A Research Agenda for The Lossenham Project
The Lossenham Project is well into its second year now, and a lot of work has been done, and is ongoing, to investigate the historic environment not only of Lossenham itself, but also the wider hinterland of the Rother and its tributary watercourses. We use the term ‘historic environment’ in its widest sense to mean the archaeological and historical records, and the historic landscape. The historic landscape is all aspects of the landscape that has been affected by human activity. Which means most of the landscape as we see it today; little if any is unaffected by human hands. The historic environment of The Lossenham Project is, then, a very big subject indeed, and spans (at the very least) the entire post-glacial period since the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years or so.
There are thus very many ways we could approach this study, many fruitful avenues of research to follow, and many questions we can ask and seek to answer. The truth is, of course, we will never be able to fully explore or question every single aspect of the historic environment of Lossenham, much less of the entire Rother system and its surrounding parishes. We will all pass into the realms of history (and archaeology) ourselves long before that would be possible, not least because in this game any answers you do get have a tendency to generate yet more questions!
Thus, we must focus our efforts. That being said, we intend to do, and are doing a lot; the project has already made significant progress on improving our understanding of the archaeology, history and landscape of this fascinating area. But as the project has matured, it has now become clear that we need to develop and agree a research agenda for it. Research agendas are an integral part of the good management of such research projects. English Heritage (now Historic England) published guidance on this some years ago, known as MoRPHE; ‘Management of Research Projects in the Historic Environment’. In addition, Historic England supported and funded the development of a series of regional research frameworks for England, involving input from a wide range of academics and heritage professionals. The relevant one for us is the South East Research Framework (SERF). This covers the counties of Kent, Sussex and Surrey, and is based around a series of thematic and period-based papers. These can be viewed online at: https://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure-and-community/history-and-heritage/south-east-research-framework
So, we have begun work on a Research Agenda for The Lossenham Project. This is not intended to be a straitjacket (which can be a risk with such things if too rigidly applied) but it is needed to focus our collective efforts on the most promising and interesting research questions within the project area. The draft version directly relates to the themes and periods defined by SERF, which will make it easier to fit our work into the bigger picture of the historic environment of the region. Having said that, I have been struck by how many of the distribution maps of key sites and finds within the SERF resource assessments show little or nothing in the Rother valley area. This underlines the research value of The Lossenham Project; all those of us participating in the project are helping to shed more light on an under-studied and very poorly understood part of south east England. However, it is already apparent that there is much to be found here, and I look forward to working with many of you in the coming months and years to remedy this. At the time-of-writing the Lossenham research agenda remains a work-in-progress. Its creation will be a collaborative process, and indeed it is my intention that many of you reading this will get a chance to contribute your thoughts and questions to it. And in fact, it will never really be finished; it will be a living document that continues to evolve as long as the project continues. So, watch this space!
Andrew Richardson