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The UK Marine Area covers 867,400 km2, 3.5 times the terrestrial extent. Our marine heritage is extraordinary. Shipwrecks from the Bronze Age to the World Wars bear testimony to Britain as an island nation, a destination for trade and conquest and, in the past, the heart of a global empire. Coastal communities have been shaped by their maritime heritage with stories of loss and heroism. Deeper in time, what is now the North Sea was dry land, peopled by prehistoric communities. Our current land would have been distant uplands above hills and plains and rivers now lost and forgotten. Numerous collections represent this heritage, covering 23,000 years, including charts, documents, images, film, oral histories, sonar surveys, seismic data, bathymetry, archaeological investigations, artefacts, artworks and palaeo-environmental cores. These are unconnected and inaccessible. This matters because the story of our seas is of huge interest to the UK public, with millions visiting maritime museums annually, and marine exploitation increasing dramatically for energy, minerals, trade, food and leisure. To unlock new stories and effect sustainable management, we must join up our marine collections. Unpath’d Waters brings together universities, agencies, museums, trusts and experts to confront this challenge. AI is being applied to innovate searching across collections, simulations to visualise landscapes, and science to identify wrecks and research their artefacts. Unpath’d Waters will deliver management tools to protect our most significant heritage and invite the public to co-design new ways of interacting with the collections. The methods, code and resources created will be published openly so they can be used to shape the future of UK marine heritage.

The UK Marine Area covers 867,400 km2, 3.5 times the terrestrial extent. Our marine heritage is extraordinary. Shipwrecks from the Bronze Age to the World Wars bear testimony to Britain as an island nation, a destination for trade and conquest and, in the past, the heart of a global empire. Coastal communities have been shaped by their maritime heritage with stories of loss and heroism. Deeper in time, what is now the North Sea was dry land, peopled by prehistoric communities. Our current land would have been distant uplands above hills and plains and rivers now lost and forgotten. Numerous collections represent this heritage, covering 23,000 years, including charts, documents, images, film, oral histories, sonar surveys, seismic data, bathymetry, archaeological investigations, artefacts, artworks and palaeoenvironmental cores. These are unconnected and inaccessible. This matter because the story of our seas is of huge interest to the UK public, with millions visiting maritime museums annually, and marine exploitation increasing dramatically for energy, minerals, trade, food and leisure. To unlock new stories and effect sustainable management, we must join up our marine collections. Unpath’d Waters brings together universities, agencies, museums, trusts and experts to confront this challenge. AI is being applied to innovate searching across collections, simulations to visualise landscapes, and science to identify wrecks and research their artefacts. Unpath’d Waters will deliver management tools to protect our most significant heritage and invite the public to co-design new ways of interacting with the collections. The methods, code and resources created will be published openly so they can used to shape the future of UK marine heritage.

The national programme of Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys (RCZAS), funded by Historic England, is designed to enhance and update coastal Historic Environment Records (HERs) through a two-phased approach. Phase 1 (Desk-based Assessment) assesses the data available on the character of the historic environment within the project area, and potential threats to heritage assets, in order to design a strategy for Phase 2 (Field Survey) which prioritises areas where heritage assets may be most at risk.This report describes the results of the Phase 1 component of the RCZAS for the North Coasts of Cornwall and Devon (excluding Exmoor) carried out in 2017 and 2018 by COARS, Southampton University. The aims of the project were to:• enhance the Cornwall and Devon HERs and the National Record of the Historic Environment;• inform future coastal and shoreline management;• provide an overview of coastal change from the Palaeolithic onwards;• assess the degree and nature of threat to coastal historic assets;• provide a broad assessment of the likely archaeological potential and vulnerability of the resource;• identify future research priorities; and• enhance public understanding and enjoyment of the coastal heritage.The study area extended from Combe Martin in Devon to Land’s End in Cornwall. It included an assessment of surviving remains along the open coast and its tidal estuaries, extending up to 1km inland from Mean High Water (MHW), with 2km inland along the Taw-Torridge, Camel and Hayle estuaries. Offshore the boundary extended up to 25 km from MHW, utilising available bathymetry data from the Marine and Coastguard Agency Civil Hydrography Programme (MCA CHP). Overall, the project added, updated or amended 7757 records, with 1610 new sites created for Cornwall and 1249 for Devon. An extensive review of the wreck record within the intertidal and offshore demonstrated the existence of notable discrepancies between the different datasets, reinforcing the need to utilise multiple sources when analysing the offshore record. An extensive review of the Quaternary deposits along the coastline has demonstrated a number of areas where future research should take place, notably through resolving questions relating to Quaternary glaciation, the age of Pleistocene raised beaches, and the distribution and age of submerged forests and blown sand deposits.Threats to the coastal historic environment resource can be characterised in two ways: ‘natural’ threats such as coastal change and rising sea-levels and ‘anthropogenic’ threats including coastal defence schemes, infrastructure works and visitor pressure. An assessment of the threats posed from coastal erosion demonstrated that the most common known sites at risk, under current SMP coastal management proposals, are cliff castles, barrows, cliff-top quarries, mines, footpaths, World War II features, coastal-edge graves / cremations, limekilns, submerged forests and intertidal wreck sites. In some stretches of the coastline settlements, which include a number of listed buidlings, are also potentially at risk under current SMP proposals. A total of 316 sites have been identified at risk from coastal erosion under the current SMP proposals, of which 65 are protected sites listed within the National Heritage List for England (NHLE). The north Devon coastline contains a stretch of ‘complex cliffs between Clovelly and Peppercombe that have inherent uncertainties with predicting the timing and extent of erosion, with the settlement of Buck’s Mills potential at greatest risk from coastal erosion as current SMP proposals are unclear over whether coastal defences will be maintained for this historic settlement. Models of future flooding (both coastal and riverine) suggest potentially 789 sites are at risk within the study area, including 113 sites at high flood risk, under the current flood prevention strategy.Research priorities and themes identified by the desk-based assessment are presented in the context of the regional themes and research aims set out in the South West Archaeological Research Framework (SWARF). Specific sites / themes that would benefit from further research or work include:• Investigation of, and dating, of Pleistocene deposits• Submerged forests and palaeolandscapes• Analysis of prehistoric artefact scatters• Intertidal wreck sites• Research and surveying of the cliff castle scheduled monuments• Assessment and recording of buildings associated with safety at sea: lifeboat stations and coastguard lookouts and cottages• Condition assessment of World War II defences at risk• Coastal industry, quarrying and quays• Coastal settlement characterisations• Shipwreck burials and coastal cemeteries

Council for British Archaeology Research Reports, 171, England's marine and maritime heritage has long provided a focus for archaeological and historical research. The first article in the journal Antiquity reported on the submerged field boundaries lying in shallow waters around the isles of Scilly, indicating an awareness of the importance of what lies beneath the water's edge. However, despite this early engagement with the subject, and England's historical dependency on the sea, it has taken some time for regulatory powers and sustained research to venture into this area. In 2002 the National Heritage Act served to change this, bringing England's marine and maritime historic environment into a clear regulatory framework. In response to this new remit, English Heritage commissioned the Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Southampton to bring together the broad community of scholars interested in marine and maritime affairs (be they working in academia, industry or a-vocationally), to help both quantify the known record and to establish a clear research agenda for the future. This publication represents the efforts of all members of this community to do so. Eight of the ten chapters presented here provide period-specific accounts of the known archaeological record, spanning nearly a million years of hominin occupation from the Palaeolithic through to the present day. Additional sections examine fields such as marine geoarchaeology and environmental archaeology more broadly. Since this is the first time any such review has been undertaken for the maritime sphere, it represents a valuable resource to students, researchers, those in development-led archaeology, curators and the public alike. Furthermore, given the scope and nature of archaeological research, it will be of relevance to historians, Quaternary scientists, archivists, and museum practitioners. Each chapter draws on five distinct themes to generate a thorough characterisation of the diverse topics connected to the maritime and marine historic environment:1 Coastal Change2 Maritime Settlement and Marine Exploitation3 Seafaring4 Maritime Networks5 Maritime Identities and Perceptions of Maritime Space.These themes reflect the variety of established regional and thematic research frameworks, from Industrial Archaeology (Palmer 2005) and built environment strategies to the international North Sea Prehistory Research and Management Framework, with which research into the maritime record intersects, and the ways in which since early prehistory the maritime sphere has been entangled in all aspects of human life in England. Given this broad scope, the resource assessment within each chapter is not intended to be definitive but serves to characterise research so far undertaken. As such, it is important that the material in each chapter, and the research questions raised, are considered in conjunction with the more detailed regional frameworks and the rapid coastal zone assessments. Importantly, the chapters in this volume also demonstrate how rich and diverse the maritime record is, and the primary contributions research into it can make to our interpretations of the past.

The national programme of Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys (RCZAS), funded by Historic England, is designed to enhance and update coastal Historic Environment Records (HERs) through a two-phased approach. Phase 1 (Desk-based Assessment) assesses the data available on the character of the historic environment within the project area, and potential threats to heritage assets, in order to design a strategy for Phase 2 (Field Survey) which prioritises areas where heritage assets may be most at risk. This report describes the results of the Phase 1 component of the RCZAS for the North Coasts of Cornwall and Devon (excluding Exmoor) carried out in 2017 and 2018 by COARS, Southampton University. The aims of the project were to: " enhance the Cornwall and Devon HERs and the National Record of the Historic Environment; " inform future coastal and shoreline management; " provide an overview of coastal change from the Palaeolithic onwards; " assess the degree and nature of threat to coastal historic assets; " provide a broad assessment of the likely archaeological potential and vulnerability of the resource; " identify future research priorities; and " enhance public understanding and enjoyment of the coastal heritage. The study area extended from Combe Martin in Devon to Land's End in Cornwall. It included an assessment of surviving remains along the open coast and its tidal estuaries, extending up to 1km inland from Mean High Water (MHW), with 2km inland along the Taw-Torridge, Camel and Hayle estuaries. Offshore the boundary extended up to 25 km from MHW, utilising available bathymetry data from the Marine and Coastguard Agency Civil Hydrography Programme (MCA CHP). Overall, the project added, updated or amended 7757 records, with 1610 new sites created for Cornwall and 1249 for Devon. An extensive review of the wreck record within the intertidal and offshore demonstrated the existence of notable discrepancies between the different datasets, reinforcing the need to utilise multiple sources when analysing the offshore record. An extensive review of the Quaternary deposits along the coastline has demonstrated a number of areas where future research should take place, notably through resolving questions relating to Quaternary glaciation, the age of Pleistocene raised beaches, and the distribution and age of submerged forests and blown sand deposits. The national programme of Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Surveys (RCZAS), funded by Historic England, is designed to enhance and update coastal Historic Environment Records (HERs) through a two-phased approach. Phase 1 (Desk-based Assessment) assesses the data available on the character of the historic environment within the project area, and potential threats to heritage assets, in order to design a strategy for Phase 2 (Field Survey) which prioritises areas where heritage assets may be most at risk. This report describes the results of the Phase 1 component of the RCZAS for the North Coasts of Cornwall and Devon (excluding Exmoor) carried out in 2017 and 2018 by COARS, Southampton University. The aims of the project were to: " enhance the Cornwall and Devon HERs and the National Record of the Historic Environment; " inform future coastal and shoreline management; " provide an overview of coastal change from the Palaeolithic onwards; " assess the degree and nature of threat to coastal historic assets; " provide a broad assessment of the likely archaeological potential and vulnerability of the resource; " identify future research priorities; and " enhance public understanding and enjoyment of the coastal heritage. The study area extended from Combe Martin in Devon to Land's End in Cornwall.