La Cotte de St Brelade

From Feb to Sept 2014 a new exhibit will be on show at the Natural History Museum, London that highlights some of the research undertaken by scientist in St Andrews and elsewhere in the UK as part of the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project over the last 10years.  Britain: One Million Years of the Human Story presents key material and evidence from a number of important sites in and around the UK that help to document the dramatic story of changing landscapes and the people who lived in them over the last million years.  Two of the sites that this major exhibition showcases have been the focus of research for the dept E&E over the last 5years.  La Cotte de St Brelade is briefly described here, Happisburgh has been presented in a previous blog and will be the focus of a future blog as new results are published.

La Cotte from the sea

La Cotte de St Brelade in Jersey is a cave site that contains a 250kyr record of human use.  Investigations have been conducted at the site over the last 100yrs but there still remains much material that has yet to be uncovered.  It’s position however, on the shore in a highly vulnerable situation, means that much of the material is in danger of being lost forever and the site has been subject to intense recent study under a NERC emergency project.

A geophysical programme was initiated in 2012 to survey the wider palaeo-environmental context of the site.  This included high resolution marine mapping combined with geophysical modelling to allow the archaeologists to drain away the sea and literally step back in time to walk through the ancient landscapes. 

The palaeolandscape was surveyed using multibeam sonar aboard two research vessels, a 15m research yacht, Gambo and also using my inshore craft, the zego boat.  The resulting landscape model shows a complex valley system offshore, through which the herds of game would have been forced along routes leading up to the dead-end valley infront of the cave site.

 

Watch as sea rises over the submerged landscape of eroded granite terrain and then fly over the valleys up to La Cotte to get a view looking out from the cave

The new views from the mammoth butchery cave site are providing alternate context for understanding the prolific finds that have been dug from the site over the last century. 

 Work continues at the site and in 2014 we hope to start exploring the relationships between landscape, geology and the geology of tool assemblages from the cave.

Happisburgh ERT Geophysical Survey, Jan 2014

Happy Days are here again!

Why happy? Well we are back in Happisburgh on the north Norfolk coast staying in the Hill House pub (of Sherlock fame – the Dancing Men, and also with a cracking set of handpump real ale) and running electrical sections across the country side. 

The site has previously yielded evidence of the UK’s oldest ancestors.  It was here in the early 2000s that artefacts and associated plant and animal remains were discovered that is the earliest evidence outside southern Europe for human activity, older than 780,000 years before present. Not only that but the biological remains suggested these people were living in an environment similar to that of present day southern Scandinavia.  These remains were found in a river channel close to the sea that was subsequently buried by thick sequences of deposits when East Anglia was covered in ice around half a million years ago.



ERT line at the big manor, Happisburgh

Over the last couple of years we have been visiting the site and using different geophysical methods to try to reconstruct the palaeo-landscapes at the key time periods in relation to the artefacts.  We have used both electric and electromagnetic surveys on the foreshore across the semi-buried channels and inland from these trying to chase the channels as they are buried beneath other sediments.  Specifically we have used a Geonics EM31 to map the lateral extent of the channels on the beach and then an Abem Terrameter to acquire 2D geo-electric sections (ERT) in a grid pattern across the fields surrounding the village in order to understand the landscape structure.  The data is processed using RES2DINV and then visualised in Fledermaus.  Ultimately, these landscape reconstructions will enable better targeting of the archaeological investigations and also allow us to try and understand where the early people were possibly living and how they were using the landscape.  

Many may know this part of the coast for its rapid and drastic erosion and retreat.  Since we have been coming here the cliffs have shot back well over 40m! Devastating for many locals, some of whom have lost their entire houses to the North Sea, but for us it comes as a mixed blessing as we get new geologic sections to investigate each time we visit with the possibility of new artefacts. Watch the press and this blog for announcements on this next month!




ERT survey line over newly exposed basal member of the Happisburgh Till

For more on this work then if any of you are down in London over the next 6 months then make sure to get to the Natural History Museum for a new exhibit on Palaeolithic Britain “Britain: One Million Years of the Human Story” with a special part on Happisburgh.  Much of this work came from the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project. So finally, a blog will shortly be written on our other site in Jersey – La Cotte de St Brelade.

The Bates Brothers discuss the latest results (photo Erin Kavanagh)



Some of Last year’s projects - The Beginning of Time?

The Begging of Time 

Last summer, just about the time that the midges come out in full force a team of archaeologists and geophysicists from the Universities of Birmingham, St Andrews and Bradford got together in a field in Aberdeenshire near Crathes Castle.  The outing was prompted by the keen-eyed and insightful thinking of Prof Vince Gaffney who had spotted a curious arrangement of Mesolithic pits form air photos and a previous archaeological site report.  

Air photo and site investigation of sinuous pit alignment

The alignment was unlike most other early monuments in the UK where obvious orientations align with solar and lunar events.  This new site showed a sinuous arrangement to the pits.  While most of us would see no significance in this, Vince’s curiosity was piqued and his brain went into overdrive.  The end result, a geophysical survey, a new interpretation and the theory presented that at 10,000yrs old the feature could be the world’s oldest calendar!

The geophysics: This included electromagnetics, (Geonics EM31 and EM38), magnetics (Foerster Mag) electrical (Geoscan) and ground penetrating radar (PulseEkko).

The end result was modeled to examine what the exact solar and lunar tracts would have looked like 10,000yrs ago.  This showed the site mimics the phases of the moon in order to track lunar months over the course of the year. But that is not all, it also contains elements for alignment with the midwinter sunrise thus providing an annual astronomic correction in order to maintain the link between the passage of time indicated by the moon, the asynchronous solar year and the associated seasons.  Pretty smart of those old Scots running around the glens hunting the deer and fishing for the salmon!

For more information see Time and a Place: A luni-solar ‘time reckoner’ from 8^th millennium BC Scotland. Internet Archaeology, July 15 2013 (http://dx.doi.org/10.11141/ia.34.1)

 

Inphase results using EM31 (high resolution over site, lower for rest of field)

Seismic Data, Orkney

Previous Rising Tides Geophysics Results
Over the past couple of years we have been collecting bathymetry and sub-bottom seismic information from the Bay of Firth and Loch of Stenness.  These give us the first hint at palaeo-landscapes. 

Bathymetry in Bay of Firth showing deep inner basin

 The bathymetry information was acquired using a SEA Swathplus 468kHz sonar deployed on our department boat, Envoy and also on my specially adapted Zego Boat.  The sub-bottom information was acquired with a Sesistec Boomer system in the Bay of Firth and using a Tritech SeaKing Parametric Sonar on Loch of Stenness.

The results allow us to target areas of the seafloor that are rock and those of sediment.  The rock areas are investigated by ROV (remotely operated vehicle) or diver and the sediment by coring

Section of bathymetry from Loch of Stenness near Brodgar World Heritage Site

Sub-bottom profiles through stone features and sediment sequences in Stenness

Rising Tides - January Coring

Orkney - The Rising Tides Project

Its January and its Orkney - Coring on a new raft I have built in the Bay of Firth and the Loch of Stenness.  This is part of the Rising Tides Project, an archaeological study of how sealevel rise has inundated lost landscapes that were used by early settlers in Orkney during the Mesolithic and Neolithic.  

We have been working in Orkney for a number of years, as a multi-disciplinary team of archaeologists, geologists and geophysicists. For my part I have been acquiring geophysics of the sea floor and sub-seafloor sediments. Using this seismic information I am building models of submerged and buried surfaces that we will interpret as palaeo-landscapes once the others have done their work on the sediments.  Getting ground truth sediment has been quite a challenge but now armed with a new raft (a segmented, modular assembly from which we can operate a vibro-corer) we can acquire the necessary sediment cores to be able to analyse the environments that the geophysics has hinted at.  The cores are not only vital to interpretation of the geophysics but are a crucial step in trying to re-people the landscapes.  

So, first week in Jan and the raft arrives on site and is assembled.

Its all bolted together ad floated out.  Since its the maiden voyage a can of Guinness was sacrificed in the launch!

Out to site and the Vibro-corer is attached.

Perfect sediment record.

The whole exercise in both the Loch of Stenness and Bay of Firth caused a bit of a stir locally that prompted a Radio Orkney reporter to venture out

Its now back to the lab for core analysis of micro-fossils and sediment dating....more to report once all this is done