Exploring hidden Ice Age landscape in the English Channel
An ambitious survey of a former Ice Age landscape, which sits off the coast of Jersey in the English Channel seabed, is to be carried out on foot by a team of archaeologists led by UCL's Institute of Archaeology. The survey will take place on a section of intertidal reef known as the Violet Bank, which on a low spring tide comprises a further 10km2 of Jersey's well preserved Ice Age landscape and includes the Neanderthal site of La Cotte de St Brelade. The UCL project aims to discover what records of early human behaviour, ancient environment and past climate change, the Violet Bank holds. It also seeks to understand how people used this landscape before the sea inundated it around 6,000 years ago. Taking advantage of some of the largest tides in the world, the team will spend a week living in a refuge tower some 3km from land and, after daily periods of complete isolation by the sea, will explore the site at very low spring tides in May 2020. The team already has evidence, collected by members of the island's Société Jersiaise, to suggest the sediments from ancient Ice Age landscapes lie hidden beneath more recent sands and shingle. This project represents the first stage in specialist recording to map these deposits and understand what potential they hold.
