‘Where Land and Waters Meet’ – Professor Nicki Whitehouse, University of Glasgow

Humans have long been attracted to resources within river and wetland ecosystems, with settlement and economic activities occurring around the wetland-dryland interface. Moving waters connect these places, weaving the threads of the landscape together, and impacting lifeways well beyond their boundaries. In this presentation, I will explore changing wetland-dryland human eco-dynamics, across inter-connected river-mere- wetlands, to understand how these ‘wildscapes’ were used and transformed over time. My case study focuses on the Humberhead Levels landscape, eastern England, where there has been a long history of palaeoenvironmental, geoarchaeological and archaeological study, outlining the main results from a major project, ‘Reconstructing the Wildscape 1 ’ and
initial considerations from a new UKRI funded project, RESPECT 2 .

Today, land cover in this area consists mostly of intensive agriculture, with a few protected areas centred on the remnants of heavily exploited lowland ombrotrophic mires. Lidar imagery, historical maps, accounts, and the sediments underlying the fields tell a different story; until the 17 th century, it was a landscape of inter-connected rivers, meres, wetlands and marshes, with extensive areas of open water, sometimes tidal, always deeply connected by sea and freshwater, with human settlement and activity clustered on islands of higher ground.  The rivers and wetlands were extensively utilized throughout prehistory for their resources and as routeways, whilst in the Roman and historic periods they were transformed for navigation and control, then diverted, drained and canalized, representing a way of life and adaptation to living-with-water that can be traced back over thousands of years. It was a landscape that fed a thriving fenland economy and a particular way of living. This irrevocably changed through drainage and reclamation in the 17 th century. An extensive archaeological database has allowed us to infer the nature and focus of human activity and land use – from the Mesolithic to the post-Medieval period – whilst pollen records provide a land cover history. By reconstructing the temporal palaeogeography and dynamics of the ‘wildscape’ we have been able to understand the complex patterns of human activity and interactions and how these riverscapes and wetlands were used over space and time. The story that emerges is one that is distinctive and unique, yet widely connected beyond the wetlands, whilst emphasising long-term continuity of human-environment relationships over time. The story of these wetlands contrasts sharply with dryland narratives and offers insights for understanding ‘blue-green’
landscapes and land management decisions today within the context of climate change and land-use for net zero, and forms the basis for new research around land use decisions
for the UK.

Finally, this story not only tells us about our changing relationship with wetlands but also tells of their commodification as resources and exploitation but also as ‘wastes’ to be ‘improved’ – both in ecological and human terms, of ‘imperial mud’ to be tamed for land expansion. These stories offer direct links to modern social challenges in the region up until the present day.

1 Reconstructing the Wildscape: https://projectwildscape.wordpress.com. This is a collaborative project with the following members of the team and colleagues: Prof Henry Chapman; Dr Ben Gearey; Dr Jane Bunting; Dr Michelle Farrell; Dr Kim Davies; Dr Philip Barratt and other collaborators/researchers
2 Rapid Engagement with Stressed Peatland Environments and Communities in Transformation [RESPECT] – UKRI funded project: https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_1127119_en.html. PI: Prof Jill Robbie, University of Glasgow