The geoarchaeology of land-claim in coastal wetlands

Seabanks and outfall works are the defining, upstanding monuments of historic and latest prehistoric landscapes created by land-claim on coastal salt marshes, but are vulnerable to changing land-use, natural processes and the needs of coastal flood defence. In Britain they have been neglected archaeologically. The geological conditions under which salt marshes are enclosed lead to a range of field criteria which permit redundant seabanks and outfalls to be mapped and dated relatively, and distinguished from earthworks built for internal flood control. A further set of field criteria is introduced which identify abandoned land-claims and seabanks set back in response to coastal erosion. These criteria can be used to test documentary sources and are irreplaceable in poorly documented or undocumented areas. Latest prehistoric and historical land-claim, and subsequent landscape development, has occurred on a wide variety of scales and patterns shaped by geological, socio-economic and political factors. These are illustrated by a brief examination of land-claims in Britain, on the north-west European shores of France, and Frisia on the southeast coast of the North Sea. The sharpest contrasts, in both pre-enclosure and post-enclosure landscape development, are between Britain and France, considered together, and Frisia. Technology transfer in the matter of land-claim and the management of enclosed wetlands is illustratrated by the employment of Dutch engineers in eastern England and coastal Germany during early modern times, and by the encouragement of Dutch settlers in the last-mentioned area

Archaeology · Cartography · Coastal erosion · Geoarchaeology · Geography · Marsh · Prehistory · Salt marsh · Salt pan · Shore · Wetland · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Ecology · Geology · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Oceanography

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