Tybrind Vig was the first submerged settlement excavated in Denmark between 1977 and 1987. The settlement is located 300m from the shore and 3m below the surface. Divers excavated well-preserved artefacts from the Ertebølle Culture. A large kitchen midden was also found.

Transcript

Hi! I’m Dr Fraser Sturt and, true to form, I’m not going pick a wreck, but I’m actually going to pick a site – a submerged site – and my favourite submerged site is Tybrind Vig in Denmark. And the reason why it’s my favourite site is the fact that it gave us a huge amount to understanding Mesolithic archaeology through its decorated paddles and log boats. It also demonstrated what submerged worlds can be in an archaeological term. But there’s more than this.

One of the really exciting things about Tybrind Vig is it was actually discovered through a public competition. The magazine ‘Hjemmet’ in 1952 I think it was made a public competition to find earliest submerged site in the waters around Denmark… and this is just when SCUBA was coming in. And so there was a huge movement by people to go out into the waters and look for archaeology and they found truly significant sites which have changed our understanding and how we think of the archaeological record today.

So, Tybrind Vig is an amazing archaeological site. It was a pioneering site in terms of the excavation of submerged prehistoric sites, but it was also a really good example of citizen science. This was found by people interested in their heritage in their waters. So Tybrind Vig, for me, is amazing.

We cover Tybrind Vig in more detail in Week 4 of Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds and Helen has also posted a video answering questions that were posed about this topic.

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Core samples can be gathered from all over the world. Here, core samples are being taken from an intertidal site at Somerset.

They can be removed from the ground using a variety of techniques; either hand powered or mechanical in nature. We can take them from dry land, inter-tidal and underwater contexts.

Once removed from the site they are taken to the BOSCORF (British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility) Core store at the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton. Here they are split in half. One section becomes an archive to be stored for later researchers, the other the ‘working’ section. Once split the core can be recorded; noting the change in sediments, colour and inclusions.

This core is over 10,000 years old and is from the southern North Sea and shows an old riverbed at the base, covered by a wetland system and then a slow shift through the development of an estuary before finally becoming fully inundated by the sea.

It is also possible to use more advanced technology to examine the cores. At the university of Southampton we have one of the few ITRAX machines that is able to take extremely high-resolution images, as well as x-rays and xRF data. The x-rays allow us to see variation in the density of core material, and to pick out microstructures not visible to the eye. The xRF data gives detail on the variation of chemical elements in the core.

Once examined, the cores are stored in a temperature control storage area. As you can see we have thousands of cores, from all over the world giving us a wealth of crucial archaeological data.

If you enjoyed this, you might like this article about how core samples can be used.

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This wednesday as part of an English Heritage funded project we will be holding a workshop to discuss different options open to archaeologists when considering the potential for submerged prehistoric remains.  The session will draw together practitioners from the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands to discuss their experiences and ideas on topics including; deposit modelling, predictive modelling and underwater direct evaluation (sampling/trenching etc).  Between 10-12 am the participants will be giving short presentations to highlight their thoughts.  These will be webcast live here and we welcome comments and participation from any web based viewers via twitter (#CMARG).  We’ll update the blog after the meeting with the thoughts and comments that emerge from the meeting.

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