As Richard Morris, the Director of the Council for British Archaeology states, the consciousness of time and of ourselves as social beings are among humanity's defining characteristics. Archaeologists have a role as storytellers to the present about the past through interpretative research. Government directives in relation to archaeology such as the Department of the Environment's Planning Policy Guidance 16 and English Heritage's guidelines for Managing Archaeological Projects assume that such a research background to rescue archaeology exists. However under the current system, whereby archaeologists compete to present the lowest-cost tender for a piece of work, the first casualty is usually the research element that is, the attempt to interpret how people lived their lives in the past. The knowledgeable approach will be the first stage of integrating conservation issues with investigation of the past.
Investigation is the primary role of archaeology.
It is only when the landscape is viewed in its entirety that its complexity and overall importance can be appreciated, and an assessment of the importance of each of its archaeological component parts can be made. This landscape approach allows archaeologists to move away from the static, schematic, view of the past by looking at human relationships across geographical space and time. This is also the only way we can understand how we have come to the different types of landscapes which characterise different regions and localities today. I would suggest that initial extensive landscape investigation is needed for the whole of any area potentially affected by a large-scale traffic management scheme as part of an environmental impact assessment which should be integral to the planning process. The archaeological input to proposed traffic management schemes should be integrated with other environmental and social impacts of a road.