Community rescue: saving sites from the sea

Members of local communities can play a crucial role in the management and rescue of information from sites that are threatened with destruction. Using examples from pioneering work in Scotland, this paper discusses a very real and necessary contribution, without which much archaeological evidence would have been lost, unrecorded. Through such projects as Shorewatch and SCHARP (Scotland’s Coastal Heritage at Risk Project), individuals and community groups have located and recorded sites; selected locally-valued places for further work; undertaken community rescue excavations; and worked on interpretive material to inform a wider audience. In some cases, groups have even moved sites in order to save them from the sea.