Description
This project follows on from an earlier AHRB Innovations Award to Penny
Spikins in 2002 on the modelling of submerged sites in the North Sea
Basin and is focussed on the investigation of two underwater sites in
Britain, Bouldnor Cliff in the Solent, which has produced clear
evidence of Mesolithic materials including hearths, artefacts and
worked timber, and Browns Bay on the Northumberland coast, where the
status of the site remains to be explored.
These sites are unique in
Britain and provide potential insight into the use of coastal
environments during the final postglacial rise of sea level and an
opportunity to develop methods and expertise in underwater
investigations
Details
Project Members
Funding bodies
- The Leverhulme Trust
- The Royal Archaeological Institute
Objectives
- part-time research funding for Garry Momber and Lawrence
Moran to devote time to this and the Gibraltar and Red Sea underwater
projects, alongside their other commitments
- investigation
of Bouldnor Cliff (Solent) and Brown’s Bay (Northumberland), where
evidence is being rapidly destroyed by erosion so that systematic
investigation is an urgent issue
- systematic evaluation,
excavation and collection of samples that can help to reconstruct the
environmental conditions of the ancient coastal landscape prior to
inundation by sea-level rise and the nature of the associated
archaeological materials
Methods
The work on the British sites will involve high-resolution geophysical
survey and sub-bottom profiling, shallow water diving (to c. 10 m) with
surface air supply and Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus
(SCUBA), auger transects, recovery of sediments and artefacts,
archaeological and palaeoenvironmental recording, analysis of
microscopic plant and animal data, and radiocarbon dating.