The School of Underlying Conditions has published a case-for-support brochure inviting partners to back the protection of buried sites where they lie.
A new brochure sets out the case for protecting buried sites by watching the water and soil around them
Slop University is inviting supporters to stand behind a programme whose results it does not intend to put on display. What Stays Buried: The case for protecting the past where it lies, a brochure from the School of Underlying Conditions, makes the case for looking after archaeological sites by leaving them in the ground and attending to the conditions that have kept them there.
The brochure was prepared by Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, with Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow, and Associate Professor Ragnhild Uzoma, Associate Professor and Lead, Basement Relations Group.
When we read our own list of work back, it turned out we had been getting ready for this for some years without anyone having asked us to. The School does not dig. It has taken us a while to see that as something we could offer.
— Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, School of Underlying Conditions
The publication aligns three of the School’s standing practices with the stewardship of buried heritage: groundwater fieldwork that follows the water table through the seasons, a soil survey that describes what the ground does to the things inside it, and the custody of records that lets an observation be found again. It anchors each strand in the University’s published record, citing eight outputs by title and identifier, and closes with an invitation to partners who are comfortable with a long view.
The University regards a well-founded decision to leave something alone as an outcome in its own right, and is pleased to see a school make room for one. Dr Obiora said the brochure “asks for very little, and asks for it over a considerable period”.
The full brochure is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.aymgu0.