DC2: "Lost coastal territories: Searching and mapping Late Palaeolithic and early Mesolithic coastal landscapes and sites under water and land"

Project details

Project description

Objectives

A third of the land area occupied by Paleolithic human groups in Europe was drowned by the sea level rise after the Last Glacial period and the coastal settlements of Paleolithic hunter-gatherer groups are today placed below current sea level. The first goal of PhD2 is to explore the feasibility of identifying and analysing archaeological remains from these periods left on the Continental Shelf floor of Atlantic Europe, a matter still unexplored.

Multidisciplinary research focusing on new technological approaches such as Topas sub-bottom profiling, multibean echosounder or XRF core scanning makes this possible and might trigger a real revolution in the knowledge of Prehistory. Brittany, Aquitaine, northern Spain and Estremadura and Alentejo in Portugal are targets to address this issue from a comparative approach.

The continental shelf of Atlantic Europe holds some particularly promising features:

1. In some areas (e.g.  Cantabria, Aquitaine, Alentejo) the density of the hunter-gatherers’ settlements near the current coastline is among the highests in Europe, suggesting the existence of a much larger network of settlements reaching out on the now flooded shelf.
2. In northern Spain and Portugal, the narrowness of the continental shelf reduces the area to be explored and places the prehistoric sites at short distance from the modern coastline, more accessible for survey.
3. In some areas with a sub-seafloor karst, archaeological sites that are similar to the well-known cave and rockshelter sites known from today’s inland might exist.

PhD2 will undertake multidisciplinary searches of places in the selected regions to locate evidence of prehistoric human activity using ROVs and scuba diving techniques.

Advanced digital mapping and environmental reconstruction techniques will be applied to identify and investigate locations prone to human settlement, to study of the landscape and coastline evolution, and the environmental setting of the hunter-gatherer’s groups. As another goal, the new results from Atlantic Europe will be compared to the situation in Norway, where Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites are preserved on dry ground. Similarities and differences in Stone Age land-use in these regions will be discussed. Thirdly, PhD2 will strongly contribute with new insights to the preservation of the coastal and submerged archaeological heritage, and will provide a powerful instrument for the future management policies.

Expected results

1. Detailed analysis of the evolution of the sea level in the Atlantic areas studied.
2. Localization of submerged Stone Age sites.
3. Spatial analysis of the late Paleolithic and the Mesolithic settlement of the selected region, including currently emerged sites.
4. Analysis of the diachronic evolution of the human activity in a coastal region from the Magdalenian to the transition the Neolithic.
5. A comparison of a Norwegian and an Atlantic region.
6. Catalogue of coastal and submerged sites and risk maps.
7. Improvement of the methodology for underwater survey and recording of Stone Age sites.
8. Contribution to the creation of a good-practices code for the analysis and preservation of coastal and submerged sites.
9. Definition of criteria for heritage management in coastal areas and the continental shelf. 

Academic secondments

• Brest (CNRS-Institut écologie et environnement; supervisor: Pierre Stéphan): three months; purpose: analysing the Mesolithic sites and the submerged paleoenvironment of Brittany.
• Oslo (Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo; supervisor: Almut Schülke): two months; purpose: comparative study of Mesolithic settlement patterns in Norway

Non-academic secondments

• Santander (FIHAC; supervisor: Javier López Lara): one month; purpose: training in coastal engineering.
• Saint-Malo (ADRAMAR; supervisor: Anne Hoyau-Berry): one month; purpose: learn about NGOs and underwater archaeological survey

Supervisors

• Main supervisor: Prof. Pablo Arias (Universidad de Cantabria)
• Co-supervisors: Dr. Camilo Jaramillo (IH Cantabria), and Dr. Pierre Stéphan (CNRS)

Eligibility criteria

The recruitment process for all Doctoral candidates in the HORIZON-MSCA-2022-DN ArCHe follows a common recruitment strategy, which is based on the European Commission’s Code of Conduct of Recruitment

MSCA-eligibility criteria

• MSCA Mobility Rule: researchers must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the country of the recruiting beneficiary for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before their date of recruitment
• All researchers recruited in a DN must be doctoral candidates (i.e. not already in possession of a doctoral degree at the date of the recruitment)

Necessary local eligibility criteria (specific for the host institution/beneficiary)

MA degree either in Archaeology, Geology, Geomorphology, Geography, Oceanography or Coastal Engineering

Enrolment in local PhD-programme

Programa de Doctorado en Arqueología Prehistórica (Escuela de Doctorado de la Universidad de Cantabria)

Appropriate academic knowledge and skills for position DC2

• Prehistoric archaeology
• Marine geomorphology
• GIS
• Underwater survey techniques
• Diving

The call is now closed.
 

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