There was little attention to process or technology. Indeed, the general ethos was that there was a ‘right answer’ to everything; the more you could memorize, the more you would know. It is salutary to think that radiocarbon dating was still considered a new advance.

Decades of work have taught me to change in so many ways. None more so than in my realisation that if I am to understand the world of the past then I need to embrace the presence of the submerged landscape. Underwater archaeology certainly existed when I was a student, but it was a specialised field best left to devotees of shipwrecks or lake dwellings (crannogs in Scotland). Never in a million years did I think that I would need to swap the torn and muddy trousers and t-shirts of the field excavator for an immersion suit.

It is still a specialized field and I am essentially still a land-based archaeologist. I’m never going to be able to undertake the work necessary to elucidate just what a landscape looked like at a time when relative sea-level was 10m lower. But now I realize that the vagaries of past sea-level change mean that I have to be able to obtain that information if I am going to understand properly the world within which the people of the past operated.  And therein lies another change: whereas we used to be able to conduct our research in stately isolation, now we work in a group. Each member brings a different skill to the table and the end result is usually proof of the way in which two plus two can make considerably more than four. It is more fun as well.

Indeed, it seems today as if the post of ‘archaeologist’ has undergone one of those deconstructions so beloved of trendy chefs. Few, if any, of us can embrace all of the diverging fields of information necessary to produce a rounded archaeological interpretation. Few try. But what we do need to do is to acquire enough basic knowledge of those techniques that impact on our own work in order to understand the strands of information that they impart and how they weave together. In this way, we all have some understanding of radiocarbon dating and have expanded that in recent years to come to terms with the application of Bayesian statistics. We may understand the essential processes of accumulation and change within fluvial gravels, the way in which isotope analysis works, and the principals of lithic analysis. We pick and choose relevant topics from the range available. Archaeology has become a pick-and-mix profession.

So, the archaeology of the submerged landscape touches us all, whether or not we can dive. We cannot ignore it, or leave it for the specialists. We can no longer assume that a site that lies on the coast today was coastal in the past. Perhaps relative sea-level has since risen, perhaps a coastal barrier has breached. There is no value in examining modern beaches, if the contemporary coast lay twenty metres lower than it does today. And we cannot assess available resources unless we know the lie of the land.

We need to familiarize ourselves with the literature, and there are plenty of publications on the subject. Most, however, are technical writings that assume some basic familiarity with the techniques and terminology. That is why I set out to write a primer, an accessible account of a fascinating topic that could act as an introduction for those who wish to take their studies further, while equally enthusing those who simply wished to know more. I know it sounds specialised, and it is part of a series that may sound daunting. But, hopefully, it is not. There is detail of the processes involved in past sea-level change, of the techniques we use to study it, and, finally, a round-up of projects around the world. It is not comprehensive, but it gives a good idea of the extent of submerged sites and landscapes and of the fascinating projects that are now taking place in every corner of the globe. Hopefully, it will inspire you to find out more.

Landscape Beneath the Waves is available from local booksellers, from Amazon, or direct from the publishers. And perhaps you could support your local library and access it there!

Yesterday I finally received a copy of my new book from the publisher. It is always a process that brings out mixed emotions. Partly I am so fed up with going through the text and illustrations that I can barely bring myself to open it. Partly, I am excited by the feeling that it is out in the wide world at last and wondering what people will think.

Of course I am hoping that it will be an easy, and interesting read.

Although the title may sound specialized, this new volume is intended for everyone. The submerged landscape concerns us all, not only specialists. I hope that others will read it and be convinced. It has been fun writing it. For now, I have to wait and see: it is available from all good booksellers (and as an ebook)!

Reconstruction of the face of Cheddar Man: Channel 4.

One of the reasons I love archaeology is the way in which it challenges us to recognise and rethink our preconceptions. It is very easy to live in the cosy world of today and focus on reassuring feelings of stability. Practices of mindfulness, among others, encourage us to ‘live for the moment’ and, amidst the insecurites of the present, this is not something with which I would wish to disagree. Nevertheless, I would add the caveat that there are also advantages to be obtained from a slightly longer term view and that perceived ‘problems’, when put into the context of past millennia, can diminish.

One recent story has got me thinking about the way in which an understanding of change can benefit both our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of the world in which we live. Both have undergone dramatic changes over the past millennia – but sometimes we forget. On the 7^th February, The Guardian was one of several papers to reveal, through DNA analysis of skeletal remains in the Cheddar Gorge caves, that those who lived in Britain at the end of the last Ice Age had dark skin and blue eyes.

For some people this was quite shocking news, but it is hardly ground-breaking. In 2010 I was able to report on research by Professor Johann Moan at the University of Oslo that suggested that the prevalence of pale skin in northern Europe was related to a reduction in vitamin D in the diet around the time that people switched to farming. Since then, several studies in various countries have looked at different aspects of this. It is, however, information that has taken a while to leak out into the general understanding and, as such, the research, a project at the Natural history Museum, is important. It has caught the public eye (or ear).

The research at Cheddar has been undertaken as part of a Channel 4 documentary looking at the study of ancient DNA. In the newspaper report the archaeological specialists take the opportunity to comment on the way in which their research sheds new light on our twenty-first century racial stereotypes; debunking, for example, the way in which we tend to regard skin colour as an indication of recent global origin. Varying skin colour, it seems, is a relatively modern feature of the human race, and its supposed links with geography are even more modern.

It sounds as if the programme is going to be one to watch. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors are rarely afforded the luxury of a programme to themselves, and it is always good to see some of the more specialised aspects of archaeology laid bare. The study of ancient DNA is a complex subject that has, on occasion, been open to misconception. There is even a link to my own current work interests: the submerged landscape, known to us as Doggerland, that lay between Britain and the continent provides the context for the movement in to Britain of the communities of hunter-gatherers who came here at the end of the Ice Age. The ancestors of ‘Cheddar Man’ must have been among these groups. (Though I disagree with the Guardian reporter who called this landmass a ‘land-bridge’ – surely an area that stretched from north of the Humber to south of the Thames was more than a land-bridge?). It is nice, though, to be reminded that the world our ancestors knew was a very different world – a world, ironically, in which for much of the time Britain was physically part of the continental landmass. I still come across people who are not aware of this, so it is a message worth repeating.

One thing does fascinate me: the title, apparently, will be First Brit: Secrets of the 10,000 Year Old Man. I think that I might feel slightly miffed if I were one of the many thousand people who lived here prior to 10,000 years ago, going back to those who left their footprints at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast some 800,000 years ago. OK, so it was not known as Britain that far back, but it was not Britain 10,000 years ago either. The cynical might detect the use of hyperbole to bring in viewers. The programme press information justifies the use of the term ‘First Brit’ on the grounds that this is the oldest complete skeleton. The Natural History staff note that it provides the oldest complete DNA genome we have to date. You can tell that they are excited.

I’m still concerned by the use of superlatives that will, inevitably, be superseded with time. I’d love to focus on the intrinsic interest of archaeology without dressing it up. But it gets the message across. And I know where I will be on the 18^th February. Glued to the television!

If you travel to Shetland today you will find a rather beautiful island chain that essentially comprises a series of steep hills. The topography is abrupt and dramatic; the landscape is gentler towards the coast, but in most places agricultural land is concentrated into small pockets. Numerous islands, of varying size, surround the main landmass.

Curiously, the islands have no indigenous land mammals. The evidence suggests that all, including otters and ponies, have been introduced by the earlier communities of Shetland. The early islanders were canny folk, well able to adapt their lifestyle and farming methods to make the most of the climate and conditions out on this north-western edge of the Atlantic landmass.

The history of the very specific conditions in Shetland brings to mind some pressing questions. If we go back far enough, to the millennia immediately after the Last Glacial Maximum, which ended in the northern hemisphere around 19,000 years ago, then a combination of lower relative sea-levels and land adjustment due to the weight of the ice mean that a great expanse of dry land connected Britain to the Continent. We call this land Doggerland and it is currently the subject of some serious research including work to investigate the topography, flora and fauna of the landscape.

Large quantities of animal bone have been recovered from Doggerland, from a variety of sources including fishing trawls and aggregate extraction. Much of this is Pleistocene, ie dating to before the present era, and it comprises the remains of mammoths, woolly rhinos, bear, lions, hippos, bison and so on. There are also elk and reindeer. And, of course, though they are rare, the remains of people have also been found.

Several of these species of animal were prey species that also occur on excavated archaeological sites in the countries that surround Doggerland, and there is a general assumption that the human inhabitants of Doggerland will have hunted them. It is, in fact, impossible to understand the early settlement of those bordering countries without taking in to account the hazy, but very real, idea that the hunter-gatherer communities who occupied them extended their ranges across lands that have since disappeared beneath the waves.

Indeed, when considering the recent re-discovery of tanged points in Orkney, the general impression is that they provide evidence of the fleeting presence of hunter-gatherer groups from Doggerland who, some 12,000 – 13,000 years ago, were keen, for whatever reason, to explore the north-west fringes of the landmass.

Which brings me back to Shetland. If it was possible for the Late Upper Palaeolithic hunters to access Orkney from Doggerland (whether across a stretch of open water or not), was it also possible for them to access Shetland? When, exactly, did Shetland become islands? If it was possible to get to Shetland overland, then it was also possible that Shetland was home to the animal species that flourished in Doggerland. Of course, you may say – there is no evidence for large mammals in early Shetland, but, I would reply – absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence. There has been little research in deposits of the right age in Shetland so it may be that the bone has just not been found. I’m not sure that we even know where to look. The dramatically lower sea-levels of the period mean that the Shetland we experience today is only part of the resource, only the tops of the Shetlandic mountains that the explorers of Doggerland would have known. It may well be that the best pockets of evidence lie underwater.

This is not just some fanciful questioning. If we really want to understand the nature of Shetland and its earliest population, then we need to understand its relationship with Doggerland. Although the arrival of the early farmers by boat and the animals they brought with them in fairly recent times, is well attested, it is possible, even probable, that there was an earlier Shetland, a place where herds of reindeer, or even mammoth, occasionally grazed and where, when they did, there were small groups of Palaeolithic hunters ready to make the most of the bounty of the land.

A new book summarizes the Quaternary environments of the submerged landscapes of the European continental shelf. It is a detailed overview that extends from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and includes some general chapters on sea-level and climate as well as the preservation conditions that impact on the sites that once lay on these hidden landscapes. Needless to say it is an expensive and academic tome, but invaluable for those working in the field, or those seeking to improve management and investigation. It is part of a series of books produced as output for the Splashcos project, the other two being Under the Sea: archaeology and palaeolandscapes of the continental shelf, and Coastline changes of the Baltic Sea from south to east, both published by Springer. Together they make a formidable addition to the growing collection of material on submerged landscapes. I’ve co-authored a chapter in the first volume.  I’m now frantically reading it all in an attempt to keep my forthcoming text book on sea-level change and submerged landscapes for archaeologists up to date!

I’ve been doing some research for a book I’m writing. I need to discuss various examples of submerged landscapes around the world. Of course, the first I have picked are my favourites, the closest to home: Doggerland, together with another favourite: Beringia.

Beringia unifies the continents of Asia and North America. It comprises an area of land and water, lying between the Mackenzie River in Canada and the Lena River in Russia and extending from the northern coastlands to the southern tip of Kamchatka. It takes its name from the narrow Bering Straits, named after the eighteenth century Danish navigator Vitus Bering (he was actually working for the Russian Czar, Peter the Great). The archaeology of Beringia includes the terrestrial sites on either side of the straits, as well as the submerged landscape.

Doggerland lies between Britain and the Continent. Its full extent and coastline are still known only through modelling, and interpretations of the data vary, but at the height of the last glaciation it is likely to have extended to the north of Shetland, only to disappear slowly as a result of sea-level rise and crustal readjustment in the millennia following deglaciation. Doggerland was no mere landbridge, recent research is investigating the topography, flora and fauna of the ancient land surfaces below the current sea bed.

Beringia is a significant location for the study of submerged landscapes, not least because of the way in which the terrestrial and underwater archaeology are regarded as part of a unified whole. This approach has, largely, yet to be achieved in studies closer to home; for example, research on Doggerland still focuses on a submerged landscape that is defined by the present-day UK and European coastlines to either side of it. When you think about it, this is a strange concept for archaeology because the whole point about Doggerland (and indeed any submerged landscape) is that the current coastlines did not exist when it was dry land and inhabited.

While, research about Doggerland is expressed as underwater investigations of a submerged landscape that operated in conjunction with the adjoining land masses, the focus for the archaeology of Beringia is different. It encompasses an environmental and cultural landscape that stretches across both dry and inundated terrain as a seamless whole. There are, of course, terrestrial and underwater elements to this research, depending on where it is based, but, in general, this produces a more holistic view.  It allows us to put the archaeology into its proper context.

This may seem like pedantry, but it is more significant than that. The work we do, and the narratives that we draw from it, are influenced by the pictures that we have in our minds eye and as long as we see the archaeology of submerged landscapes as separate to that of the land, then we will treat them differently.

This is important for two reasons, one to do with the past and one to do with the present. In general, the submerged landscapes around the world were last available for human activity from the millennia around the height of the last glaciation into the earliest millennia of the Holocene. This coincides with the time when modern humans were, in many cases, expanding their territories into new and unexplored lands. In several cases this expansion made use of lands that are now submerged, though access to any archaeological information has, until recently, been restricted by the depths of water that now cover them. Both Beringia and Doggerland are implicated in human expansions: in the case of Beringia the movement of peoples from Asia into North America and in the case of Doggerland, the exploration of northern Britain in the Late Upper Palaeolithic and the subsequent expansion of microlith-using Mesolithic communities in the Early Holocene. All of these episodes are crucial for our understanding of the creation of the modern world. But, in order to understand them fully, we need to focus on more than the underwater portion of the trip as this is a mere accident of history, no more than a taphonomic process.

All archaeologists today, therefore, whatever their chosen specialisations, require a basic grounding in the archaeology of submerged landscapes. It should be an automatic inclusion in any university course, as essential as radiocarbon dating, artefact analysis, or the Neolithic; as obvious as upland archaeology, the preservation conditions of peat, or the contribution of pollen analysis. The archaeology of submerged landscapes is not an add-on, but I fear that, for the most part, we still treat it as such. Hopefully, with time, the holistic philosophy of Beringia will permeate our mindsets.