UWLAS Archaeological Services

Estuarine, coastal and shallow marine environments

Estuarine, coastal and shallow marine environments

Archaeological investigation of these zones is a important field in archaeology requiring specialist expertise and unusual approaches to investigation. Staff in Lampeter have extensive experience in these often hostile zones either leading or as part of multi-disciplinary teams investigating a range of situations in which archaeological material may occur. These range from diving on wreck sites as part of survey and excavation and remote study of wreck sites as part of archaeological management studies to the investigation of buried Prehistoric landscapes of Holocene or earlier date.

Services provided

  • Desk-top evaluations of buried and submerged landscapes
  • Project management
  • Development of project designs, post-excavation assessments and research designs with particular expertise on wrecks and ships
  • Recovery of ship/boat finds, including dismantling, lifting, packaging and transportation
  • On-site specialist support: specialist advice, staff training, in situ recording and sampling
  • Production of specialist archive and publication reports
  • On-site advice on sequence development and sampling
  • Palaeoenvironmental analysis
  • Borehole surveys
  • Geophysical surveys and geotechnical investigations

For further information/advice or quotation in relation to these services, please contact Dr Martin Bates (tel: +44(0)1570 424908; e-mail: m.bates@trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk) or Nigel Nayling (tel: +44(0)1570 424904; e-mail: n.nayling@trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk)

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Case study: Seamless approaches to the Prehistoric landscapes of southern England and adjacent shallow marine zone

Southern England has an important heritage of Pleistocene sequences rich in Palaeolithic and late Prehistoric archaeology. Typically these sequences are difficult to access due either to their burial by excessive thickness of recent alluvium (Figure 1) or the presence of shallow marine waters. However, buried within or below these sequences are locations that were often prime sites for activity in the past and consequently their archaeological potential can be considered high. Novel combinations of techniques borrowed from other disciplines are now routinely being used to investigate these areas. These approaches are being coupled at Lampeter with new conceptual frameworks for thinking about the buried sequences that provide an alternative approach to their investigation and understanding (Bates and Bates, 2000; Bates et al., 2007a and b). Ultimately the objective of such an approach is a seamless strategy across the transition zone between dry and wet environments where understanding and categorising the archaeological potential of the land/marine-scape can be achieved (Bates et al., 2007).

Figure 1. Medway Marshes at Kingsnorth: a relatively features marshland topography burying a complex of landscapes spanning the last 250,000 years. Figure 2. DC resistivity sections from estuarine situations in the lower Thames Valley.

For example estuarine sediments up to 30 m in thickness characterise the lower parts of the Thames system in the Kent and Essex Marshes.  Recent work in this area has focused on developing detailed sub-surface models of the early Holocene topography based on integrated geophysical (DC resistivity sectioning, Figure 2) and boreholes. The use of geophysics to support the construction of sub-surface models is clearly illustrated by a comparison of the modelled early Holocene landsurface based only on boreholes (Figure 3A) and that based on a combined borehole and geophysical survey (Figure 3B).

Figure 3. Modelled early Holocene landsurfacesfrom site in Lower Thames Valley. A: based only on borehole data; B: based on DC resistivity profiles and borehole data.

Other evidence may be buried along our intertidal zones where modern beach sediments may obscure features such as ancient channels or buried forests. In these situations the sequences may only occasionally be uncovered after major storms.  Geophysical survey in such locations (Figure 4A) may provide detailed evidence for these channels (Figure 4B and C) and allow targeted excavation of these features in this difficult environment (Figure 5). Survey across such zones is traditionally difficult and when attempts are made to project any features found into the sub-tidal zone additional techniques and resources are required. For example survey including bathymetric and sub-bottom survey can provide evidence to integrate these features between terrestrial and marine zones (Figure 6).

Figure 4. Geophysical prospection of Pleistocene palaeochannelon foreshore at West Street, Selsey. A: DC Resistivity surveying; B: edge of channel identified in survey. C: EM-38 survey plot of channel.

Figure 5.Trenching in the intertidal zone: the EarnleyChannel, West Sussex.

Figure 6. Transition zone investigation in the West Wittering area. A: location plan. B: geophysical survey and site investigation interventions showing the presence of a mapable channel on the foreshore and immediate hinterland. C: A similar channel identified in the sub-tidal zone on the basis of marine geophysical survey. 

Figure 7. Seamless zonation of the West Sussex Coastal Plain and shallow marine zone for zones of differing geoarchaeological potential. The ultimate objective of many of these studies has been to contextualise the study space in terms of the archaeological potential and likely significance of any buried sequences. While such approaches are now becoming increasingly common and sophisticated on land (e.g. Bates et al., 2007c; Wenban-Smith et al., 2007), their implementation in marine zones is less well developed. A recent study has however attempted this for the West Sussex Coastal area (Bates et al., 2007) (Figure 7). 

Bates, C.R., Bates, M.R. and Dix, J. 2007 Contiguous palaeo-landscape reconstruction (Transition zone mapping for marine-terrestrial archaeological continuity).  Project Report – English Heritage MALSF project 4632.

Bates, M.R. and Bates, C.R. 2000 Multi-disciplinary approaches to the geoarchaeological evaluation of deeply stratified sedimentary sequences: examples from Pleistocene and Holocene deposits in southern England, United Kingdom.  Journal of Archaeological Science, 27, 845 - 858.  

Bates, M.R., Bates, C.R. and Whittaker, J.E. 2007a Mixed method approaches to the investigation and mapping of buried Quaternary deposits:  examples from Southern England.  Archaeological Prospection 14, 104-129.

Bates, M.R., Bates, C.R. and Briant, R.M. 2007b Bridging the gap: a terrestrial view of shallow marine sequences and the importance of the transition zone. Journal of Archaeological Science 34, 1537-1551.

Bates, M.R., Briant, R.M., Wenban-Smith, F.F. and Bates C.R. 2007c. Curation of the Sussex/Hampshire Coastal Corridor Lower/Middle Palaeolithic Record. Project Report - English Heritage ALSF project 3279.

Wenban-Smith, F.F., Briant, R.M. and Marshall, G. 2007. The Palaeolithic Resource in the Medway Gravels (Essex). Medway Valley Palaeolithic Project Final Report.  English Heritage ALSF project 3836.