There has been more press coverage of "Doggerland" in articles -- which seem to me to be quite balanced and responsible -- in The Guardian and online in journals. Here are some links:
I'm not blaming anybody for dreaming up the label "Doggerland" or for working on the remains to be found under the North Sea, and indeed the story of the gradual submergence of this area is a fascinating one, but it's worth bearing in mind that the label itself is a piece of interpretative inflation. It immediately suggests an area with a consistent geographical character and a cultural identity -- whereas of course it is simply a part of a continuum. It was gradually submerged by the post-glacial rise of sea-level, with the rise sometimes slow and sometimes rapid -- as at the time of the Storegga submarine landslides around 8,150 years ago. But inevitably Doggerland as a "Lost Atlantis" is what grabs the public's attention, and the "giant tsunami" was spectacular enough to ensure press headlines and wide media coverage when it was first proposed and then subsequently explored in a number of research projects.
I don't blame Vince Gaffney or any other of the researchers involved in the North Sea research for seeking to tell an appealing story in an attractive way, with excellent maps and other graphics -- but let's be aware that the story is always likely to be far more spectacular than the reality, and that the people of "Doggerland" were no more uniform and united than the peoples who occupied the territories to east, west, north and south.
No comments:
Post a Comment