coastal settlements

Liman Tepe: A bridge between worlds

For over 30 years a pioneering project has investigated the prehistory of the Izmir region of Turkey. What has it discovered? Vasıf Şahoğlu told Matthew Symonds an epic tale of rise and fall, connectivity and technology, and the long shadows cast by devastating natural disasters.

Opposite. Excavations at the Mesolithic site at the Sands of Forvie in 2001 Photo: Graeme Warren.

The Storegga disaster: in search of squashed Mesolithic people

Around 8000 years ago a huge underwater landslide off Norway triggered a tsunami (‘tidal wave’) that wreaked destruction along the coasts of Norway, Iceland and eastern Scotland. An archaeologist considers the contemporary (Mesolithic) Scottish scene in the next article. Here geographer David E Smith describes what Quaternary scientists know as the Storegga tsunami.