Cartographic,Geophysical and Diver Surveys of the Medieval Town Site at Dunwich,Suffolk, England

This paper presents the results of an integrated historical and geophysical survey of a medieval town lost through cliff recession and coastal inundation. Key objectives included evaluating historic maps in supporting the relocation and identification of major buildings, and applying integrated multibeam, side‐scan and sub‐bottom profiling to determine the location and extent of archaeological remains. The results demonstrate that cartographic sources from 1587 onwards can be a reliable source of data to guide geophysical survey. Integration of historical mapping with geophysical data enabled identification of the remains of two medieval structures, and the tentative identification of two others. © 2010 The Authors     

In defence of oblivion: the case of Dunwich,Suffolk

This article examines the way in which the town of Dunwich, Suffolk, once the capital of a Saxon kingdom and the sixth largest town in England, has constructed its identity from its long history of experiencing coastal erosion. Now as a small village, Dunwich has built a cultural heritage industry devoted to presenting absence to its visitors and residents, through many diverse forms: historiography, archaeology and the material culture displayed and commodified in the Dunwich Museum. Local pride in this history of disappearance runs strong, as was demonstrated when a proposed monument to the lost town was rejected by village residents. Connecting this sense of identity both to critical investigations into the nature of loss, transience and disappearance, as well as to the future of local and global environmental processes, this article considers whether a site whose construction of loss-as-identity should be allowed to survive past its natural lifespan – especially one that, given the process of erosion involved, can be measured. If the dominant cultural logic at a site tends towards absence rather than presence, I here ask what justifications exist for forestalling that identity in the name of conservation and preservation.