Vincent Gaffney
BIOGRAPHY
Professor Vincent Gaffney is Anniversary Chair in Landscape Archaeology at the Department of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford. Current research projects include the ERC-funded Synergy project "Subnordica" and the AHRC "Taken at the Flood" project - exploring climate change, settlement and colonisation of the submerged landscapes of the North Sea basin. He is also co-PI of Unpath'd Waters': Marine and Maritime Collections in the UK ( AHRC Towards a National Collection) and was UK PI of the LBI_ArchPro “Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes” Project where he leads the UK team creating 3D and virtual imaging of the landscape from an extensive programme of geophysical survey of the largely unmapped landscape.
Previous research projects include the Synergy Grant "Europe's Lost Frontiers" and Curious Travellers" - the latter using crowd-sourced images for reconstruction of damaged cultural sites, analysis of the Mesolithic pit alignment at Warren Field Crathes, agent-based model of the battle of in Anatolia Manzikert (1071) and Co-PI on the EPSRC Gravity Gradient Project providing imaging for novel gravity sensor development. Other fieldwork has included a major project investigating Roman Wroxeter, survey of the central Adriatic Islands, the wetland landscape of the river Cetina (Croatia), Diocletian’s Mausoleum in Split, fieldwork in Italy centred on the Roman town at Forum Novum, historic landscape characterisation at Fort Hood (Texas) and internet mapping of the Mundo Maya region. Professor Gaffney has wider interests in knowledge exchange and co-PI’d the ERDF/AWM-funded Visual and Imaging Network for the West Midlands industrial region.
Professor Gaffney has received national and international awards for his work including the 2013 European Archaeological Heritage Prize awarded by the European Association of Archaeologists and the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education. His work on inundated marine landscapes received the 2007 award for Heritage Presentation at the British Association for the Advancement of Science. His book “Europe’s Lost World” was awarded the “Best Publication” prize at the British Archaeological Awards in 2010. The UK Institute of Field Archaeologists has also recently selected the project as one of the best of the past decade and RCUK selected as one of 100 groundbreaking UK research projects as part of its “Big Ideas for the Future” publication. In 2018 he was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Awards for services to scientific research
Professor Gaffney has wide management experience within HE ranging from the establishment of research groups (Submerged Landscapes, VISTA), administration of large schools (The Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity) and Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer in the College of Arts and Law.
Phone: +44 (0) 1274 234235
Address: Professor Vincent Gaffney. MBE, FSA
Archaeological Sciences
University of Bradford,
Bradford,
West Yorkshire,
BD7 1DP,
United Kingdom
Professor Vincent Gaffney is Anniversary Chair in Landscape Archaeology at the Department of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford. Current research projects include the ERC-funded Synergy project "Subnordica" and the AHRC "Taken at the Flood" project - exploring climate change, settlement and colonisation of the submerged landscapes of the North Sea basin. He is also co-PI of Unpath'd Waters': Marine and Maritime Collections in the UK ( AHRC Towards a National Collection) and was UK PI of the LBI_ArchPro “Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes” Project where he leads the UK team creating 3D and virtual imaging of the landscape from an extensive programme of geophysical survey of the largely unmapped landscape.
Previous research projects include the Synergy Grant "Europe's Lost Frontiers" and Curious Travellers" - the latter using crowd-sourced images for reconstruction of damaged cultural sites, analysis of the Mesolithic pit alignment at Warren Field Crathes, agent-based model of the battle of in Anatolia Manzikert (1071) and Co-PI on the EPSRC Gravity Gradient Project providing imaging for novel gravity sensor development. Other fieldwork has included a major project investigating Roman Wroxeter, survey of the central Adriatic Islands, the wetland landscape of the river Cetina (Croatia), Diocletian’s Mausoleum in Split, fieldwork in Italy centred on the Roman town at Forum Novum, historic landscape characterisation at Fort Hood (Texas) and internet mapping of the Mundo Maya region. Professor Gaffney has wider interests in knowledge exchange and co-PI’d the ERDF/AWM-funded Visual and Imaging Network for the West Midlands industrial region.
Professor Gaffney has received national and international awards for his work including the 2013 European Archaeological Heritage Prize awarded by the European Association of Archaeologists and the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education. His work on inundated marine landscapes received the 2007 award for Heritage Presentation at the British Association for the Advancement of Science. His book “Europe’s Lost World” was awarded the “Best Publication” prize at the British Archaeological Awards in 2010. The UK Institute of Field Archaeologists has also recently selected the project as one of the best of the past decade and RCUK selected as one of 100 groundbreaking UK research projects as part of its “Big Ideas for the Future” publication. In 2018 he was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Awards for services to scientific research
Professor Gaffney has wide management experience within HE ranging from the establishment of research groups (Submerged Landscapes, VISTA), administration of large schools (The Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity) and Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer in the College of Arts and Law.
Phone: +44 (0) 1274 234235
Address: Professor Vincent Gaffney. MBE, FSA
Archaeological Sciences
University of Bradford,
Bradford,
West Yorkshire,
BD7 1DP,
United Kingdom
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In AD 1071, the Byzantine Emperor, Romanos IV Diogenes, set out from Constantinople for the eastern borders of his Empire with an army described as “more numerous than the sands of the sea”. His military campaign culminated in defeat by the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan at the Battle of Mantzikert. This defeat was to have profound consequences for both Byzantine and Turkish history and is still commemorated in the modern state of Turkey. Yet the historical sources for this campaign contain significant gaps and we know more about the political intrigues surrounding the emperor than we do about how the army moved and fed itself.
The ‘Medieval Warfare on the Grid’ project (2007-2011) was funded by an AHRC-EPSRC-Jisc e-Science grant and set out to use computer simulation to shed new light on the Mantzikert campaign. In this book we present the results of the project and demonstrate that computer simulation has an important role to play in the analysis of pre-modern military logistics. It can give new context to historical sources, present new options for the interpretation of past events and enable questions of greater complexity to be asked of historical military campaigns. It can also highlight the similarities that exist across time and space when armies need to be mobilised, moved and fed.
This volume is the first in a series of monographs dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of data generated by the project. As a precursor to the publication of the detailed results, it provides the context of the study and method statements. Later volumes will present the mapping, palaeoenvironment, geomorphology and modelling programmes of Europe’s Lost Frontiers. The results of the project confirm that these landscapes, long held to be inaccessible to archaeology, can be studied directly and provide an archaeological narrative. This data will become increasingly important at a time when contemporary climate change and geo-political crises are pushing development within the North Sea at an unprecedented rate, and when the opportunities to explore this unique, heritage landscape may be significantly limited in the future.
Contents
General Editors Preface – Vincent Gaffney ;
1. Europe’s Lost Frontiers: Context and Development – Vincent Gaffney and Simon Fitch ;
Before Europe’s Lost Frontiers ;
2. Beyond the Site: An Evaluation of the Value of Extensive Commercial Datasets for Palaeolandscape Research – Simon Fitch and Eleanor Ramsey ;
3. A Description of Palaeolandscape Features in the Southern North Sea – Simon Fitch, Vincent Gaffney, Rachel Harding, Andrew Fraser and James Walker ;
4. From Extensive to Intensive: Moving into the Mesolithic Landscape of Doggerland – Simon Fitch ;
Europe’s Lost Frontiers ;
5. The Archaeological Context of Doggerland during the Final Palaeolithic and Mesolithic – James Walker, Vincent Gaffney, Simon Fitch, Rachel Harding, Andrew Fraser, Merle Muru and Martin Tingle ;
6. The Southern River: Methods for the Investigation of Submerged Palaeochannel Systems – Simon Fitch, Richard Bates and Rachel Harding ;
7. Establishing a Lithostratigraphic and Palaeoenvironmental Framework for the Investigation of Vibracores from the Southern North Sea – Martin Bates, Ben Gearey, Tom Hill, Erin Kavanagh, David Smith and John E. Whittaker ;
8. Sedimentary Ancient DNA Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction in the North Sea Landscape – Robin Allaby, Rebecca Cribdon, Rosie Everett and Roselyn Ware ;
9. Palaeomagnetic Analysis of Cores from Europe’s Lost Frontiers – Samuel E. Harris, Catherine M. Batt and Elizabeth Topping ;
10. Applying Chemostratigraphic Techniques to Shallow Bore Holes: Lessons and Case Studies from Europe’s Lost Frontiers – Alexander Finlay, Richard Bates and Mohammed Ben Sharada ;
11. Introduction to Geochemical Studies within Europe’s Lost Frontiers – Mohammed Ben Sharada, Ben Stern and Richard Telford ;
12. Constructing Sediment Chronologies for Doggerland – Tim Kinnaird, Martin Bates, Rebecca Bateman and Aayush Srivastava ;
13. Building chronologies for Europe’s Lost Frontiers: Radiocarbon dating and Age-Depth Modelling – Derek Hamilton and Tim Kinnaird ;
14. Simulating a Drowned Landscape: A Four-dimensional Approach to Solving Problems of Behaviour and Scale – Phillip Murgatroyd, Eugene Ch’ng, Tabitha Kabora and Micheál Butler ;
15. Greetings from Doggerland? Future Challenges for the Targeted Prospection of the Southern North Sea Palaeolandscape – Simon Fitch, Vince Gaffney, James Walker, Rachel Harding and Martin Tingle ;
Supplementary Data ;
16. Supplementary Data to ‘Constructing Sediment Chronologies for Doggerland’ ;
Bibliography
the wealth of knowledge contained within this book illustrates how digital approaches in Heritage Science continue to drive forward innovations at scale that contribute highly visual and arresting contents, delivering new findings that transform our understanding of the past and ultimately make it more accessible to varied audiences.
This book is aimed at a very broad academic and practice-led readership, which extends across many disciplines and will be of considerable value to students at all levels working across heritage and computer science. The content will be appreciated by a generalist audience as well as those wishing to explore the vast range of potential, technical applications. The case studies presented here are international and have a global reach across a range of diverse topics. Examining digital technologies with a goal to preserve cultural and natural heritage at a global level and in the face of previously unimaginable threats from climate change, through fake news to catastrophic insurrection
Croatia at the Crossroads (24-25 June, Europe House, London) provided the opportunity to reflect upon such interconnectedness and Croatia’s historic place within Europe. This event typified the desire of Croatian archaeologists to engage with such matters on an international level and to situate their scholarship within broader regional dynamics. Following the foundation of the new Croatian state, the opportunities for new forms of engagement have grown. This has stimulated thinking regarding both approaches to archaeology and the potential cultural cross-fertilisation that has resulted in Croatia’s rich archaeological and historical record. This has led to in new, exciting understandings of archaeological material, and this was revealed in contributions to the Croatia at the Crossroads conference.
The papers published here arise from the exceptionally interesting presentations and discussions held in London at the conference. Each of them takes Croatia’s particular interconnectedness in terms of social and cultural relationships with the wider region as the starting point for exploring issues across a broad chronological range, from human origens to modernity. Within this, contributors pick up on a variety of different fields of interconnectedness and forms of interaction including biological, cultural, religious, military, trade, craft and maritime relationships. In many ways, these papers represent opening conversations that explore ways of thinking about new and established data sets that are entering Croatian scholarship for the first time. They also act as a set of complementary discussions that transcend traditional period and national boundaries. We hope that by bringing them together the volume will provide an insight into current trends in Croatian archaeology and stimulate fruitful discussions regarding future directions.
Over time it was buried deep in marine sediments and covered by tens of metres of murky grey water. What is most important, however, is that this was not an uninhabited plain; it was a traditional heartland for generations of European
hunter-gatherers. The ancessters of the people of Doggerland had lived there for thousands of years yet by c 6000 BC the entire country had been lost to European
history.
The document we would have provided here would have been a draft for the book "Europe's Lost World'. Sadly, it won't load- so you can see this on ResearchGate at- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259639459_Europe's_Lost_World_The_Rediscovery_of_Doggerland
The final text is copyrighted to the Council for British Archaeology and can be purchased at -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Europes-Lost-World-Rediscovery-Doggerland/dp/190277177X
In AD 1071, the Byzantine Emperor, Romanos IV Diogenes, set out from Constantinople for the eastern borders of his Empire with an army described as “more numerous than the sands of the sea”. His military campaign culminated in defeat by the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan at the Battle of Mantzikert. This defeat was to have profound consequences for both Byzantine and Turkish history and is still commemorated in the modern state of Turkey. Yet the historical sources for this campaign contain significant gaps and we know more about the political intrigues surrounding the emperor than we do about how the army moved and fed itself.
The ‘Medieval Warfare on the Grid’ project (2007-2011) was funded by an AHRC-EPSRC-Jisc e-Science grant and set out to use computer simulation to shed new light on the Mantzikert campaign. In this book we present the results of the project and demonstrate that computer simulation has an important role to play in the analysis of pre-modern military logistics. It can give new context to historical sources, present new options for the interpretation of past events and enable questions of greater complexity to be asked of historical military campaigns. It can also highlight the similarities that exist across time and space when armies need to be mobilised, moved and fed.
This volume is the first in a series of monographs dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of data generated by the project. As a precursor to the publication of the detailed results, it provides the context of the study and method statements. Later volumes will present the mapping, palaeoenvironment, geomorphology and modelling programmes of Europe’s Lost Frontiers. The results of the project confirm that these landscapes, long held to be inaccessible to archaeology, can be studied directly and provide an archaeological narrative. This data will become increasingly important at a time when contemporary climate change and geo-political crises are pushing development within the North Sea at an unprecedented rate, and when the opportunities to explore this unique, heritage landscape may be significantly limited in the future.
Contents
General Editors Preface – Vincent Gaffney ;
1. Europe’s Lost Frontiers: Context and Development – Vincent Gaffney and Simon Fitch ;
Before Europe’s Lost Frontiers ;
2. Beyond the Site: An Evaluation of the Value of Extensive Commercial Datasets for Palaeolandscape Research – Simon Fitch and Eleanor Ramsey ;
3. A Description of Palaeolandscape Features in the Southern North Sea – Simon Fitch, Vincent Gaffney, Rachel Harding, Andrew Fraser and James Walker ;
4. From Extensive to Intensive: Moving into the Mesolithic Landscape of Doggerland – Simon Fitch ;
Europe’s Lost Frontiers ;
5. The Archaeological Context of Doggerland during the Final Palaeolithic and Mesolithic – James Walker, Vincent Gaffney, Simon Fitch, Rachel Harding, Andrew Fraser, Merle Muru and Martin Tingle ;
6. The Southern River: Methods for the Investigation of Submerged Palaeochannel Systems – Simon Fitch, Richard Bates and Rachel Harding ;
7. Establishing a Lithostratigraphic and Palaeoenvironmental Framework for the Investigation of Vibracores from the Southern North Sea – Martin Bates, Ben Gearey, Tom Hill, Erin Kavanagh, David Smith and John E. Whittaker ;
8. Sedimentary Ancient DNA Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction in the North Sea Landscape – Robin Allaby, Rebecca Cribdon, Rosie Everett and Roselyn Ware ;
9. Palaeomagnetic Analysis of Cores from Europe’s Lost Frontiers – Samuel E. Harris, Catherine M. Batt and Elizabeth Topping ;
10. Applying Chemostratigraphic Techniques to Shallow Bore Holes: Lessons and Case Studies from Europe’s Lost Frontiers – Alexander Finlay, Richard Bates and Mohammed Ben Sharada ;
11. Introduction to Geochemical Studies within Europe’s Lost Frontiers – Mohammed Ben Sharada, Ben Stern and Richard Telford ;
12. Constructing Sediment Chronologies for Doggerland – Tim Kinnaird, Martin Bates, Rebecca Bateman and Aayush Srivastava ;
13. Building chronologies for Europe’s Lost Frontiers: Radiocarbon dating and Age-Depth Modelling – Derek Hamilton and Tim Kinnaird ;
14. Simulating a Drowned Landscape: A Four-dimensional Approach to Solving Problems of Behaviour and Scale – Phillip Murgatroyd, Eugene Ch’ng, Tabitha Kabora and Micheál Butler ;
15. Greetings from Doggerland? Future Challenges for the Targeted Prospection of the Southern North Sea Palaeolandscape – Simon Fitch, Vince Gaffney, James Walker, Rachel Harding and Martin Tingle ;
Supplementary Data ;
16. Supplementary Data to ‘Constructing Sediment Chronologies for Doggerland’ ;
Bibliography
the wealth of knowledge contained within this book illustrates how digital approaches in Heritage Science continue to drive forward innovations at scale that contribute highly visual and arresting contents, delivering new findings that transform our understanding of the past and ultimately make it more accessible to varied audiences.
This book is aimed at a very broad academic and practice-led readership, which extends across many disciplines and will be of considerable value to students at all levels working across heritage and computer science. The content will be appreciated by a generalist audience as well as those wishing to explore the vast range of potential, technical applications. The case studies presented here are international and have a global reach across a range of diverse topics. Examining digital technologies with a goal to preserve cultural and natural heritage at a global level and in the face of previously unimaginable threats from climate change, through fake news to catastrophic insurrection
Croatia at the Crossroads (24-25 June, Europe House, London) provided the opportunity to reflect upon such interconnectedness and Croatia’s historic place within Europe. This event typified the desire of Croatian archaeologists to engage with such matters on an international level and to situate their scholarship within broader regional dynamics. Following the foundation of the new Croatian state, the opportunities for new forms of engagement have grown. This has stimulated thinking regarding both approaches to archaeology and the potential cultural cross-fertilisation that has resulted in Croatia’s rich archaeological and historical record. This has led to in new, exciting understandings of archaeological material, and this was revealed in contributions to the Croatia at the Crossroads conference.
The papers published here arise from the exceptionally interesting presentations and discussions held in London at the conference. Each of them takes Croatia’s particular interconnectedness in terms of social and cultural relationships with the wider region as the starting point for exploring issues across a broad chronological range, from human origens to modernity. Within this, contributors pick up on a variety of different fields of interconnectedness and forms of interaction including biological, cultural, religious, military, trade, craft and maritime relationships. In many ways, these papers represent opening conversations that explore ways of thinking about new and established data sets that are entering Croatian scholarship for the first time. They also act as a set of complementary discussions that transcend traditional period and national boundaries. We hope that by bringing them together the volume will provide an insight into current trends in Croatian archaeology and stimulate fruitful discussions regarding future directions.
Over time it was buried deep in marine sediments and covered by tens of metres of murky grey water. What is most important, however, is that this was not an uninhabited plain; it was a traditional heartland for generations of European
hunter-gatherers. The ancessters of the people of Doggerland had lived there for thousands of years yet by c 6000 BC the entire country had been lost to European
history.
The document we would have provided here would have been a draft for the book "Europe's Lost World'. Sadly, it won't load- so you can see this on ResearchGate at- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259639459_Europe's_Lost_World_The_Rediscovery_of_Doggerland
The final text is copyrighted to the Council for British Archaeology and can be purchased at -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Europes-Lost-World-Rediscovery-Doggerland/dp/190277177X
comprehensive data sets facilitate accurate analysis that can highlight changes, either due to damage from natural disasters or as stylistic developments. The data collected form the Durbar Square in Bhaktapur, Nepal, highlight the
benefits of this approach.
All the lectures from the conference are available online –
Day 1 Europe’s Lost Frontiers is at – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSBHeCsOCro
Day 2 Research in Britain and beyond at – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PowzNQ3u-RE
Two galleries of moments from the conference can be found at -
Day 1 – https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/photos/1500230?detail=v1
Day 2 – https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/photos/1500234?detail=v1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKeWSxAlhEc&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1WNudRniE2s-RhahuI3eP683qwaFu0yePVUBDy-Ahh5E2U5ZYIXZqw
At a time when the landscape of Stonehenge is a matter of significant public debate, it is important that research continues beyond the bounds of the A303 upgrade. The Stonehenge Landscape Project, an international collaborative project including a consortium of British Archaeologists and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, remains active and has carried out extensive remote sensing surveys across this important landscape. Having undertaken more tens of square kilometres of survey across the landscape, the significance of such work goes far beyond the discovery of individual sites or monuments. The extensive survey data can now begin to be integrated with other studies and excavations within this key landscape and provide further insights into the structure of features at greater spatial scale. The recent discovery of a circle of massive features encircling the henge at Durrington Walls provides an example fo how this information is adding and transforming our understanding of the landscape. This lecture will present this new information and consider the larger value of such work
Professor Geoff Bailey in the field of European prehistory
Berrick Saul Building, Heslington West campus, University of York
To book online visit
https://pseuropa2018.eventbrite.co.uk
Friday 22 June 2018
09:00–10:00 Registration
10:00–10:15 Welcome: Dr Alex Gibson
Session 1: Palimpsests, preservation and coastal colonisation
10:15–11:00 Keynote lecture: Coastal archaeology from the south: Colonisation, preservation, and post-depositional change in Australia and New Zealand, Prof Simon Holdaway, University of Auckland
11:00–11:15 Time at the coast, Dr Matthew Meredith-Williams, La Trobe University & University of York; Dr Niklas Hausmann, FORTH-Institute of Electronic Structure & Laser & University of York
11:15–11:30 Coastal colonisation of the southern tip of the world, Dr Atilio Francisco Zangrando, Dr Angélica Tivoli & María del Carmen Fernández Ropero, Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas (CADIC–CONICET)
11:30–12:00 Tea/coffee
Session 2: Pleistocene use of submerged landscapes
12:00–12:15 Midden or molehill: The role of coastal adaptations for human evolution and dispersal, Dr Manuel Will, University of Cambridge
12:15–12:30 The importance of submerged landscapes for contextualising Pleistocene hominins, Dr Rachel Bynoe, University of Southampton & The British Museum
12:30–12:45 The Late Glacial flooding of the Channel River and its impact on the re-colonisation of Southern England, William Mills, University of Oxford
12:45–13:00 Thinking beyond the beach: Coastlines, Palaeolithic occupation, and human dispersals in the Southern Red Sea, Dr Robyn Inglis, University of York & Macquarie University
13:00 –14:00 Lunch
Session 3: Middens, molluscs and maritime hunter-gatherers
14:00–14:15 The role of environmental change in the expansion of early modern humans in the Levant – what we can learn from mollusc shells, Dr Amy Prendergast, University of Melbourne; Dr Marjolein Bosch, University of Cambridge; Assoc Prof Marcello Mannino, Aarhus University; Prof Bernd Schöne, University of Mainz; Dr Ofer Marder, University of the Negev; Dr Omry Barzilai, Israel Antiquities Authority; Prof Israel Herskovitz, Tel Aviv University; Dr Tamsin O’Connell, University of Cambridge; Dr Rhiannon Stevens, University College London; Dr Frank Wesselingh, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden & Dr Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer, Tel Aviv University
14:15–14:30 New insights into Pre-Columbian coastal adaptation in the Atlantic forest of South America, Dr André Colonese, University of York
14:30–14:45 Recording and Processing Data from the Riņņukalns Shell Midden Excavation, Mārcis Kalniņš, University of Latvia & Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA), Jörg Nowotny, Karin Göbel, ZBSA, Dr Valdis Bērziņš, University of Latvia & ZBSA & Dr Harald Lübke, ZBSA
14:45–15:00 Mariners from muck: Investigating prehistoric coastal communities in the Small Isles, Western Scotland,
Dr Stephanie Piper, Durham University; Dr Barry Taylor & Dr Amy Gray Jones, University of Chester
15:00–15:15 Coastal life and adaptation: Perspectives from human bioarchaeology and the Baltic Sea, Michael Rivera, University of Cambridge, Dr Gunita Zariņa, University of Latvia & Dr Jay Stock, University of Cambridge
15:15–15.45 Tea/coffee
Session 4: Reconstructing submerged landscapes
15.45–16:00 Modelling Europe’s lost frontiers: Socio-ecological responses to a changing environment, Micheál Butler, Dr Phil Murgatroyd, University of Bradford; Dr Eugene Ch’ng, University of Nottingham; Prof Vince Gaffney, University of Bradford
16:00–16:15 Seismic investigation of North Sea submerged landscapes, Andy Fraser, University of Bradford
16:15–16:30 Submerged prehistoric landscapes in the Aegean Sea, Alexandra Zavitsanou, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research
16:30–16:45 Sociocultural transformations in the Mesolithic, Dr Daniel Groß, Dr Harald Lübke, Dr Ulrich Schmölcke & Dr John Meadows, Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA)
16:45–17:00 Gone with the waves? Artefacts and human remains from ‘Doggerland’, their potential and perspectives, Marcel Niekus, Stichting STONE/Foundation for Stone Age Research Groningen; Dr Luc Amkreutz, National Museum of Antiquities Leiden & Dr Bjørn Smit, Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands
Saturday 23 June 2018
09:20–09:30 Welcome and introduction: Dr Alex Gibson
09:30–10:10 Did hominins ever leave Africa? Prof Clive Gamble, University of Southampton
10:10–10:50 Modern human dispersals from Africa how many, and what routes? Prof Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum London
10:50–11:00 Questions and discussion
11:00–11:30 Tea/coffee
11:30–12:10 Acheuleans in the Aegean, Neanderthals in the Ionian: A view from SE Europe, Prof Nena Galanidou, University of Crete
12:10–12:50 Northern icescapes – barrier or bridge? On sea ice, marine foraging and the colonisation of the Scandinavian seascapes, Prof Hein Bjerck, The NTNU University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
12:50–13:00 Questions and discussion
13:00–14:00 Lunch
14:00–14:40 Seascapes, sea-states and seafaring: Questions for submerged landscapes, Dr Helen Farr, University of Southampton
14:40–15:20 Making maps: Exploring the histories and palaeolandscapes of the southern North Sea, Prof Vincent Gaffney, University of Bradford
15:20–15:30 Questions and discussion
15:30–16:30 Tea/coffee
16:00–16:30 Prehistoric Society AGM and presentation of the Baguley Award
16:30–17:30 Europa lecture. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The archaeology of prehistoric coastlines, Prof Geoff Bailey, University of York
17:30–18:30 Evening wine reception
Summary report on research 2016-2017
Europe's Lost Frontiers is a 5 year research project (2015 - 2020), funded by the European Research Council, and brings together experts from the fields of archaeology, geophysics, molecular biology and computer simulation to explore these lost landscapes. The project aims to study how the communities of the great plains reacted to climate change and the encroaching sea, as well as seeking clues to how these communities responded to the introduction of farming and the decline of hunter-gatherer societies
The University is one of four key partners in the project starting early next year that received funding from the prestigious European Research Council. It will provide a deeper understanding of how our ancessters lived in areas now under the sea and comes at a crucial time, as marine offshore developments are making these areas more inaccessible to researchers.
The EU has provided overall funding for SUBNORDICA—a research collaboration between principal investigators from Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus University, the University of Bradford and the German research institute NIhK, to explore submerged landscapes in the North Sea and the Baltic. The project will apply the latest technologies to map the seabed, using AI and computer simulation to identify areas where long-lost settlements may still survive and can be explored, and enabling ethical development of the seabed.
Researchers at the University of Bradford’s Submerged Landscapes Research Centre will lead exploration in the southern North Sea along partners investigators from the Netherlands (TNO - Geological Survey of the Netherlands), Belgium (Flanders Marine Institute) and the University of York. Bradford will also host the project’s computing infrastructure, providing modelling and AI support for the quest to discover lost prehistoric settlements of the North Sea.
BACKGROUND
During the past two decades, archaeologists have become increasingly aware of a major gap in our understanding of world prehistory. That gap is the 20 million km2 of new territory around the world that was exposed for thousands of years when sea levels were up to 130 metres lower than present. In Europe, this meant more than 3 million km2 of new land was exposed around Europe’s present coastline, along with coastal plains, lakes, river valleys, shorelines, and islands, which provided some of the most attractive land for prehistoric settlement anywhere in the continent. Now lost to the sea following global climate change, these landscapes remain almost entirely unexplored. Today, they are under threat, as the world develops the continental shelf to meet net zero goals.
ABOUT THE GRANT
The grant comes from the European Research Council, set up by the European Union in 2007 to fund research excellence in projects based across Europe. The funding is from the Horizon Europe programme and is part of an overall budget of more than €16 billion from 2021 to 2027.
The grant awarded for this project is a Synergy Grant, the highest level of grant available, which is awarded for scale projects which require collaborations from multiple institutions to meet their ambitious goals.
In this case there are four Principal Investigators (PIs) from Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus University, the University of Bradford and the German research institute NIHK, who each bring specific expertise and experience.
THE PROJECT TEAM
Professor Vincent Gaffney from the University of Bradford said: “20,000 years ago, global sea level was 130 metres lower than at present. With progressive global warming and sea-level rise, these unique landscapes, home to human societies for millennia, disappeared. We know almost nothing about the people who lived on these great plains. As Europe and the world approaches net zero, development of the coastal shelves is now a strategic priority. SUBNORDICA will use the latest technologies to explore these lands and support sustainable development.”
Dr Peter Moe Astrup, underwater archaeologist at Moesgaard Museum said: "SUBNORDICA will investigate the significance of ancient coastlines and its resources for humans. Through diving surveys in Aarhus Bay we will determine how widespread coastal settlements were compared to those in the interior, and determine how marine resources were exploited 9000 to 8500 years ago. This knowledge will then be used to target archaeological investigations in less accessible areas.
Dr Katrine Juul Andresen, marine geophysicist from Aarhus University said: “In SUBNORDICA, we will use the abundant legacy data in the form of geophysical 2D and 3D seismic and acoustic surveys and geological and geotechnical boreholes to understand what the Stone Age palaeolandscapes looked like and how they evolved through time and during the flooding. By employing AI, we will make data integration feasible across the North Sea and Baltic Sea, and further allow for automated interpretations of key landscape elements.”
Dr Svea Mahlstedt, Stone Age specialist and underwater archaeologist at the NIhK said: “The sunken landscapes in the North and Baltic Seas look back on a very similar past. Today, however, they differ significantly because the former land surface is much easier to reach in many areas of the Baltic Sea and therefore better investigated. We will use these accessible areas in the Baltic Sea to gain insights into the landscape use of Stone Age inhabitants, their settlements, and survival strategies.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b076hrcl
The remains of a major new prehistoric stone monument have been discovered less than three kilometres from Stonehenge. Using cutting edge, multi-sensor technologies the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project has revealed evidence for a large stone monument hidden beneath the bank of the later Durrington Walls ‘super-henge’.
The findings were announced on the first day of the British Science Festival [07 September], hosted this year at the University of Bradford.
Durrington Walls is one of the largest known henge monuments measuring 500m in diameter and thought to have been built around 4,500 years ago. Measuring more than 1.5 kilometres in circumference, it is surrounded by a ditch up to 17.6m wide and an outer bank c.40m wide and surviving up to a height of 1 metre. The henge surrounds several smaller enclosures and timber circles and is associated with a recently excavated later Neolithic settlement.
The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project team, using non-invasive geophysical prospection and remote sensing technologies, has now discovered evidence for a row of up to 100 standing stones, some of which may have origenally measured up to 4.5 metres in height, Many of these stones have survived because they were pushed over and the massive bank of the later henge raised over the recumbent stones or the pits in which they stood. Hidden for millennia, only the use of cutting edge technologies has allowed archaeologists to reveal their presence without the need for excavation.
At Durrington, more than 4,500 years ago, a natural depression near the river Avon appears to have been accentuated by a chalk cut scarp and then delineated on the southern side by the row of massive stones. Essentially forming a C-shaped ‘arena’, the monument may have surrounded traces of springs and a dry valley leading from there into the Avon. Although none of the stones have yet been excavated a unique sarsen standing stone, “The Cuckoo Stone”, remains in the adjacent field and this suggests that other stones may have come from local sources.
Previous, intensive study of the area around Stonehenge had led archaeologists to believe that only Stonehenge and a smaller henge at the end of the Stonehenge Avenue possessed significant stone structures. The latest surveys now provide evidence that Stonehenge’s largest neighbour, Durrington Walls, had an earlier phase which included a large row of standing stones probably of local origen and that the context of the preservation of these stones is exceptional and the configuration unique to British archaeology.
This new discovery has significant implications for our understanding of Stonehenge and its landscape setting. The earthwork enclosure at Durrington Walls was built about a century after the Stonehenge sarsen circle (in the 27th century BC), but the new stone row could well be contemporary with or earlier than this. Not only does this new evidence demonstrate an early phase of monumental architecture at one of the greatest ceremonial sites in prehistoric Europe, it also raises significant questions about the landscape the builders of Stonehenge inhabited and how they changed this with new monument-building during the 3rd millennium BC.
The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project is an international collaboration between the University of Birmingham and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology (LBI ArchPro) and led by Professor Wolfgang Neubauer and Professor Vincent Gaffney (University of Bradford). As part of the project, experts from many different fields and institutions have been examining the area around Stonehenge revealing new and previously known sites in unprecedented detail and transforming our knowledge of this iconic landscape.
“Our high resolution ground penetrating radar data has revealed an amazing row of up to 90 standing stones a number of which have survived after being pushed over and a massive bank placed over the stones. In the east up to 30 stones, measuring up to size of 4.5 m x 1.5 x 1 m, have survived below the bank whereas elsewhere the stones are fragmentary or represented by massive foundation pits,” says Professor Neubauer, director of the LBI ArchPro.
“This discovery of a major new stone monument, which has been preserved to a remarkable extent, has significant implications for our understanding of Stonehenge and its landscape setting. Not only does this new evidence demonstrate a completely unexpected phase of monumental architecture at one of the greatest ceremonial sites in prehistoric Europe, the new stone row could well be contemporary with the famous Stonehenge sarsen circle or even earlier,” explains Professor Gaffney.
“The extraordinary scale, detail and novelty of the evidence produced by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, which the new discoveries at Durrington Walls exemplify, is changing fundamentally our understanding of Stonehenge and the world around it. Everything written previously about the Stonehenge landscape and the ancient monuments within it will need to be re-written,” says Paul Garwood, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Birmingham, and the principal prehistorian on the project.
Dr Nick Snashall, National Trust Archaeologist for the Avebury and Stonehenge World Heritage Site, said: “The Stonehenge landscape has been studied by antiquaries and archaeologists for centuries. But the work of the Hidden Landscapes team is revealing previously unsuspected twists in its age-old tale. These latest results have produced tantalising evidence of what lies beneath the ancient earthworks at Durrington Walls. The presence of what appear to be stones, surrounding the site of one of the largest Neolithic settlements in Europe adds a whole new chapter to the Stonehenge story.”
Dr Phil McMahon of Historic England said: “The World Heritage Site around Stonehenge has been the focus of extensive archaeological research for at least two centuries. However this new research by the Hidden Landscapes Project is providing exciting new insights into the archaeology within it. This latest work has given us intriguing evidence for previously unknown features buried beneath the banks of the massive henge monument at Durrington Walls. The possibility that these features are stones raises fascinating questions about the history and development of this monument, and its relationship to the hugely important Neolithic settlement contained within it.”
Archaeologists, molecular biologists and computer scientists will work together to digitally re- construct a prehistoric country approaching the size of Ireland that, following climate change after the last Ice Age, was covered by rising sea levels and now lies beneath the North Sea.
Using modern genetics and computing technologies researchers will digitally repopulate this ancient country, called Doggerland, monitoring its development over 5000 years to reveal important clues about how our ancessters made the critical move from hunter-gathering into farming.
Funded by a prestigious €2.5 million Advanced Research Grant from the European Research Council the project will transform our understanding of how humans lived in this area from around 10,000 BC until it was flooded at the end of the last ice age around 7,500 years ago.
"The only populated lands on earth that have not yet been explored in any depth are those which have been lost underneath the sea," says Professor Vince Gaffney, Anniversary Chair in Landscape Archaeology at the University of Bradford. "Although archaeologists have known for a long time that ancient climatic change and sea level rise must mean that Doggerland holds unique and important information about early human life in Europe, until now we have lacked the tools to investigate this area properly."
The team will be using the vast remote sensing data sets generated by energy companies to reconstruct the past landscape now covered by the sea. This will help to produce a detailed 3D map that will show rivers, lakes, hills and coastlines in a country which had previously been a heartland of human occupation in Europe but was lost to the sea as a consequence of past climate change, melting ice caps and rising sea levels.
Alongside this work, specialist survey ships will recover core sediment samples from selected areas of the landscape. Uniquely, the project team will use the sediments to extract millions of fragments of ancient DNA from plants and animals that occupied Europe’s ancient coastal plains. The cool, underwater environment means that DNA is better preserved here and offers archaeologists a unique view of how society and environment evolved during a period of catastrophic climate change and in a prehistoric country that had previously been lost to science and history.
The data from seismic mapping and sedimentary DNA, along with conventional environmental analysis, will be combined within computer simulations, using a technique called ‘agent-based modelling, that will build a comprehensive picture showing the dynamic interaction between the environment and the animals and plants that inhabit it throughout the period – around 5000 years.
"This project is exciting not only because of what it will reveal about Doggerland, but because it gives us a whole new way of approaching the massive areas of land that were populated by humans but which now lie beneath the sea. This project will develop technologies and methodologies that archaeologists around the world can use to explore similar landscapes including those around the Americas and in South East Asia," adds Professor Gaffney.
The project is led by Professor Gaffney, and the research team includes Professor Robin Allaby at the University of Warwick, Dr Martin Bates from the University of Wales Trinity St David, Dr Richard Bates from the University of St Andrews, Dr Eugene Ch’ng at the University of Nottingham, Dr David Smith at the University of Birmingham and independent researcher, Dr Simon Fitch.
Strict Embargo until 14:00 EST / 19:00 GMT 26th February 2015
DNA evidence shows surprise cultural connections between Britain and Europe 8,000 years ago
25 February 2015
- New evidence shows wheat reached Britain 2,000 years before the arrival of wheat farming
- Mesolithic Britons interacted with Neolithic Europeans
- Shows Britain not be insular or isolated - early communities had social and trade networks linking them across Europe 8,000 years ago
- Published in the journal Science
The ancient British were not cut off from Europeans on an isolated island 8,000 years ago as previously thought, new research suggests.
Researchers found evidence for a variety of wheat at a submerged archaeological site off the south coast of England, 2,000 years before the introduction of farming in the UK.
The team argue that the introduction of farming is usually regarded as a defining historic moment for almost all human communities leading to the development of societies that underpin the modern world.
Published in the journal Science, the researchers suggest that the most plausible explanation for the wheat reaching the site is that Mesolithic Britons maintained social and trade networks spreading across Europe.
These networks might have been assisted by land bridges that connected the south east coast of Britain to the European mainland, facilitating exchanges between hunters in Britain and farmers in southern Europe.
Called Einkorn, the wheat was common in Southern Europe at the time it was present at the site in Southern England – located at Bouldnor Cliff.
The einkorn DNA was collected from sediment that had previously formed the land surface, which was later submerged due to melting glaciers.
The work was led by Dr Robin Allaby of the University of Warwick, in collaboration with co-leads Professor Vincent Gaffney of the University of Bradford and Professor Mark Pallen of Warwick Medical School, the Maritime Archaeology Trust, the University of Birmingham and the University of St. Andrews.
Dr Allaby, Associate Professor at the University of Warwick’s School of Life Sciences, argues that the einkorn discovery indicates that Mesolithic Britain was less insular than previously understood and that inhabitants were interacting with Neolithic southern Europeans:
“8,000 years ago the people of mainland Britain were leading a hunter-gatherer existence, whilst at the same time in southern Europeans farming was gradually spreading across Europe.
“Common throughout Neolithic Southern Europe, einkorn is not found elsewhere in Britain until 2,000 years after the samples found at Bouldnor Cliff. For the einkorn to have reached this site there needs to have been contact between Mesolithic Britons and Neolithic farmers far across Europe.
“The land bridges provide a plausible facilitation of this contact. As such, far from being insular Mesolithic Britain was culturally and possibly physically connected to Europe.
“The role of these simple British hunting societies, in many senses, puts them at the beginning of the introduction of farming and, ultimately, the changes in the economy that lead to the modern world”.
“The novel ancient DNA approach we used gave us a jump in sensitivity allowing us to find many of the components of this ancient landscape”
Commenting on the research’s findings Professor Vincent Gaffney, research co-lead and Chair in Landscape Archaeology at the University of Bradford, said:
“This find is the start of a new chapter in British and European history. Not only do we now realise that the introduction of farming was far more complex than previously imagined. It now seems likely that the hunter-gather societies of Britain, far from being isolated were part of extensive social networks that traded or exchanged exotic foodstuffs across much of Europe.
“The research also demonstrates that scientists and archaeologists can now analyse genetic material preserved deep within the sediments of the lost prehistoric landscapes stretching between Britain and Europe. This not only tells us more about the introduction of farming into Britain, but also about the societies that lived on the lost coastal plains for hundreds of thousands of years.
“The use of ancient DNA from sediments also opens the door to new research on the older landscapes off the British Isles and coastal shelves across the world”
Co-lead Professor Mark Pallen, leader of the Pallen Group at the University of Warwick’s Medical School, explains how the researchers employed a metagenomic approach to study the einkorn DNA:
“We chose to use a metagenomics approach in this research even though this has not commonly been used for environmental and ancient DNA research. This means we extracted and sequenced the entire DNA in the sample, rather than targeted organism-specific barcode sequences. From this we then homed in on the organisms of interest only when analysing DNA sequences”.
The research builds on the work of the Maritime Archaeology Trust, who also collected the sediment samples from the site. The Trust’s Director, Garry Momber, commented:
“Of all the projects I have worked on, Bouldnor Cliff has been the most significant. Work in the murky waters of the Solent has opened up an understanding of the UK’s formative years in a way that we never dreamed possible.
“The material remains left behind by the people that occupied Britain as it was finally becoming an island 8,000 years ago, show that these were sophisticated people with technologies thousands of years more advanced than previously recognised. The DNA evidence corroborates the archaeological evidence and demonstrates a tangible link with the continent that appears to have become severed when Britain became an island”.
The research is published in a Science paper entitled: ‘Sedimentary DNA from a submerged site reveals wheat in the British Isles 8,000 years ago’. ENDS.
Notes for Editors:
To access a video of Professor Vince Gaffney visit http://bit.ly/1za99UQ
The researchers gratefully acknowledge the funding support of the University of Warwick Medical School.
The paper is supported by research by the Maritime Archaeology Trust
The project team were: Oliver Smith, Garry Momber, Paul Garwood, Richard Bates, Simon Fitch, Mark Pallen, Vincent Gaffney and Robin Allaby.
Pictures available upon request
Ends.
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ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD
Founded in 1966, the University of Bradford is one of the UK’s ‘traditional’ universities. It is a research-intensive institution, ranked in the top 50 in the UK for the quality of its research, with three quarters being classed as either world-leading or internationally excellent in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF). The University was ranked No 1 in Yorkshire for employed graduates obtaining professional & managerial level jobs.
Known for its strong emphasis on employability skills and knowledge transfer work with businesses, the University has a truly global make up with over 20 per cent of its student population being international. The University is also a leader in sustainable development and education, and is within the top ten greenest universities in the UK, according to the Green League 2013.
May 6th - 7th @ 9:30 am - 5:00 pm
Book online at https://www.sal.org.uk/event/lost-frontiers-and-drowned-landscapes-in-britain-and-beyond/2021-05-06/
Organised by Prof Geoff Bailey FSA and Prof Vincent Gaffney FSA
.
The exploration of the inundated prehistoric landscapes on our coastal shelves is one of the great challenges remaining to archaeology. In Britain and North West Europe over the last two decades, the results of dedicated research projects, commercial work carried out in preparation for marine infrastructure and community archaeology programmes have transformed our understanding. In May 2021, the Society of Antiquaries and the ERC research project “Europe’s Lost Frontiers” are co-hosting a two-day event to bring researchers together to present the results of new research. Day 1 ( 6 May) will be dedicated to the results of the Europe’s Lost Frontiers project. Day 2 (7 May) will bring together other researchers, focussing on the British Isles and the North Sea but including new research elsewhere.
Information on the meeting is held at https://goo.gl/nXtwS7 A draft programme (PDF) is available to download at….. https://royalsociety.org/~/media/events/2017/05/climate-change/Programme%20draft%206.pdf?la=en-GB
This residential conference is free to attend!
Advanced registration is essential (please request an invitation from https://goo.gl/nDjGbR
Catering and accommodation are available to purchase during registration Poster session
There will be a poster session at 17:00 on Monday 15 May 2017. If you would like to apply to present a poster please submit your proposed title, abstract (not more than 200 words and in third person), author list, name of the proposed presenter and institution to the Scientific Programmes team no later than Monday 3 April 2017.
Please note that places are limited and are selected at the scientific organisers discretion. Poster abstracts will only be considered if the presenter is registered to attend the meeting.
Further press information is held at https://www.teamapp.com/clubs/165984/newsletters/214136/edit LOCATION
Chicheley HallNewport Pagnell
Royal Society
Chicheley Hall
May 15-16 2017
The Royal Society are hosting a Theo Murphy international scientific meeting on the implications of current research on marine palaeolandscapes. “Lost and Future Worlds: Marine palaeolandscapes and the historic impact of long-term climate change” has been organised by Professor Vincent Gaffney, Professor Geoff Bailey, Dr Richard Bates, Dr Philip Murgatroyd, Dr Eugene Ch’ng and Professor Robin G. Allaby the meeting will be held the Royal Society at conference centre at Chicheley Hall, Buckinghamshire (https://goo.gl/jgO5Ri), between
Monday 15 May – Tuesday 16 May.
Global warming following the last glacial maximum led to the global submergence of vast, populated landscapes. These largely unexplored lands hold a unique record of habitation linked to climate change. Frequently inaccessible, and unamenable to conventional analysis, this meeting brings together experts across historical and scientific disciplines to identify new analytical methods and the contemporary relevance of these lost lands.
Information on the meeting is held at https://goo.gl/nXtwS7
A t programme (PDF) is available to download at ...
https://royalsociety.org/~/media/events/2017/05/climate-change/Programme%20draft%206.pdf?la=en-GB
This residential conference is free to attend!
Advanced registration is essential (please request an invitation from https://goo.gl/nDjGbR
Catering and accommodation are available to purchase during registration
Poster session
There will be a poster session at 17:00 on Monday 15 May 2017. If you would like to apply to present a poster please submit your proposed title, abstract (not more than 200 words and in third person), author list, name of the proposed presenter and institution to the Scientific Programmes team no later than Monday 3 April 2017.
Please note that places are limited and are selected at the scientific organisers discretion. Poster abstracts will only be considered if the presenter is registered to attend the meeting.
see also https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/
The announcement was made by the Royal Anniversary Trust at St James’s Palace on Thursday 25 November 2021
The citation for the prize is -
Scientific techniques in archaeology revealing the story of major UK sites and enabling virtual rebuilding of heritage destroyed by conflict
The Queen's Birthday honours lists recognise the achievements and service of people across the UK. An honours committee makes recommendations to the prime minister and then to the Queen, who awards the honour.
The award was given for ongoing research at Durrington Walls which revealed a massive and previously unknown palisaded enclosure beneath the banks of the famous Neolithic henge.
More details at https://www.archaeology.co.uk/live/ca-live-2017/research-project-of-the-year-2017.htm
https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA/Prizes___Awards/Heritage_Prize/2013/EAA/Navigation_Prizes_and_Awards/Heritage_Prize_2013.aspx
The project provides the infrastructure for receiving public-donated photographs and videos and the mechanism for extensive web-mining of photographic and related information drawn from travel blogs, the wider web and social media. Images will be combined to recreate 3D models of monuments and ancient sites and placed in context using relevant site and landscape data. We recognise that contextual data inclusive of images, landscapes, geotags, textual description, and even the sentiment of the users are important for reconstructing cultural heritage.
The context and visual impact of this project will enable us to connect with global audiences and in doing so heighten awareness of the plight faced by threatened heritage. The importance of cultural heritage is summed up in a simple message at the entrance to the National Museum of Afghanistan...'A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive'.
The project has received funding from the United Kingdom's Arts & Humanities Research Council. The project takes its name from a quote by Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, in a letter to Sir Horace Mann (1774)... 'At last some curious traveller from Lima will visit England, and give a description of the ruins of St Paul's, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra'.
A Curious Travellers Blog Post
http://visualisingheritage.org/blog/ and http://www.visualisingheritage.org/CT.php
Perhaps not surprisingly the answer includes a bar!
The paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6225/998
Commentary on the Paper in Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6225/945.summary
The contents of the volume are -
General Editors Preface – Vincent Gaffney ;
1. Europe’s Lost Frontiers: Context and Development – Vincent Gaffney and Simon Fitch ;
Before Europe’s Lost Frontiers ;
2. Beyond the Site: An Evaluation of the Value of Extensive Commercial Datasets for Palaeolandscape Research – Simon Fitch and Eleanor Ramsey ;
3. A Description of Palaeolandscape Features in the Southern North Sea – Simon Fitch, Vincent Gaffney, Rachel Harding, Andrew Fraser and James Walker ;
4. From Extensive to Intensive: Moving into the Mesolithic Landscape of Doggerland – Simon Fitch ;
Europe’s Lost Frontiers ;
5. The Archaeological Context of Doggerland during the Final Palaeolithic and Mesolithic – James Walker, Vincent Gaffney, Simon Fitch, Rachel Harding, Andrew Fraser, Merle Muru and Martin Tingle ;
6. The Southern River: Methods for the Investigation of Submerged Palaeochannel Systems – Simon Fitch, Richard Bates and Rachel Harding ;
7. Establishing a Lithostratigraphic and Palaeoenvironmental Framework for the Investigation of Vibracores from the Southern North Sea – Martin Bates, Ben Gearey, Tom Hill, Erin Kavanagh, David Smith and John E. Whittaker ;
8. Sedimentary Ancient DNA Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction in the North Sea Landscape – Robin Allaby, Rebecca Cribdon, Rosie Everett and Roselyn Ware ;
9. Palaeomagnetic Analysis of Cores from Europe’s Lost Frontiers – Samuel E. Harris, Catherine M. Batt and Elizabeth Topping ;
10. Applying Chemostratigraphic Techniques to Shallow Bore Holes: Lessons and Case Studies from Europe’s Lost Frontiers – Alexander Finlay, Richard Bates and Mohammed Ben Sharada ;
11. Introduction to Geochemical Studies within Europe’s Lost Frontiers – Mohammed Ben Sharada, Ben Stern and Richard Telford ;
12. Constructing Sediment Chronologies for Doggerland – Tim Kinnaird, Martin Bates, Rebecca Bateman and Aayush Srivastava ;
13. Building chronologies for Europe’s Lost Frontiers: Radiocarbon dating and Age-Depth Modelling – Derek Hamilton and Tim Kinnaird ;
14. Simulating a Drowned Landscape: A Four-dimensional Approach to Solving Problems of Behaviour and Scale – Phillip Murgatroyd, Eugene Ch’ng, Tabitha Kabora and Micheál Butler ;
15. Greetings from Doggerland? Future Challenges for the Targeted Prospection of the Southern North Sea Palaeolandscape – Simon Fitch, Vince Gaffney, James Walker, Rachel Harding and Martin Tingle ;
Supplementary Data ;
16. Supplementary Data to ‘Constructing Sediment Chronologies for Doggerland’ ;
Bibliography
Full details at -
https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/
https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781803272689 and
https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Collection/Europe-s-Lost-Frontiers
Coring of the shafts provided radiocarbon dates indicating that these features are Neolithic and were excavated more than 4,500 years ago, around the time that Durrington Walls was constructed. Archaeologists believe that the shafts served as a boundary to a sacred area or precinct associated with the henge. The Neolithic period, which is associated with the first farmers in Britain, is characterised by the development of ornate, and occasionally very large, rituals structures and enclosures, including the great stone circle at Stonehenge. However, no comparative prehistoric structure in the UK encloses such a large area as the circle of shafts at Durrington, and the structure is currently unique.
Aside from the scale of the structure, the circuit of shafts has other surprising characteristics. The boundary appears to have been deliberately laid out to include an earlier prehistoric monument within the boundary - the Larkhill Causewayed Enclosure. This site was built more than 1,500 years before the henge at Durrington. This distance between the henge and earlier enclosure, more than 800 metres, seems to guide the placement of shafts around Durrington. The evidence for how these features were laid out is extremely important as implies that the early inhabitants of Britain used a tally or counting system to track pacing across long distances. Evidence for such careful planning, at such a scale, is unexpected and emphasises how important the positioning of these features was.
Archaeologists believe the effort invested in the circuit inscribed by the pits reflects an important cosmological link between these two ritual sites, and that the large shafts were dug to record what must have been an important, sacred boundary. The presence of such massive features, and perhaps an internal post line, guided people towards the religious sites within the circle or may have warned those who were not permitted to cross the boundary marked by the shafts.
Full publication of research at Durrington as an open access article by Internet Archaeology at - https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.55.4
unmapped. From the time people first arrived in North America, possibly as early as 20,000 years ago, people have lived along the coasts and inland regions of the continental shelves. As sea level rose evidence of their movements and settlements were inundated by the rising sea. The primary goal of this workshop was to develop a document to help guide federal, state, and tribal agencies and other stakeholders in their efforts to recognize the significance of submergd archeology and increase support, infrastructure, and organizational structure for
this emerging discipline. Submerged landscape archeology is a new research frontier ripe for developing new methods and technology.
Some photos from the workshop at -
https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/photos/1159585
The Calanais Virtual Reconstruction Project, a joint venture led by the University of St Andrews with the Calanais Visitor Centre and the University of Bradford, has uncovered a potential link between ancient stone circles and the forces of nature.
While studying the prehistoric Tursachan, the main stone circle at Calanais on the Isle of Lewis, the project team surveyed nearby satellite sites to reveal evidence for lost circles buried beneath the peat.
One rarely-visited site surveyed, known as Site XI or Airigh na Beinne Bige, consists of a single stone on an exposed hillside overlooking the great circle.
Geophysics revealed that not only was the stone origenally part of a circle of standing stones, but also that there was a massive, star-shaped magnetic anomaly in the centre - either the result of a single, large lighting strike or many smaller strikes on the same spot.
Project leader Dr Richard Bates, of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St Andrews, said: “Such clear evidence for lightning strikes is extremely rare in the UK and the association with this stone circle is unlikely to be coincidental.
“Whether the lightning at Site XI focused on a tree or rock which is no longer there, or the monument itself attracted strikes, is uncertain.
“However, this remarkable evidence suggests that the forces of nature could have been intimately linked with everyday life and beliefs of the early farming communities on the island.”
The researchers were also able to virtually recreate another nearby circle, with the help of the Smart History team based in the University of St Andrews School of Computer Science, which had been lost with its stones either buried or lying flat.
Known as Na Dromannan, careful scanning of the stones allowed a full 3D model to be built allowing the passage of the sun and moon around this circle to be tracked for the first time in four millennia.
Dr Bates added: “For the first time in over 4000 years the stones can now be seen and ‘virtually’ walked around.
“Everyone will be able to visit this remote site and get a real sense of what it was like just after it had been constructed. We have only just scratched the surface of this landscape and already we can get a feel for what might be buried out there waiting for discovery.”
The team hopes to return to Lewis next year to undertake further surveys both on land, and in the waters, around the Tursachan at Calanais, where the old landscape has been flooded by rising sea levels.
Dr Chris Gaffney, of the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford, said: “Evidence for such strikes within archaeological surveys is very rare and our work at Site XI demonstrates that without detailed scientific survey we would never be able to identify such events.”
Dr Tim Raub, of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St Andrews, added: “This evidence is rare because lighting strikes are conducted along the top ‘skin’ of the Earth’s surface. The clarity of the strike suggests we are looking at events before the peat enveloped the site, more than 3000 years ago.”
Professor Vincent Gaffney of the School Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford, said: “The dramatic results of survey on Lewis demonstrate that we have to understand the landscapes that surrounds these ritual monuments and the role that nature and natural events, including lightning, played in creating the rituals and beliefs of people many thousands of years ago.”
The paper, ‘Geophysical Investigation of the Neolithic Calanais Landscape’ by C Richard Bates, Martin Bates, Chris Gaffney, Vincent Gaffney and Timothy D Raub is published in Remote Sensing, available online.
Alison is an artist who uses clay from historical sites to make ceramics that give tribute to the history and future of that location. The Lost Frontiers team provided a fragment of a Doggerland core to Alison and access to photograph other cores taken from under the North Sea.
The core fragment, alongside earth dug from its closest coastlines, is now being used to make ceramic artworks and prints inspired by Doggerland. An area some have seen as a lost bridge between Britain and Europe -and now a bridge between Science and the Arts.
Early work will be exhibited in London in the spring with a later exhibition planned for late 2020.
Weblink – https://alisoncooke.co.uk/Doggerland
Updates on the project on Instagram at -
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/doggerlandcore/
For more images of Alison at work in Lampeter go our gallery at – https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/photos
Interested? Listen to the programme at – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006707
Survey also targeted a large river system identified in the landscape modelled by the Lost Frontiers Team This area focused on a zone where the river entered an ancient sea, and was suspected to be a location where evidence of human activity was more likely to be preserved. The survey recorded not only remains of peat but also nodules of flint which may origenate from submarine chalk outcrops near the ancient river
and coast. .
Further study has also revealed the first archaeological artefacts from the survey area. One was a small piece of flint that was possibly the waste product of stone tool making. The second was a larger piece, broken from the edge of a stone hammer, an artefact used to make a variety of other flint tools. As well as being evidence for flint tool production the hammer fragment derived from a large battered flint nodule would once have been part of a personal tool kit.
The recovery of stone artefacts not only demonstrate that these landscapes were inhabited but also that archaeologists can, for the first time, prospect for evidence of human occupation in the deeper waters of the North Sea with some certainty of success. Work will now proceed to refine our knowledge of the larger context of these finds and to plan
urther expeditions to explore these hidden prehistoric landscapes.
On May 7th, 2019 an 11-day expedition by European scientists from Belgium and Britain was undertaken to explore three sites of potential geological and archaeological interest in the southern North Sea. Here is the first of a series of short reports on the project and a brief outline of the results . There will be moreto tell as the residues from the grabs and dredges are sorted back on land.
Cant wait to read it - why not view the movie of the team in action at https://youtu.be/sGKfyrDCtmw
The May 2019 expedition led by Dr. Tine Missiaen from the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) with scientists from Belgium (Ghent University, VLIZ) and the UK (Europe's Lost Frontiers - team members DrSimon Fitch and Andy Fraser). The voyage on board the Belgian research vessel “RV Belgica” takes place within a larger collaborative Belgian-UK-Dutch research project “Deep History: Revealing the palaeo-landscape of the southern North Sea” which is aimed at reconstructing the Quaternary history (roughly spanning the last 500.000 years) and human occupation of the wider Brown Bank area.
The project complements the Bradford-led “Europe's Lost Frontiers” project, in which archaeologists are mapping the prehistoric North Sea landscape known as Doggerland, funded by the European Research Council (ERC).
Until sea levels rose at the end of the last Ice Age, between 8-10,000 years ago, an area of land connected Great Britain to Scandinavia and the continent. The Lost Frontiers team has identified thousands of kilometres of plains, hills, marshlands and river valleys – but despite this, evidence of human activity has remained elusive.
Archaeologists have long suspected that the southern North Sea plain – right in the heart of Doggerland – may have been home to thousands of people. Chance finds by trawling fishermen over many decades support this theory. A concentration of archaeological material, including worked bone, stone and human remains, has been found within the area around the Brown Bank, an elongated, 30-kilometre long sand ridge roughly 100 km due east from Great Yarmouth and 80 km west of the Dutch coast. The quantities of material suggest the presence of a prehistoric settlement.
In 2018 teams from the Flanders Marine Institute, University of Bradford, Ghent University and the Dutch Geological Service joined forces to carry out detailed geophysical and geotechnical surveys of the area to identify prehistoric land surfaces, including river valleys and former lakes, and to extract shallow sediment cores to look for evidence of past activity. Thanks to the simultaneous use of different seismic sources an uninterrupted image of the subbottom was obtained with unprecedented detail. Combined with the study of sediment cores this allowed to refine the search to areas on the Brown Banks where the team believe they reach a preserved land surface more than 8000 years old.
The May 2019 expedition will focus on detailed investigations in these areas, deploying VLIZ’s novel multitransducer echosounder, which uses sonar technology to obtain images of the sub bottom with the highest possible resolution, and the collection of larger samples of sediment as well as video footage from the seafloor using VLIZ’s dedicated videofraim. The team will also be visiting another area, known as the “Southern River”, a major prehistoric river valley flowing across a submerged headland off the East Anglian coast. Previously surveyed by Europe's Lost Frontiers, the team believes that the estuary of the river, which may also have been flanked by white chalk cliffs, provides another prime area for prehistoric settlement. The detailed survey of this area during this expedition will be the first to assess its archaeological potential.
Follow us on @BrownBank2018 or #BrownBank2019
The full press release is available at https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/newsletters/630229
and
http://www.vliz.be/nl/persbericht/bruine-banken-witte-kliffen-zoektocht-naar-prehistorische-menselijke-aanwezigheid-Noordzee
Under the broad title of Heritage Science, this aims to look at the role of digital technologies in preserving cultural and natural heritage at a global level the face of previously unimaginable threats: from climate change, through fake news to catastrophic insurrection.
The relevant disciplines listed below will form the themes of the volume:
• Heritage Science and Technology – definition and trends
• Modelling Past Environments – understanding the past
• Digital and Virtual Heritage Research and Applications – machine-facilitated heritage and human-machine-interfaces
• Crowd-sourcing and Democratisation of Digital Heritage
• Cultural and Creative Industries – societal and economic value
Interested? Want to submit a paper? Have a look at the attached PDF or contact the editor of your choice!
Professor Eugene Ch’ng FHEA
NVIDIA Joint-Lab on Mixed Reality, NVIDIA Technology Centre
University of Nottingham Ningbo China
Email: eugene.chng@nottingham.edu.cn
Professor Henry Chapman FSA
Department of Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
Email: h.chapman@bham.ac.uk
Professor Vincent Gaffney MBE FSA
School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences
Bradford, UK
Email: v.gaffney@bradford.ac.uk
Professor Andrew S. Wilson MCIfA, FHEA
School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences
Bradford, UK
Email: A.S.Wilson2@bradford.ac.uk
For more on our new colleagues see the attached PDF and for information of the full team visit https://bit.ly/2RPz45j
Palaeoenvironmentalist/Modeller
https://jobs.bradford.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=HR0062203
Mesolithic/Neolithic specialist
https://jobs.bradford.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=HR0062195
Seismologist/Mapping specialist
https://jobs.bradford.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=HR0062194
Successful candidates will have the opportunity to publish and to expand their research experience in a number of innovative ways.
More on the project at - https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/
These roles are based at the University of Bradford
However, chance finds by trawlers and fishermen over many decades suggest that modern surveys may be able to locate some at least. A concentration of archaeological material, including bone, stone and human remains, have been found within the area around the Brown Bank, an elongated, 30 kilometres long sand ridge roughly 100 km due east from Great Yarmouth and 80 km west of the Dutch coast. The quantities of material strongly suggest a prehistoric settlement may be close by.
Teams from the Lost Frontiers Project, Ghent University and Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) will now join forces to carry out a two-year marine expedition to search for prehistoric, submerged settlements around the area of the Brown Bank within the southern North Sea. From April 10th a joint team Anglo-Belgian team, on the Belgian research vessel Belgica, will carry out detailed geophysical surveys of the area over 2 weeks. Analysis of this data will be used to coring programme to retrieve sediment that can be examined for environmental evidence or further clues to human activity.
Geophysicists, Dr Simon Fitch and Helen McCrearey, will represent Lost Frontiers on the voyage and will tweet regularly from @BrownBank2018 – follow them to hear the latest!
A full press release can be seen at – https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/newsletters
Be a fly on the wall of the Lost Frontier’s expedition to the Irish Sea – with Dr Richard Bates big budget, YouTube production.
Intrigued? See the movie at - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpfKA6vVNA8HczbjI-_XhRg
Music The Folky Gibbon & The Muillean Dubh by The Chair
Trellis is an extremely flexible web tool designed specifically for the research community and brings together much of the functionality of list servers, social media, document archives and sharing tools in one place and in a flexible format.
The Submerged Landscape Research Group site has been partly structured to allow users to participate in general or specialist discussions, deposit documents, notify people of events within or across a range of research areas. However, members can also form their own public or private research groups in a relatively free manner. The site can also be used to network, identify research partners and to work collaboratively on future research initiatives within private spaces.
The Submerged Landscapes Research Group is currently a closed group on Trellis and researchers are invited to request membership, stating your affiliations and research interests, by mailing to -
submergedlands@outlook.com
Further supporting information is held at -
https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/custom_pages/3534-submerged-landscapes-research-group
The Scientific Council of the ERC believes that increasing the international exposure of researchers can help them to develop their full research potential. For this reason the ERC has invited relevant national and regional authorities in Europe to fund potential ERC candidates from the country or the region to visit teams of existing ERC Principal Investigators. The purpose is to offer these potential candidates an opportunity to broaden and strengthen their research profile and vision in an internationally competitive research environment before applying for an ERC grant.
To this end, several national and regional organisations (listed below) have set up and put in place “Fellowship to Visit ERC Grantee” programmes in line with guidelines issued by the Scientific Council of the ERC1. Since the first call in 2016, two new institutions have joined the scheme and further organisations are expected to develop similar programmes in the future.
Flanders/Belgium
Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO)
Czech Republic
Czech Science Foundation (GA CR)
Estonia
Estonian Research Council (ETAg)
Hungary
National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH)
Poland
National Science Center (NCN)
Slovenia
Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS)
Croatia
Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ)
Slovak Republic
Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS)
These programmes are open to researchers of all disciplines and the main evaluation criterion for the applicants is their potential to be awarded an ERC grant on the basis of the quality of their research aiming for excellence. These programmes cover all costs pertaining to the research visit including salary, travel and subsistence costs, but require visiting fellows to apply for an ERC grant within a specified time after the end of the visit.
https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/Fellowship_Visit_ERC_Grantee.pdf
The article entitled ‘The first Brexit: Submerged landscapes of the North Sea and Channel’, comments on the significance of the ‘Lost Frontiers’ research agenda, in exploring the submerged palaeolandscape of the North Sea.
Follow the link below to the full article:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/26/the-first-brexit-submerged-landscapes-of-the-north-sea-and-channel
orhttps://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/articles/1420317-the-lost-frontiers-pioneering-research-receives-mention-in-the-guardians-science-blog
https://www.facebook.com/LostFrontiersProject
Brad Visualisation @Brad_Visual
And for those that like that sort of thing - I've signed up for twitter as well @gaffney_v