Historic Environment 
(coastline and offshore known sites)

There are a total of 2,152 known historic and archaeological sites within the EGCP boundary. These include offshore marine and maritime sites, and those onshore along the coast and foreshore. Designations range from national Scheduled Monument and Listed Building to local importance only as noted within the Historic Environment Records (HERs) for each Local Authority area. Survey in 2022 noted that soft sections of the coastline are subject to active erosion, and sites within these sections are at risk from loss over the next 10 years.

1,795 sites are wrecks, of which only 6 are currently accurately plotted. Most relate to ships sunk in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, while the earliest dated loss is 1501 AD off Cruden. 1 wreck relates to an aircraft, a Fairey Barracuda torpedo/dive bomber which crashed in 1946. 

257 sites are standing structures, earthworks and cropmarks ranging in date from Iron Age to World War II. One of most signficant coastal range of sites are the World War II defences consisting of concrete anti-tank blocks, pillboxes, anti-glider scaffold and barbed wire. The anti-tank blocks in particular have had a secondary affect of slowing down coastal erosion along stretches of the coastline. Other sites include the internationally significant Dunnottar Castle, and the nationally significant remains at Cairnbulg of a rocket pole system for use in coastal rescues.

37 sites relate to artefact finds ranging from Mesolithic flints to Bronze Age pottery and a bronze spearhead to Early Medieval carved stones to Medieval/Postmedieval cannon from shipwrecks to later musket balls, glass and pottery.

65 sites are known only through documentary references and remain largely unlocated.

3 sites are natural in origin.

As further offshore survey is undertaken, relating to renewable energy for instance, there is considerably scope for known wreck sites to be accurately located, and others to be identified that were previously unknown. Significant numbers of unexploded ordnance remain on the seabed from WWII activity.

The submerged land referred to as Doggerland, which once connected Scotland with continental Europe until the late Mesolithic, is still poorly understood and mapped from an archaeological perspective. There is considerable potential for buried artefacts and settlement to exist offshore along this coastline, dating to both the Late Upper Palaeolithic (c.12,000 BC - 8,000 BC) and the Mesolithic (c.8,000 BC - 4,000 BC).