Oxbow says: From 1993, the North Somerset Levels Project sought to
investigate the origins and development of this area of reclaimed
coastal marshland during the first and second millennia AD. The
inter-disciplinary approach taken has added archaeological (survey and
excavation) data, palaeoenvironmental evidence, studies of documentary
sources, architecture, cartography and field- and place-names, to what
was already known about the historic landscape. This report, which
publishes the findings of the project, examines local and regional
changes and variations in the landscape, focusing on two major phases of
exploitation, modification and transformation during the Roman and
medieval periods. Factors such as agriculture, grazing, salt production,
fishing, draining, flood defence, and the establishment of settlements,
roads, commons, field systems, as well as cultural factors, are all
discussed, as evidence from the local area is placed within a wider
regional context. An excellent study which exemplifies all that is new
and exciting in landscape study.