Scheduled Monuments (DATASET)

The sole criterion in the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 is that, before a monument can be scheduled, it must be of 'national importance'. Guidance and criteria to assess national importance of monuments is set out by Scottish Ministers in The Scottish Historic Environment Policy. This takes account of a wide range of factors, including artistic, archaeological, architectural, historic, traditional, aesthetic, scientific and social. The aim of scheduling is to preserve sites and monuments as far as possible in the form in which they have come down to us today. Scheduling is an ongoing process. We assess and reassess monuments as our knowledge and understanding of what survives and its importance changes. Sometimes monuments are amended to bring the maps and descriptions up-to-date. The process of amending is the same as for scheduling. Most scheduling takes place as part of a rolling programme focusing on those parts of Scotland that appear to be under-scheduled, and where scheduling will most quickly make a positive difference. Historic Scotland may commission thematic research to inform this analysis. The purpose of this dataset is for importation into licence holders' GIS applications to allow the user to identify the approximate position, size and extent of scheduled monuments in Scotland. The user should be aware that this information is INDICATIVE only and reference should always be made to the legal documentation.



via DGU - Custom query http://data.gov.uk//dataset/9075113f-d8e3-48da-bbfc-34f58939529b