Abstract The disappearance of Doggerland beneath the waves of the southern North Sea was the most notable landscape change to affect northwest Europe in the early Holocene. This submerged palaeolandscape has captured the imaginations of archaeologists and the public for over a century, but it is only in recent decades that our knowledge of it has begun to come into focus. Although often presumed as significant culturally, the area of Doggerland remains something of a geographical gap within our knowledge of Mesolithic northwest Europe. In part this reflects the fact that the archaeology of this area is largely restricted to finds made by chance discovery and sites located just off the current shore. Nevertheless, we are rapidly approaching a point where the targeted prospection of deeper waters may be possible. This chapter reviews our current knowledge regarding Mesolithic Doggerland, how it changed over time, and how these changes may have affected both the people who lived there and on the lands it once connected.
Abstract Doggerland was a land mass occupying an area currently covered by the North Sea until marine inundation took place during the mid-Holocene, ultimately separating the British land mass from the rest of Europe. The Storegga Slide, which triggered a tsunami reflected in sediment deposits in the Northern North Sea, North East coastlines of the British Isles and across the North Atlantic, was a major event during this transgressive phase. The spatial extent of the Storegga tsunami however remains unconfirmed because to date no direct evidence for the event has been recovered from the southern North Sea. We present evidence that Storegga associated deposits occur in the southern North Sea. Palaeo-river systems have been identified using seismic survey in the southwestern North Sea and sedimentary cores extracted to track the Mid Holocene inundation. At the head of one palaeo-river system near the Outer Dowsing Deep, the Southern River , we observed an abrupt and catastrophic inundation stratum. Based on lithostratigraphic, macro and microfossils and sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) evidence, supported by optical stimulation luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon dating, we conclude these deposits were a result of the Storegga event. Seismic identification of this stratum to adjacent cores indicated diminished traces of the tsunami, largely removed by subsequent erosional processes. Our results demonstrate the catastrophic impact of Storegga within this area of the Southern North Sea, but indicate that these effects were temporary and likely localized and mitigated by the dense woodland and topography of the area. We conclude clear physical remnants of the wave are likely to be restricted to inland basins and incised river valley systems.
Climate change regularly made the news in 2019. In the face of numerous protests around the globe, and increasingly frequent natural disasters, we appear to be entering a (perhaps overdue) stage of heightened awareness with regard to the fragility of the Earth and our impact upon it. Current concerns over the fate of our planet, and species, look set to stay, but for deep-time prehistorians, who have long contended with records of environmental change on a scale relatively unparalleled in historic times, business continues as usual. In the opening to Resilience and reorganisation of social systems during the Weichselian Lateglacial in North-west Europe , Sonja Grimm makes reference to the importance of the Club of Rome (a non-profit, non-governmental organisation) in highlighting socio-ecological stability as an issue for public concern, and one that archaeological studies such as this can contribute to and bolster. Meanwhile, Peter Moe Astrup, in his introduction to Sea-level change in Mesolithic southern Scandinavia , notes that Mesolithic people from this area would have been exposed to the consequences of global sea-level rise on a far greater scale than those predicted for our own future generations. What these volumes share is an emphasis on the importance of adaptive flexibility and the human experience in shaping our response to climate change.
<p>Around 8200 years ago, the Storegga tsunami, caused by a massive submarine landslide off the coast of Central Norway, struck the coasts of west Norway, Scotland and Doggerland. This event is well known from wide ranging geological and palaeobotanical work undertaken over the last 30 years. What has been less explored, however, is the potential social impact that this natural freak event had on the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies living on the coasts and shores of the North Sea. What happened in the tsunami&#8217;s aftermath? It has been widely assumed to have been a disaster &#8211; but was it? What constituted a disaster in the Mesolithic? In the Mesolithic, people were hunter-gatherer-fishers, they lived by, off, and with the sea. Settlement sites in West Norway were concentrated along the outer coast. People lived on the shores of islands and headlands, or along resource rich tidal currents. Eastern Scottish Mesolithic sites are also found on contemporary coasts, while the coasts of central Doggerland have long since become submerged. What happened to groups in these landscapes on the day the sea became a monster and in the years that followed? In this paper, we will outline a newly started project that will investigate the social impact of the tsunami in areas of the North Sea that have distinctive Mesolithic histories. These coastal inhabitants had, for millennia, developed their own traditions to engage with and learn how to exploit and keep safe from the sea. What can we learn about Mesolithic societies by investigating how communities handled the forces of a tsunami? Responses identified in the archaeological material and environmental archives can potentially inform us of social structures, institutions or ways of living that made the existing societies resilient or vulnerable.</p>
Doggerland was a landmass occupying an area currently covered by the North Sea until marine inundation took place during the mid-Holocene, ultimately separating the British landmass from the rest of Europe. The Storegga Event, which triggered a tsunami reflected in sediment deposits in the northern North Sea, northeast coastlines of the British Isles and across the North Atlantic, was a major event during this transgressive phase. The spatial extent of the Storegga tsunami however remains unconfirmed as, to date, no direct evidence for the event has been recovered from the southern North Sea. We present evidence of a tsunami deposit in the southern North Sea at the head of a palaeo-river system that has been identified using seismic survey. The evidence, based on lithostratigraphy, geochemical signatures, macro and microfossils and sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA), supported by optical stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon dating, suggests that these deposits were a result of the tsunami. Seismic identification of this stratum and analysis of adjacent cores showed diminished traces of the tsunami which was largely removed by subsequent erosional processes. Our results confirm previous modelling of the impact of the tsunami within this area of the southern North Sea, and also indicate that these effects were temporary, localized, and mitigated by the dense woodland and topography of the area. We conclude that clear physical remnants of the wave in these areas are likely to be restricted to now buried, palaeo-inland basins and incised river valley systems.
Around 8150 BP, the Storegga tsunami struck North-west Europe. The size of this wave has led many to assume that it had a devastating impact upon contemporaneous Mesolithic communities, including the final inundation of Doggerland, the now submerged Mesolithic North Sea landscape. Here, the authors present the first evidence of the tsunami from the southern North Sea, and suggest that traditional notions of a catastrophically destructive event may need rethinking. In providing a more nuanced interpretation by incorporating the role of local topographic variation within the study of the Storegga event, we are better placed to understand the impact of such dramatic occurrences and their larger significance in settlement studies.
The Storegga tsunami (c. 8150 cal BP) is geologically well attested from various isolation basins across the west Norwegian coast. Ascertaining the impact it had upon the Mesolithic peoples who lived through it, however, remains a difficult proposition; one further complicated by broadly synchronic processes of climate change and sea-level rise. This paper presents a regional scale approach to addressing this matter through a multiproxy study comprising: 1) the performance of a new numerical tsunami run-up simulation for six different focus areas; 2) characterising the impact of the tsunami upon key resource base ecosystems; 3) characterising the potential for complication arising from contemporaneous processes of environmental change caused by the '8.2 ka BP event', and sea-level rise associated with the early-mid Holocene 'Tapes' transgression, and 4) the reconstruction of temporal traditions in site location relative to the contemporary palaeoshoreline within the six focus areas used for the numerical simulation. Severity of run-up and inundation is found to be acutely variable according to coastal geomorphology and topography, bathymetry, and proximity to the propagation centre. Although the tsunami may have had a severely negative impact upon some coastal inhabitants and ecosystems, it is not possible from current evidence to reliably infer unequivocal impacts relating to the tsunami through the archaeological record, nor is it clear that impact upon key ecosystem components was necessarily lasting, widespread, or even entirely negative for coastal hunter-fisher-gatherers. Variability in projected run-up and settlement histories highlight the appeal of regionally based approaches to reconstructing impact, at least where data resolution may permit. The tsunami does not appear to have prompted a lasting shift away from coastally oriented ways of life.
Numerical ages have been determined for a stratigraphic sequence of silicic tephra layers exposed at the Cowan Pumice Mine in Blind Spring Valley, near Benton Hot Springs, east-central California, as well as at Chalk Cliffs, north of Bishop, Calif. The tephra layers at these sites were deposited after eruptions from nearby sources, most of them from near Glass Mountain, and some from unknown sources. The ages were determined primarily by the laser-fusion 40Ar/39Ar method, mostly on sanidine feldspar; two were determined by conventional K-Ar analysis on obsidian clasts. These tephra layers, all underlying the Bishop ash bed and listed in order of concordant age and stratigraphic position, are: A table is presented. The above tephra layers were also petrographically examined and the volcanic glass shards of the layers were chemically analyzed using the electron microprobe and, for some samples, instrumental neutron activation analysis and X-ray fluorescence. The same types of chemical and petrographic analyses were conducted on stratigraphic sequences of tephra layers of suspected upper Pliocene and Pleistocene age in several past and present depositional basins within the region outside of Blind Spring Valley. Chemical characterization, combined with additional dates and with magnetostratigraphy of thick sections at two of the distal sites, allow correlation of the tephra layers at the Cowan Pumice Mine with layers present at the distal sites and provide age constraints for other intercalated tephra layers and sediments for which age data were previously lacking. The identification at several sections of the widespread Huckleberry Ridge ash bed, derived from the Yellowstone eruptive source area in Wyoming, as well as a new 40Ar/39Ar age on this ash bed from a proximal locality, provide additional age constraints to several of the distal sections. The dated or temporally bracketed distal units, in order of concordant age and stratigraphic position, are: A table is presented. At the Cowan Pumice Mine, only a partial section of the eruptive record is preserved, but the best materials for laser-fusion 40Ar/39Ar and other isotopic dating methods were obtained. In the more distal Willow Wash and Confidence Hills sections, both persistent depositional basins for most of late Pliocene time, more complete sections of upper Pliocene tephra layers were preserved. In the region of Glass Mountain, the tephra layers that make up each of the mapped and dated pyroclastic units are multiple and complex, but a progressive simplification of the stratigraphy away from the source area was observed for more distal sites in southern and southwestern California and in Utah. This progressive simplification is attributed to both variable explosiveness and magnitude of individual tephra eruptions, as well as to variable dispersal of the tephra by winds during an eruptive episode. Lake beds present at several localities in the western Great Basin (Fish Lake Valley, Nev.; the Waucoba Road area near Big Pine, Calif.; and Confidence Hills, Death Valley, Calif.) are dated between ∼2.15 and ∼2.04 Ma and indicate that wetter or colder conditions than present existed at these sites. Age and correlation data presented here provide a chronostratigraphic framework for studies of late Neogene stratigraphy, tectonics, and environmental change in the southwestern United States. Two Reunion magnetic events are bracketed between ∼2.18 and ∼2.17 Ma for the older (Reunion 1) and between ∼2.16 and ∼2.14 Ma for the younger (Reunion II). A third, older excursion associated with these two is at 2.22 Ma, but it does not reach reversed magnetization.
Around 8,200 years ago, the Storegga tsunami hit the coasts of the Norwegian and North Seas. This event is well known from wide ranging geological and palaeobotanical work undertaken over the last 30 years. Outside of attempts at palaeodemographic models, however, exploration of the social impact of the wave on Mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies living on the coasts of west Norway, the north and east British Isles, and around the southern North Sea basin have been less common. It has been widely assumed that the tsunami was a disaster–but what constituted a disaster for the Mesolithic peoples who lived through this event? What can we learn about life after natural hazards by considering the archaeological material from regions with distinct Mesolithic histories? This paper presents a review of evidence of the Storegga tsunami at Mesolithic sites from western Norway, the Northeast UK, and elsewhere around the southern North Sea basin. We consider the ways in which the social impact of the Storegga tsunami has been studied up till now and suggest an alternative way forward.
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