Last chance to see? The ‘Crisis of Preservation’ and pathways to a sustainable future for Europe’s peatland archaeology

Despite repeated calls for action from various sources, peatland archaeological sites continue to deteriorate; the passive strategy of preservation in situ is failing. Here, the authors consider four challenges to peatland preservation—physical degradation, mapping and monitoring of sites, communication, and policy frameworks—with climate change ultimately causing further problems. Drawing on positive policy developments in England, they argue that advocacy for peatland archaeology needs to be louder and clearer: archaeology must become an integral consideration in all climate-change mitigation and land-use planning, rather than an afterthought, if the fragile heritage of European peatlands is to be preserved.