Time and Tide: Modelling the Effects of Landscape Change on Population Support in the Southern North Sea

Abstract

The submerged landscape of the North Sea has long been known by archaeologists as an area of Mesolithic occupation yet, despite this, the nature of the occupation of this landscape has remained poorly understood due to its inaccessibility. This chapter presents a first attempt to use digital technologies and modelling to understand the nature of the human occupation of these currently inaccessible landscapes and their associated demography. The models aim to explore the impacts of sea level-driven landscape change upon the Mesolithic population, and further aims to reveal the diversity of resources that would have been present. As such the model will seek to take the first steps in developing an adequate representation of the past landscape and generate an understanding into how past landscape evolution may have served as a buffer to the effects of marine inundation.