Doggerland: a Speculative Survey

Archaeologists tend to refer to the land that once existed between Britain and the continent as a landbridge. It was, however, a landscape as habitable as neighbouring regions, and here called Doggerland to emphasise its availability for settlement by prehistoric peoples. Evidence from the Geological Surveys undertaken by countries bordering the North Sea Basin, together with allied research, is drawn together to provide an overview of the possibilities. A range of interacting geological processes implies that the present-day relief of the North Sea bed does not provide a sound guide to the relief of the former landscape, nor to the chronology and character of its submergence. A series of maps accompanies the text to provide a speculative reconstruction of the topography, river systems, coastline, vegetation, fauna, and human occupation of Doggerland from the Devensian/Weichselian maximum to the beginnings of the Neolithic.

[1]  A. Roberts,et al.  REVIEWING THE BRITISH LATE UPPER PALAEOLITHIC: NEW EVIDENCE FOR CHRONOLOGICAL PATTERNING IN THE LATEGLACIAL RECORD , 1996 .

[2]  R. C. Preece.  Island Britain: A Quaternary Perspective , 1995 .

[3]  M. Zvelebil.  Plant Use in the Mesolithic and its Role in the Transition to Farming , 1994, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

[4]  A. Morrison,et al.  The Early Prehistory of Scotland , 1996 .

[5]  R. Devoy.  Sea-level Changes During the Holocene: The North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans , 1987 .

[6]  R. Devoy.  Sea Surface Studies , 1987 .

[7]  D. Roe.  Studies in the Upper Palaeolithic of Britain and northwest Europe , 1986 .

[8]  B. Huntley.  European vegetation history: Palaeovegetation maps from pollen data ‐ 13 000 yr BP to present , 1990 .

[9]  P. Day.  Devensian Late-glacial and early Flandrian environmental history of the Vale of Pickering, Yorkshire, England , 1996 .

[10]  T. V. Weering,et al.  Holocene marine sedimentation in the North Sea basin , 1981 .

[11]  M. E. Godwin,et al.  British Maglemose Harpoon Sites , 1933, Antiquity.

[12]  Clive Gamble,et al.  Radiocarbon evidence for the Lateglacial Human Recolonisation of Northern Europe , 1997, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

[13]  P. Rowley-Conwy,et al.  Mesolithic Northwest Europe : recent trends , 1987 .

[14]  K. Lambeck.  Glacial rebound of the British Isles—I. Preliminary model results , 1993 .

[15]  H. Tauber,et al.  New C-14 Datings of Late Palaeolithic Cultures from Northwestern Europe , 1986 .

[16]  J. Ehlers,et al.  The extension of the Late Weichselian/Late Devensian ice sheets in the North Sea Basin , 1991 .

[17]  P. Mellars,et al.  ‘Absolute’ dating of Mesolithic human activity at Star Carr, Yorkshire: new palaeoecological studies and identification of the 9600 bp radiocarbon ‘plateau’ , 1994, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

[18]  E. Oele,et al.  The Quaternary history of the North Sea , 1979 .

[19]  H. Godwin,et al.  A Maglemosian Site at Brandesburton, Holderness, Yorkshire , 1957, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

[20]  Christopher Smith,et al.  Late Stone Age Hunters of the British Isles , 1992 .

[21]  R. C. Preece,et al.  Malacological evidence relating to the insularity of the British Isles during the Quaternary , 1995, Geological Society, London, Special Publications.

[22]  Roger Jacobi,et al.  Britain Inside and Outside Mesolithic Europe , 1976, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

[23]  A. Whittle.  Europe in the Neolithic: The Creation of New Worlds , 1998 .

[24]  J. Brigham‐Grette,et al.  Quaternary stratigraphy of the Fladen area, central North Sea: a multidisciplinary study , 1987 .

[25]  M. Waller.  The Fenland Project, Number 9: Flandrian environmental change in Fenland , 1994 .

[26]  G. Clark.  Star Carr : a case study in bioarchaeology , 1972 .

[27]  M. Grosswald.  Late Weichselian Ice Sheet of Northern Eurasia , 1980, Quaternary Research.

[28]  R. Adams.  Excavations at Star Carr. J. G. D. Clark , 1956 .

[29]  J. Meer,et al.  Micromorphology of some North Sea till samples, a pilot study , 1990 .

[30]  Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on European Coastal Lowlands , 1993 .

[31]  J. Coles,et al.  Fenland survey : an essay in landscape and persistence , 1997 .

[32]  A. J. Sutcliffe.  On the Track of Ice Age Mammals , 1985 .

[33]  D. Charman,et al.  Environmental change and tephra deposition : the Strath of Kildonan, Northern Scotland , 1995 .

[34]  D. Smith,et al.  Evidence for a tsunami from a mesolithic site in Inverness, Scotland , 1990 .

[35]  M. Walker,et al.  Radiocarbon dating the Devensian Lateglacial in Britain: New evidence from Llanilid, South Wales , 1990 .

[36]  J. Cook,et al.  A Reindeer antler or ‘Lyngby’ axe from Northamptonshire and its context in the British Late Glacial , 1994, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

[37]  G. Coope,et al.  Regional differences in the Lateglacial climate of northern Europe based on coleopteran analysis , 1995 .

[38]  J. Clutton-Brock,et al.  New osteological and C-isotope evidence on mesolithic dogs: Companions to hunters and fishers at Star Carr, Seamer Carr and Kongemose , 1990 .

[39]  G. Clark.  The Earlier Stone Age Settlement Of Scandinavia , 1975 .

[40]  V. Childe,et al.  The Mesolithic Settlement of Northern Europe: , 1936, Nature.

[41]  T. Cameron.  The Geology of the Southern North Sea , 1993 .

[42]  P. Gibbard.  The History of the Great Northwest European Rivers During the Past Three Million Years , 1988 .

[43]  L. Larsson.  The Mesolithic of Southern Scandinavia , 1990 .

[44]  P. Johnston.  The role of hydro-isostasy for Holocene sea-level changes in the British Isles , 1995 .

[45]  David E. Smith,et al.  A Major Coastal Flood During the Holocene in Eastern Scotland , 1985 .

[46]  D. Long,et al.  The sedimentary record of climatic variation in the southern North Sea , 1988 .

[47]  C. Bonsall.  The Mesolithic in Europe , 1989 .

[48]  L. Kooijmans.  Sporen in het land, de Nederlandse delta in de prehistorie , 1985 .