Publication Abstract

Identifying submerged and buried prehistoric landsurfaces of the southern North Sea

Identifying submerged and buried prehistoric landsurfaces of the southern North Sea

Ingrid Ward, Vince Gaffney, Piers Larcombe*

With expanding commercial development in the southern North Sea, including Marine Renewable Energy Resources, environmental and heritage issues are increasingly becoming a fundamental part of maritime planning.  However, our understanding of the submerged archaeological resource remains very limited.  Consequently, English Heritage (EH) has commissioned a number of studies through the Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF) to map the now drowned Quaternary landscape of the North Sea and to assess its wider archaeological potential.

The prediction of archaeological potential is progressing as more archaeological and geological information gradually becomes available.  A new protocol, introduced in 2005 by EH and BMAPA, has guided marine aggregate dredging companies in reporting archaeological finds more effectively.  Finds include a mammoth tusk dredged from a licenced area, 100 kilometres east of the River Humber and dated to around 44,000 years old and more recently stone axes reported to be over 100,000 years old found off the coast of East Anglia.  Thus the risk of damage to any submerged archaeology is, to some extent, offset by the advantage gained from discovering new sites, particularly in areas presently licensed to the offshore industry and subject to monitoring.

Finds produced by trawlers and dredgers need to be placed into their geological and chronological context but our current knowledge of both remains fairly limited.  In order to begin to understand the pattern between depositional environments and marine archaeology, a first-order geomorphological approach can be used to delineate the basic physical characteristics, sedimentary processes and geomorphic development of the depositional environments in which archaeological remains might be preserved.  At the same time, high high-resolution geophysical mapping projects, such as the North Sea Palaeolandscapes Project (NSPP), are beginning to reveal the extent of surviving Holocene landforms in the southern North Sea. The NSPP, utilised >23,000 km2 of 3D seismic data to generate volumetric models of the Holocene landscapes in the area of the southern North Sea. The information generated as part of the project demonstrates that the region represents one of the largest samples of a potentially, well-preserved, early Holocene landscape surviving in Europe and also that this data, collected for the purposes of mineral prospection, can be used to identify landscape features which have been preserved following inundation of the area.

The topographic details generated from such data include fluvial, lacustrine, estuarine and coastal features such as palaeochannels, coastal barriers and dune systems. This information, along with derived topographic data may assist in explaining the distribution of known archaeological sites and for predicting new archaeological sites.  Integration of geological and archaeological disciplines provides the best opportunity to develop tools, including predictive maps of archaeological potential, which serve the needs of managers of the marine archaeological heritage.

Reference

Ingrid Ward, Vince Gaffney, Piers Larcombe* (2008) Identifying submerged and buried prehistoric landsurfaces of the southern North Sea. International Scientific Meeting on Marine Renewable Energy and the Environment, Royal Institution of Great Britain, 16-17 June 2008.  Abstract and presentation,  (at http://www.maree2008.org/)

Ingrid Ward, Vince Gaffney, Piers Larcombe*

International Scientific Meeting on Marine Renewable Energy and the Environment, Royal Institution of Great Britain, 16-17 June 2008. Abstract and presentation, (at http://www.maree2008.org/)