. The 22 senior academics who have collectively objected to the tunnel plans stated that ‘Even if excavations were conducted to the highest standards… this represents an unacceptable loss’. Yet the same academics have all carried out their own fieldwork within the World Heritage Site, which presumably did not represent 'an unacceptable loss’. So why is commercial fieldwork forced to play by different rules to academic research projects?

This is far from a new debate, and the history bears some scrutiny. In the early days of PPG 16, Martin Carver drew a contrast between the ‘empiricists’, principally non-academic heritage professionals, who wanted to keep archaeological remains for an unspecified future, and the 'smaller but more vocal force’ of ‘researchers’ for whom archaeological remains only become a ‘resource’ when defined as such by themselves. In a wide-ranging paper he came to a paradox:

the point of archaeology is to know more; but the resource on which it depends is managed so as to favour what is already known. Archaeological research gives priority to the unknown; archaeological heritage management to the known.

Development-led fieldwork was seen as a kind of compromise: it was research to determine the value of a site:

(Carver 1995)

The paradox of Stonehenge in 2018 is that the ‘researchers’ have become ‘empiricists’, assigning future value to the whole landscape and suggesting (commercial) archaeologists should leave it well alone.

Ten years after Carver’s paper, Richard Bradley (2006) reflected on the changing face of British archaeology in an era when 'the growth of contract archaeology’ could lead academics to feel disenfranchised. He argued that the schism between what he referred to as ‘two cultures' had created 'unwelcome divisions between those who undertake field archaeology and those who remain disengaged’. Similarly to Carver, he contrasted a managerial group who tended 'to regard documentation as a worthwhile end in itself’ with academics who wanted 'to interpret human behaviour in the past’.

Perhaps one explanation of the academic stand over Stonehenge twelve years later is that the WHS has remained primarily the domain of research projects, a sanctuary from the outside world of fixed-percentage evaluations and reports with numbered paragraphs. Though, ironically, much new understanding of the Stonehenge landscape has come from the results of development-led fieldwork taking place just outside the WHS, especially at Larkhill, Bulford and Boscombe Down.

Reading Carver's and Bradley’s papers today makes one realise, on the one hand, how rapidly British archaeology has changed over 25 years but, on the other, how some fundamental issues have never been properly resolved, in particular what Mike Pitts has termed (in a recent tweet) 'the Faustian nature of archaeological fieldwork’.

In the same week that the sanctity of Stonehenge’s archaeological landscape has been emotionally defended using the hyperbolic language of catastrophe and scandal, a known henge monument in Northamptonshire has been completely excavated in advance of development, and presented as a research opportunity that will achieve meaningful results for the local community. This is certainly not 'the research of the second rate’. Yet locals protesting against the development in question do not appear to have received quite the same level of support from senior academics. If ‘national importance’ is no longer a sufficient criterion, how do we decide what to dig and what to preserve? The answers are rarely clear or consistent.

Although the relationship between the ’two cultures' continues to evolve, the Stonehenge debate shows that a problematic separation still exists. Shouldn’t it be a priority for the sector to address this? Back in 2011 the IfA’s Southport Group produced a report that outlined, among many other things, a vision:

(Southport Group 2011).

While such collaborations do, of course, take place (for example, Highways England have convened a Scientific Committee for the A303), almost none of this vision has been systematically implemented, and the symptoms of that failure are seen in the arguments around Stonehenge. If there was ever a time and a place to put together a model collaborative venture of this sort, it would be there and now.

Of course there are many other arguments in relation to the tunnel that need scrutiny, especially about landscape and setting; it is not just about the ‘destruction’ of archaeology. But if the road scheme is to go ahead then, rather than treat it as a purely commercial contract, could not the whole archaeological sector - commercial, academic and voluntary - develop a joint research project to investigate a large area of landscape (though still, of course, just a tiny fraction of the WHS) focussed on the ephemeral and non-monumental: lithic scatters, tree-throws, pits and fields?

Rather than denigrating each other’s work, uniting to press for a ‘gold standard’, question-driven, inclusive project in response to a unique opportunity in one of our premier archaeological landscapes would invalidate any concerns about fieldwork quality, provide a model for future collaborative work in other places, and might just bring the discipline together rather than exposing the old faultlines yet again.

Yes it would be expensive but when the cost of the road scheme is estimated as £1.4bn even a multi-million pound archaeological project still represents small change in the highways budget. You may or may not think Stonehenge needs a tunnel, but no-one would disagree that if fieldwork is to take place we have to do the best job we possibly can. Why not start delivering Southport at Stonehenge?

Bradley, R. 2006. 'Bridging the Two Cultures – commercial archaeology and the study of prehistoric Britain’. The Antiquaries Journal 86, 1-13.

Carver, M. 1995. ‘On archaeological value’. Antiquity 70, 45-56.

Southport Group, 2011. Realising the Benefits of Planning-Led Investigation in the Historic Environment: a framework for delivery.