Underwater archaeology

[Rokcet Scientist]

[quote="Realist"]Stan,
You might find these interesting:
[url]www.iceage.org.uk[/url]
[url]www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Research/Aggregates/index.htm[/url]
I [i]think[/i] Southampton uni is now home to Dr Bryony Coles and the Doggerland Project; she used bathymetric data of the North Sea to tentatively reconstruct what the NW European plain ('Doggerland') looked like before the remnants were inundated by a tsunami c.7000 years ago. This tsunami was triggered by an underwater earthquake off Norway, which caused a major cliff fall. The tsunami eventually reached as far west as modern day Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.[/quote]

Interesting indeed.

[quote="Realist"]A couple of years back, a team of underwater archaeologists discovered a pre-Ice Age hunting camp on the sea bed a couple of miles off the coast of Berwick on Tweed, Northumberland, NE England.[/quote]

"Pre-ice age hunting camp"?
Let's see: since the last ice age is generally regarded as having started 3 million years ago the occupants of that hunting camp would then have to have been Lucy's contemporaries, wouldn't they? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Major_ice_ages)
Let's find them! Just imagine that: Lucy's cousins lived in Europe! Maybe the UK even...
Do I sense a Nobel Prize?
Or another Piltdown Man?

[Guest]

[
"Pre-ice age hunting camp"?
Let's see: since the last ice age is generally regarded as having started 3 million years ago the occupants of that hunting camp would then have to have been Lucy's contemporaries, wouldn't they? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Major_ice_ages)
Let's find them! Just imagine that: Lucy's cousins lived in Europe! Maybe the UK even...
Do I sense a Nobel Prize?
Or another Piltdown Man?

Pre-last Ice Age...your own Neanderthal roots are showing.......

[stan]

Here's the link...sorry about that, Rokcet.

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/NE ... ortham.gif

[Guest]

I forgot to post this one, for some same strange reason...

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prehistoric/

[Rokcet Scientist]

Thx, stan.

BTW, I'm sure you'll understand I'm not dignifying some unsubstantiating ordinary name callers around here with a response.

[stan]

Realist, thanks for the links to British ice age archaeology.
They are a bit intimidating...I keep forgetting that archaeology is
a science! I'll study them while you guys are sleeping in.

So it sound as though some archaeological remnants survived
glaciation? Or were they in a part of the Isles that were not "iced over"
the last time?

It is a bit confusing...I need to know British and European geography better...though I am working on it. I am glad that that "initiative" group is
bringing people's attention to the issue of the continental shelf.

I think the size of the US is such that as a nation we often don't think ahead on
environmetal matters, and probably can't easiily recognize any sort of threat to our huge continental shelf. But England is so concentrated...
and has such an OLD and RICH history and culture, and is so intimately
connected with the SEA.

By the way, I'll take a moment to recommend a non-archaeology title
for your pleasure: Trawler, by Redmond O'Hanlon.
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/trawler/
One of the most exciting books I've read. THere's a lot of wild conversation between O'Hanlon and a marine biologist about the
Biology and Geology of the North Atlantic, especially deep-sea species. BOth guys are sleep-deprived,
riding out a winter storm, and over stimulated. Couldn't put it down.

[Guest]

Stan,
Can't do much better than point you to here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/boxgrove/
There are some interesting links on the news page.
Sounds an interesting book btw.

[Guest]

Rokcet:
*SNIP*

Do you know of any fossils or human artifacts recovered from underneath the icecap?

Just using that quote to open with a little context. (CONTEXT? in an ARCHAEOLOGY forum? What AM I thinking of!?! javascript:emoticon(':lol:') )

A few points to throw into the discussion here -

1. Archaeologists working in Arctic regions have found some artifacts and other evidence of human habitation that would have been in the glacial zones during the last Great Ice Age ("GIA" for this chat) - particularaly in and around Alaska and parts for far northern Canada.

2. Marine archaeologists in Florida have now charted a number of locations that today are well below the Atlantic and Gulf waters - but were inhabited during the GIA.

3. Ditto for submarine areas on the western edges of the Bering Sea.

4. "Cave art" of the types found in France, Spain and Germany does not thus far seem to have been found in the Americas (according to my relatively wide but still imperfect knowledge). However, other forms of somewhat comparable themes have been found in South America and along the likely migration track between the Pacific Northwest and the central highlands of Mexico. The further south, the more found - probably thanks to a climate more suited for the survival of that work. Desert region petroglyphs in California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and the northern Mexican desert range from very old to relatively recent. (Sorry for the fuzzy terminology, but my reference books on this are at work, writing from home on a Sunday morn.)