| Abstract: |
Claimed by the Sea is centred on two remarkable Bronze Age metalwork assemblages recovered from the seabed at Langdon Bay, Dover, Kent, and Moor Sand, Salcombe, Devon. The sites have become well established in the period literature, but hitherto no full account has been published of their exploration, contexts, and contents. Their discovery marked a new chapter in the emerging field of maritime archaeology, being the first suspected wreck sites of prehistoric date in European seas outside the Mediterranean. This volume sets out in detail the history of discoveries, site environments, survey methods employed, and the evolution of thinking behind the interpretation of these two assemblages. Drawing on various strands of evidence, it also appraises afresh the circumstances of deposition – whether due to shipwreck, coastal erosion or ritual deposition at sea. Both sites were initially found by sport divers in the mid to late 1970s, but a young pioneering diving archaeologist, Keith Muckelroy, was quick to grasp their potential importance (Chapters 1 and 2). He set up systematic surveys using dedicated amateur divers and got backing from the British Museum and the National Maritime Museum. After Muckelroy’s untimely death in 1980, the campaign continued under the direction of one of the present authors (MD), continuing at Salcombe until 1982 and at Dover, sporadically, until 1989. Investigations at Salcombe were unexpectedly revived in 2004 when new Bronze Age finds were made by the South West Maritime Archaeology Group just a few hundred metres west of the earlier finds; at the time of writing, new discoveries continue to be made, but those found since the end of 2004 are not detailed in this volume. Geomorphological studies of the coastlines at the two sites, both of which are overlooked by cliffs, consider the processes and rates of coastal erosion since the Bronze Age (Chapters 1 and 2). Also relevant to Langdon Bay is the changed configuration of the mouth of the nearby River Dour. A review of the Bronze Age archaeology of the respective hinterlands shows no phase-specific concentrations of metalwork that might have supported the hypothesis of cliff-deposited hoards having eroded into the sea. Nevertheless, intensive underwater survey failed to locate boat remains at either site and, if sunken boats were responsible for the metalwork strewn across the seabed, they must have vanished without trace in the harsh inshore environment of the Channel. Interpretation therefore hangs on the character and spatial distribution of the material assemblages that have survived the ravages of 3000 years (Chapter 3). While Langdon Bay’s 360 finds are all of bronze, the 29 Salcombe artefacts reported on include other materials – gold, tin, iron, and bone. By coincidence, both sites have yielded assemblages best dated to the 13th century BC, the period of early Penard metalwork in Britain and Rosnoën in northern France, although Salcombe has also produced a later sword hilt, c 10th–9th century BC. The range of metalwork types present is diverse, especially in the large Langdon Bay assemblage, and inter-regional comparisons are far-flung – from the British Isles to Sicily and from Brittany to Pomerania (Chapter 3). |
