Everything is heading back to base and the team will be trying deal with the Post-Exhibit Exhaustion! – Once again, many thanks to all of you who turned up to the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, and also thankyou to those of you who followed us on the web. It’s a wonderful experience to meet you all and see so many people enthused about science.
Further reading
- Bates MR, Bates CR, Dawson S, Huws D, Nayling N, Wickham-Jones
CR. (forthcoming)
A multi-disciplinary approach to the archaeological investigation
of a bedrock dominated shallow marine landscape: an example from
the Bay of Firth, Orkney, UK. International Journal of Nautical
Archaeology
- E Ch'ng, Chapman H, Gaffney C, Gaffney V, Murgatroyd P,
Neubauer W 2011 Landscapes without
Figures: Big data, Long waves and the Formative Role of
Archaeological Computing. IEEE Computer: Special Issue on
Computational Archaeology.
- Fitch S, Gaffney V, Gearey B, Ramsey E 2011 Between
the Lines - enhancing methodologies for the exploration of
extensive inundated palaeolandscapes. Remote Sensing for
Archaeological Heritage Management. EAC Occasional Paper No.5.
Proceedings of the 11th EAC Heritage Management Symposium. (ed.
D.C. Cowley), 175-205. Brussels: Europae Archaeologia Consilium
(EAC).
The only lands on Earth that have not been extensively explored are those that have been lost to the oceans. After the end of the last Ice Age extensive landscapes that had once been home to thousands of people were inundated by the sea. Although scientists predicted their existence for many years, exploration has only recently become a reality.
A virtual
visualisation of an Agent Based model of life in the Mesolithic on
the Doggerbank. Credit: Dr. Eugene Ch'ng, University of
BirminghamThis exhibit explores those drowned landscapes around the UK and
shows how they are being rediscovered through pioneering scientific
research. It reveals their human story through the artefacts left
by the people - a story of a dramatic past that featured lost
lands, devastating tsunamis and massive climate change. These were
the challenges that our ancestors met and that we face once more
today.
How it works
Current climate change and associated sea level rise are at the
forefront of social and scientific discussion, but research shows
that dramatic changes in the environment have occurred numerous
times in the past.
One of the most significant landscapes lost to sea level rise is
the European world of Doggerland. Occupying much of the North Sea
basin, this inundated landscape, bigger than many modern European
countries, was slowly submerged between 18,000 BC and 5,500 BC.
Archaeologists now consider Doggerland to have been the heartland
of human occupation within Northern Europe at that time, but
understanding it depends on being able to locate and visualise the
landscape.
Scientists have taken a new approach to this by coupling
geophysical survey techniques developed by the oil industry with 3D
visualisation technologies developed by the computer modelling
industry. These innovative methodologies allow the recreation of
these once inhabited landscapes, mapping rivers, lakes, hills,
coastlines and estuaries, and the modelling of the flora and fauna
associated with them. These models bring back to life the homeland
of these Mesolithic populations, tantalisingly hinted at by
artefacts recovered from the seabed. They also allow scientists to
explore the effects of sea level rise upon the landscape and its
populations in new and more immersive ways that may help the past
provide solutions for the present.
Visit the
Facebook page for Europe's Lost World: Our Drowned
Landscapes.