Monitoring Cultural Heritage in a Long-Term Project: The Norwegian Sequential Monitoring Programme

A sequential monitoring programme for archaeological sites and monuments was started in Norway in 1997. The purpose of this ongoing monitoring was to produce more accurate figures for loss and damage and to detect long-term trends in loss/damage patterns. In this article we present the method used to document the sequential monitoring, the extent of and the most important causes of loss and damage to archaeological heritage, and we discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of the method used in this monitoring programme. The results so far point to agriculture as the single most important cause of loss, and together with housing and leisure it is also the most important cause of damage. In the large parts of Norway where agriculture is marginal and has been characterized by small farms and grass based livestock production, regrowth of fallow fields leads to cultural landscape change and the loss of archaeological sites.