The North Sea Palaeolandscapes Project (NSPP) was initially funded by the Aggregates Levy Fund to run for 18 months between 2006 and 2007. At the end of that time project staff had mapped more than 23,000km2 of the early Holocene land surfaces in the southern North Sea. Having achieved this, project staff undertook a series of projects that extended the study area and refined the methodologies utilised for analysis of the extensive data sets made available for research by energy companies. In December 2015 staff from the NSPP began a new project funded through a European Research Council Advanced Grant – “Europe’s Lost Frontiers: exploring climate change, settlement and colonisation of the submerged landscapes of the North Sea basin using ancient DNA, seismic mapping and complex systems modelling”. This paper describes the backdrop to the new project and explains its goals and methodologies.

Location

Norcroft Centre, University of Bradford