sea level rise

Archaeology and climate change

The CHERISH Project resulted from a joint Welsh and Irish application to the European Union’s Interreg fund, the purpose of which is to bring member nations together to share innovative and sustainable solutions to regional development challenges. In this case, the challenge was climate change and its impact on the heritage sites and landscapes along the Irish Sea coast and beneath its waters. The project was conceived and led by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, and Chris Catling, the Commission’s Secretary, now reports on its methods and outcomes.

The Drowning of a Cornish Prehistoric Landscape: Tradition, deposition, and social responses to sea level rise

REVIEW BY JACQUELINE A NOWAKOWSKI Mount’s Bay, west Cornwall, hosts a major drowned landscape. This attractive and well-produced monograph successfully integrates results of the excavation of a Bronze Age enclosure barrow, east of Penzance in the littoral zone, with excellent…

Europe’s Lost Frontiers – Volume 1 : Context and Methodology

REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH Due to current climate change, the coastline of north-western Europe is in a state of flux, resulting in the slow but inevitable inundation of the sea. This change in coastline is clearly witnessed by the ongoing disappearance…

The Mesolithic in Britain: landscape and society in times of change

Review by George Nash. The concept of a ‘Mesolithic’, a Middle Stone Age, has been with us since the early 1930s, and many thousands of sites dating to this period have been discovered since, some submerged under our coastal waters.…

The Past

This week: Submerged cities

According to Plato, it was a fabulously wealthy island – larger than Asia Minor and Ancient Libya combined, and situated just beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Its powerful princes conquered much of the eastern Mediterranean, subjecting whole populations to slavery, until an alliance led by the Athenians staged a fightback, managing finally to liberate the occupied lands.

Confronting Climate Change at Butrint

A new report spells out the risks that rising sea levels pose to some of the world’s greatest archaeological sites. Richard Hodges and David Prince consider the situation at Butrint.

RIGHT This hammerstone was recently found off the coast of Norfolk.

Searching for the people of Doggerland

Around 8,150 years ago, a sudden shift in the seabed created the Storegga tsunami in the North Sea. With all known evidence pointing towards this event greatly affecting, but not completely inundating, Doggerland (the strip of land that once connected…

Before the flood

The study found that 37 of the 49 World Heritage Sites are already at risk from floods, and 42 from erosion, although the level of risk varies from site to site, with Venice and Ravenna particularly at risk from flooding, and Samos and Tyre from erosion