Archaeologists have long suspected that the southern North Sea plain must have been home to thousands of people during prehistory. This evidence now lies deep under seawater and sediment and there are now no certain prehistoric settlements known that are not within a short distance of modern coasts.

However, chance finds by trawlers and fishermen over many decades suggest that modern surveys may be able to locate some at least. A concentration of archaeological material, including bone, stone and human remains, have been found within the area around the Brown Bank, an elongated, 30 kilometres long sand ridge roughly 100 km due east from Great Yarmouth and 80 km west of the Dutch coast. The quantities of material strongly suggest a prehistoric settlement may be close by.

Teams from the Lost Frontiers Project, Ghent University and Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) will now join forces to carry out a two-year marine expedition to search for prehistoric, submerged settlements around the area of the Brown Bank within the southern North Sea. From April 10th a joint team Anglo-Belgian team, on the Belgian research vessel Belgica, will carry out detailed geophysical surveys of the area over 2 weeks. Analysis of this data will be used to coring programme to retrieve sediment that can be examined for environmental evidence or further clues to human activity.

Geophysicists, Dr Simon Fitch and Helen McCrearey, will represent Bradford and Lost Frontiers on the voyage and will tweet regularly from @BrownBank2018 – follow them to hear the latest!

A full press release can be seen at – https://lostfrontiers.teamapp.com/newsletters

Location

North Sea