The Digging Season - examining the ecological impact and cultural legacy of peat extraction on the Somerset Levels

Peat has been mined in Somerset since the Roman occupation, and thereafter successive authorities have been determined to drain, shore-up, and otherwise ‘improve’ what is England’s largest wetland. The desiccation of the Somerset Levels has released millions of tons of CO2 that had built up over the past seven thousand years or so. This story is devastatingly similar to that of peatlands and wetlands around the world. Healthy bogs can sequester carbon on colossal scales, but when they dry out, stored carbon decomposes and they become net producers of greenhouse gasses. Globally, wetlands and bogs are currently releasing around 2 billion tons of CO2 annually and have a severe impact on climate change.

Whilst peat has accumulated across the millennia on the Somerset Levels, the anaerobic conditions have preserved artefacts that would otherwise have rotted. The Somerset Levels and Moors have revealed a wealth of information about the earliest farming communities who settled there around 6,000 years ago. Many artefacts are archaeologically unique and provide an understanding of ancient cultures that we would otherwise be ignorant of.

Topographic photographs of the final throes of the peat mining industry are presented alongside artefacts that were discovered in the process of peat cutting. Illustrations of contemporary objects (inspired by line drawings made in the 1970s and ‘80s by the Somerset Levels Project who were responsible for much of the archaeological fieldwork on the Levels) allude towards future possibilities for this beguiling place – whether they are positive or bleak. Made in collaboration with landscape architect Jenny Hyden, the ‘show bog’ approximates a wet healthy raised bog, as would have covered much of the Somerset Levels, had they remained untouched.

• https://www.jessealexander.co.uk/thedigg...