1,721,072 research outputs found
Communities of knowledge: teaching and learning in maritime archaeology (In special issue: Education and Training in Maritime Archaeology)
No full textThis paper explores the points of contact and divergence between education,
training and experience in maritime archaeology. In particular, it is proposed that whilst it
is worth developing McGrail’s (Studies in maritime archaeology. British Archaeological
Reports, Oxford, 1997) discussion of what should be included when we teach Maritime
archaeology, more might be gained from moving beyond individual opinions of instructors.
As such, this paper includes an exploration of both my own answers to the questions
offered in the call for papers and those of past and present Southampton students. What
emerges from this comparison is that by focusing too closely on the specifics of what is (or
should be) taught, we miss out on what students actually gain from courses and more
broadly what we gain as a community
Local knowledge is required: a rhythmanalytical approach to the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the East Anglian Fenland, UK
No full textThis is a paper about blurring the boundaries between people, land and water in the past and of appreciating the importance of the wider environment in our accounts of prehistory. Maritime approaches to time/space are shown to offer new ways of looking at how people engage with the world around them. Informed by these approaches, and building on Lefebvre’s concepts of lived space and rhythm, current tensions within archaeology between cartesian and phenomenological approaches to the past will be shown to be unconstructive. These issues are all addressed in relation the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the East Anglian Fenland. Here a rhythmical, maritime approach will be shown to offer us a subtly different view of life during this period
Titanic salvage: recovering the ship’s radio could signal a disaster for underwater cultural heritage
No full textThe RMS Titanic’s Marconi radio was last used to make distress calls from the north Atlantic after the ship struck an iceberg on April 14 1912. Now the radio could become the target of a salvage operation after a private company was granted permission to recover the artefact from the wreck’s interior.This recovery for profit is directly at odds with the ethics of modern archaeological practice. It also raises questions about legal protection for shipwrecks such as the Titanic and how we choose to value our shared cultural heritage
Clement Reid (FRS FLS FGS) - remembering a 19th century pioneer in British Quaternary Science at the centenary of his death
No full textThe Relic Palaeo-landscapes of the Thames Estuary
No full textA geological and heritage assessment of the Outer Thames Estuary as part of an MALSF-MEPF Regional Environmental Characterisation project revealed c.15,000 km2 of palaeo-landscapes hypothesised as dating from 600,000 to 720,000 years ago. These deposits lie immediately offshore from the region that has produced the earliest archaeological evidence for the occupation of the British Isles (c. 600,000 to 700,000 years ago). The exceptional level of preservation of this landscape holds great potential for: understanding our earliest archaeological heritage; understanding the broader geological changes which have occurred during several episodes of sea level change; and providing an enhanced context for a number of aggregate licensing areas and other commercial seabed projects. To resolve the true importance of this landscape this, one year, follow-on project aimed to improve the chronology of this very important submerged landscape. In order to establish the chronology of this area the project aimed to collect 30 (<6 m) long vibrocores from carefully chosen locations distributed across this landscape. These sites were identified from the interpretation of new and legacy seismic data collected during the project and provided by the aggregate industry (Resource Management Association). The retrieved sediments would be logged and appropriate materials selected for analysis by a combination of dating techniques (palaeo-secular variation (PSV), amino acid racemization (AAR), electron spin resonance (ESR), optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and radiocarbon dating.Over the twelve months of the project: fifty-five square kilometres of swath bathymetry data and co-registered backscatter have been acquired; a further thirty square kilometres of swath bathymetry has been provided by the Harwich Harbour Authority; twenty-five line kilometres of boomer data from the main palaeo-river channel in the area has been acquired; and finally several hundred line kilometres of extant boomer data and a total of 133 borehole logs and photo imagery have been provided by the Resource Management Association. These datasets were fully processed and integrated with data acquired during the initial REC project to provide a three phase model of landscape evolution. The proposed thirty vibrocores were successfully acquired giving a total of 140 m of sedimentary core, an intact archive of which now resides in the BOSCOR facility at the NOCS. These cores have been fully logged, photographed and analysed for grain size. In turn, these lithological data sets have been correlated with the appropriate seismic sections to further enhance a geological model of the area. In addition, we have undertaken extensive sampling and analysis of the cores, for PSV, AAR, ESR, OSL and radiocarbon dating to build up a chronological picture of the development of the submerged landscapes of the Outer Thames Estuary.The sampled sedimentary sequences are dominated by Late Glacial to mid- Holocene sediments deposited since the Last Glacial Maximum c. 20,000 years ago. However, the project has provided significant evidence to support the original hypothesis of a much longer term evolution of this river system, which can be split into two distinct phases. Firstly, there is a record of river channel activity across the area in the Middle to Late Pleistocene (c. 160,000 – 70,000 years ago) and secondly, from a more restricted number of sites we have identified both morphological and dating evidence to support our original hypothesis of a landscape that potentially dates back to the early Middle Pleistocene (significantly older than 420,000 years ago).This intensive project has successfully accomplished all that it set out to do in the tight time frame and in addition to the immediate results will provide a platform for more intense study over the next year, where additional dating will be undertaken; more detailed analysis of the environmental information in the cores will be done; and integration with the extensive but sparsely distributed onshore record can be made
From sea to land and back again: understanding the shifting character of Europe's landscapes and seascapes over the last million years
No full textThe palaeogeography of the northwest margin of Europe has changed markedly, and regularly, since humans first occupied the region around one million years ago (Parfitt et al. 2010). Britain as we know it today has morphed from peninsula to island and back again in response to glacial cycles on at least five occasions over this period. Understanding the timing, nature and extent of these changes is fundamental to appreciating the context within which archaeologically attested activity occurred. That being said, it is argued here that rather than just providing an environmental backdrop to a well-known story, knowledge of the rate, pace and degree of change can provide a secure vantage point from which to reconsider a range of key questions concerning connectivity and social change throughout prehistor
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The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Channel Islands: maritime and terrestrial perspectives
No full textThis paper investigates the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Channel Islands. It presents a new synthesis of all known evidence from the islands c. 5000-4300 BC, including several new excavations as well as find spot sites that have not previously been collated. It also summarises – in English – a large body of contemporary material from north-west France. The paper presents a new high-resolution sea level model for the region, shedding light on the formation of the Channel Islands from 9000-4000 BC. Through comparison with contemporary sites in mainland France, an argument is made suggesting that incoming migrants from the mainland and the small indigenous population of the islands were both involved in the transition. It is also argued that, as a result of the fact the Channel Islands witnessed a very different trajectory of change to that seen in Britain and Ireland c. 5000-3500 BC, this small group of islands has a great deal to tell us about the arrival of the Neolithic more widely
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