Dr Ben Jennings and Dr Abbi Flint from the UK WetFutures team will be speaking at a webinar on ‘The heritage of peatlands’ hosted by the Moors for the Future Partnership. They’ll be talking about peatland archaeology in the UK, and some of the less visible (intangible) forms of peatlands cultural heritage such as folklore. 

As well as Ben and Abbi, speakers include Anna Badcock and Natalie Ward from the Peak District National Park Authority, Chris Atkinson from Pennine Prospects, Chris Fry from the Moors for the Future Partnership, and time for your questions and discussion. 

It’s a great opportunity to collectively explore the connections between conservation and the cultural heritage of peatlands and the common ground for protecting peatlands as cultural landscapes and ecosystems.  

The webinar will take place on Thursday 17th September at 12-1pm UK time.  
You can find out more and book your place here:
https://www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk/the-latest/recent-news/moorlife-2020/the-heritage-of-peatlands-webinar ​

• What kind of archaeology do you associate with wetlands and peatlands?  
• What can the archaeology of wetlands tell us? 

• What are the challenges and opportunities facing wetlands archaeology now and in the future? 

If you’re interested in peatlands and wetlands please join us on twitter on the 26th August (12-1pm in UK and Ireland, 1-2pm in the Netherlands) to discuss these and other issues in the first of a series of Wetland Heritage twitter chats. 

If you’ve not joined a twitter chat before it’s a great opportunity to make connections, learn about other people’s work and share your own work and ideas.  

How it works
A twitter chat is simply a collaborative online conversation organised around a central theme or topic. For the first #WetlandHeritageChat the topic will be #WetlandArchaeology.  

You just need to be logged in to twitter and use the search function to find the hashtag #WetlandHeritageChat.  

Over the course of the hour, we’ll prompt the discussion with a series of questions (numbered Q1, Q2, Q3 etc) and encourage you to respond by joining the conversation; tweeting your response/reflections/comments using the #WetlandHeritageChat hashtag, and A1, A2, A3, etc to indicate which question you’re responding to. You don’t have to respond to the questions, but your comments, questions and reflections will be valued if you do.  

If you follow our twitter account (@WetFutures) you’ll find it easier to keep track of the questions. 

If you can’t join the twitter chat as it happens, you can still see the discussion (and add your responses) afterwards using the #WetlandHeritageChat hashtag. We’re also planning to archive the chat and share it here. 

Join us!
Why not block the date in your diary and join us over lunch on the 26th August (12-1pm in UK and Ireland, 1-2pm in the Netherlands)? 
​
We’d love to read your contributions to the #WetlandHeritageChat and your thoughts on #WetlandArchaeology! 

In the run up to National Heritage Week Ireland, Rosie and Ben have put together a post-lockdown guide to the best peatland sites across Ireland that can be visited during the nation's staycation! Please see below for our tour and associated guide:  

by Dr Abbi Flint (Research Assistant on the WetFutures UK team)  
One of the aims of WetFutures is to explore the cultural heritage of wetlands. When we think about cultural heritage, often what comes to mind are physical remains – things like buildings, structures and monuments, changes to the landscape that show how it was used in the past, or objects found in and around wetlands – but not all aspects of cultural heritage are easily seen.

Cultural heritage also includes the traditional ways that people have used wetlands, local events and customs, the stories, songs, legends and myths that people tell, and even the art and literature that these places inspire. Some of which may be very specific to a local place or group of people. These contribute to what UNESCO define as ‘intangible cultural heritage’. 

The UK WetFutures team have recently been exploring one aspect of the intangible cultural heritage, the folklore of wetlands, through a review of existing literature. We didn’t just look at what might traditionally be seen as folklore but included broader ways that wetlands, and specifically bogs, are portrayed.  
​
Some folklore around bogs reflects historic views of these places as potentially dangerous and inhospitable – where mysterious lights (will-o'-the-wisps) may help or hinder travellers, where fairies or black-dogs appear, and where people may disappear into bottomless depths. However, our review of the broader folklore of one of our UK case study sites, Ilkley Moor, suggests these exist alongside other (sometimes more positive) associations. The moor has been portrayed as both dangerous and having health and aesthetic value, as both wild and shaped by people, and as playing an important part in local social history. The physical cultural heritage within wetland landscapes may also have its own folklore - for example, around the use and meaning of the prehistoric carved rocks and stone circles found on Ilkley Moor. ​

In the latest addition of the GeogPod, Dr Mary Gearey (Brighton University) talks about her latest book 'English Wetlands: Spaces of Nature, Culture, Imagination' - and WetFutures get a mention, so thank you!

Have a listen to Mary's full talk here! 

​https://geogpod.podbean.com/mf/play/3ix87o/Mary_Gearey_74jsl.mp3 

Ben, Rosie and Kim from the WetFutures Ireland team have recently been interviewed by NatureVolve on their work that they are undertaking for WetFutures, Irish heritage and archaeology! 
The interview includes photography by Tina Claffey - an incredible photographer with a keen eye for the natural world of the bog. 


Read the interview here:

The WetFutures Irish team are speaking at the global Re-Peat global festival this Sunday (31st May)- a celebration of peatlands across the world! Ben and Rosie are talking on the subject of gender and peatlands - mixed in with a bit Seamus Heaney poetry - not one to miss!

The talk will be recorded and available here, following the talk!

In these difficult times, projects like WetFutures can take a back-seat. But even though we are not all in the same offices or even the same countries, we are still working away - and on an even bigger capacity! In the last few months, Dr Floor Huisman (Netherlands), Dr Abbi Flint (UK) and Rosie Everett (Ireland) have joined the team - so welcome! 

Following the success of the WetFutures Ireland research on the perceptions of peatlands in the community (led by  Dr Kim Davies), the Dutch and UK team are currently in development of tailored questionnaires to undertake at wetland sites relevant to their research. This is a fantastic approach for face-to-face engagement with the public, and allows for us to get honest and though-provoking answers on how people feel about the work we are doing as a project, and how we can use that effectively to engage with communities and stake-holders in these unique wetland sites. 

One of the outputs of these questionnaires is to collect all the key terms that are most used in answers to create a word cloud - a visual representation of what is important for those that have undertaken the questionnaires. And we love it! 

We are all so excited to get back out in to the field - so watch this space! ​

Our very own Ben Jennings (WetFutures UK) spoke at Cafe Scientifique at the Bradford Media Museum this week, discussing the work of WetFutures and the way in which we engage with environmental policy makers, such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Ben's talk highlighted how engagement and collaboration with the scientific and policy-driven community allows us to discuss the role of heritage management of wetlands can go beyond the perception that archaeologists are all about bog bodies. In particular, Ben highlighted the role of WetFutures in engaging with communities within areas of wetlands, and the value of this enacting change within government policy to ensure wetland protection.