Framing the Late-Pleistocene chronology of environmental and cultural change in Doggerland

ongoing

During the last Ice Age, sea-levels were much lower than today. A land bridge, known as Doggerland, connected the British Isles to the European mainland. Doggerland was part of the Eurasian Mammoth Steppe, a continuous biome of grasslands and plains. It was a productive and fertile environment with rich resources, and formed a core habitat for humans. With the warming temperatures of the early Holocene, the ice sheets melted and rising sea-levels submerged Doggerland. Remains of this extinct world are often found on the beaches of the North Sea, and in the nets of fishermen. These finds generate great interest, both in society and in academia, and are being studied across various disciplines. Robust chronological frameworks are crucial for understanding cultural and environmental changes, especially when the stratigraphic context of finds is uncertain. Radiocarbon analysis of several high-profile ancient bones from the North Sea has yielded unexpected results, with anomalously young dates for extinct megafauna, and marine mammals dating to periods when the North Sea was dry. It has been suggested that these dates are affected by contamination, but this was never formally investigated. FLOOD will directly address this issue using cutting-edge advances in radiocarbon dating, including biomolecular assessment of samples to identify contamination, and compound-specific radiocarbon analysis of the amino acid 'hydroxyproline'. FLOOD will (re)date a selection of high-profile samples with the aim to put a long-lasting debate about the validity of these dates to rest. Results will have widespread implications for the study of sea-level fluctuations, climate change, archaeology, (marine) paleoecology and importantly, for the field of radiocarbon dating.