Why have so many archaeological sites been so well-preserved over hundreds of years? What did past generations make of them? Did they realise they were important and know their significance or was it just chance that they survived? Beatrix (11)

Hello Beatrix, site preservation depends on many things: the main one being the geology! If you have a very dry environment (like in Egypt), or on the contrary a wet, peaty environment (such as can be found in Ireland or Scandinavia), preservation will usually be good. That’s why so many great discoveries were made there: think about mummies and bog bodies!

People in the past did understand that the land had been occupied: the Romans had some knowledge about prehistory and the Saxon and Vikings knew about the Romans. I once worked on a Saxon site where Saxon people had kept Roman Samian pottery (which is very striking as it is red and shiny), possibly as a token or as a curiosity!

It’s difficult to know how much people in the past understood about their own past, but monuments such as stone circles and tumuli were predominant features in the landscape. People in different centuries must have had different ideas, different beliefs about where they came from and what they represented, although we can only guess what those thoughts were! It’s not usual however for prehistoric sites to be re-used at different periods: for example, prehistoric stone circles or barrows and Iron Age hill forts were also used by Roman or Saxon people. This shows that in some way, these sites remained important.