From Land to Sea: A facility for prospection, landscapes and people

The study of landscapes suffers from an artificial divide; that between current land and sea. The idea that terrestrial archaeology ends where water begins hinders our understanding of historic landscapes. Much of the coastal shelf has been habitable land in the past and wetlands, riverine and lacustrine zones possess individual archaeologies that can only be interpreted through an understanding of the surrounding land.

The urgency to explore these neglected but critical areas increases as climate change leads to the dewatering of wetlands, sea level rise impacts our coastal heritage and net zero compliance demands the development of our coastal shelves for green energy. The present and future construction of offshore wind farms render the archaeological characterisation of submerged landscapes a time-critical endeavor. This is both a UK and a global challenge. Evidence of cultures and lifeways, hitherto unavailable in terrestrial contexts, risk being lost to archaeological study for the long term. Climate change and the threat of increasingly unpredictable weather patterns places additional risk onto sites within both the littoral zone and marginal wetland environments. The critical need to respond to such change, to inform and engage with communities impacted and national and international heritage curators, has never been so urgent.

The last two decades have seen the development of technologies that can breach the divide between land and sea, and researchers at Bradford are uniquely placed to host a resource dedicated to this critical area of humanities research. This Facility will drive progress in examining some of the most intractable issues in global history, rendering accessible landscapes that preserve vital evidence which often does not survive on land.

The University of Bradford (UoB) has had a pioneering role in terrestrial and marine prospection, landscape archaeology and heritage research, which has resulted in advances in how we understand key points in human history such as the transition from mobile hunter gatherers to settled farming communities. UoB has developed a suite of techniques and approaches, harnessing digital twin and AI technologies, which represent the state-of-the-art in both terrestrial and submerged landscape research. This ability to characterise the landscape and examine it as an interconnected and developing system allows us to find markers of human activity, identify likely sites of human occupation and even identify differences in human response to the environment across time and space, enabling the study of cultural diversity.

The aim of the proposed Facility is to offer the equipment and expertise needed to survey on land, in shallow water and near-coastal areas. It will enable collaborators and external research groups, both national and international, to explore the submerged landscapes of the continental shelf, and inland underwater sites such as lake villages and crannogs. The Facility will offer a combination of technology, methodology and expertise, placing submerged landscape archaeology and its terrestrial counterpart within the reach of researchers, commercial organisations and Indigenous groups who would otherwise be unable to examine these critically important areas. The knowledge transfer involved with use of this resource will both enable users to answer their own questions regarding their past and, where practical, kickstart their own submerged landscape research groups. UoB, and the UK, would enhance its existing reputation for conservation and heritage science, and as a leading enabler for landscape archaeology and the pioneer of a global network in submerged landscape research.