The preservation of knowledge can be exceptionally important and of great significance for some of the issues that we have examined over the course of this module.

For instance, as we saw in chapter 6, our understanding of modern day over-fishing has been enhanced dramatically through archaeological studies of fish remains.

However, like cod, archaeological fish specialists are also an endangered species – at present, only the University of Cambridge has an academic fish specialist, Dr James Barrett. This means that only one person is available to train a new generation in the skills that have proven so vital for understanding fish stock.

In an endeavour to halt the growth of a skills gap, the University of Nottingham led an initiative to develop a new digital resource…