Abstract
Around 8,200 years ago, the Storegga tsunami hit the coasts of the Norwegian and North Seas. This event is well known from wide ranging geological and palaeobotanical work undertaken over the last 30 years. Outside of attempts at palaeodemographic models, however, exploration of the social impact of the wave on Mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies living on the coasts of west Norway, the north and east British Isles, and around the southern North Sea basin have been less common. It has been widely assumed that the tsunami was a disaster–but what constituted a disaster for the Mesolithic peoples who lived through this event? What can we learn about life after natural hazards by considering the archaeological material from regions with distinct Mesolithic histories? This paper presents a review of evidence of the Storegga tsunami at Mesolithic sites from western Norway, the Northeast UK, and elsewhere around the southern North Sea basin. We consider the ways in which the social impact of the Storegga tsunami has been studied up till now and suggest an alternative way forward.
Highlights
“After the tidal wave, the Indians told of tree tops filled with limbs and trash and of finding strange canues [sic] in the woods
The size of the Storegga tsunami has led to it being commonly assumed as having been a disaster for the hunter-gatherer-fisher (Mesolithic) societies living on shores of Norway and the North Sea basin (e.g., Edwards 2004; Bjerck 2008; Waddington 2014; Waddington and Wicks 2017)
We attempt to give a broad overview of the cultural data to hand, presenting a regional assessment of the Mesolithic record broadly contemporaneous with Storegga tsunami from western Norway, Northeast UK, and the southern North Sea basin
Summary
“After the tidal wave, the Indians told of tree tops filled with limbs and trash and of finding strange canues [sic] in the woods. In the immediate vicinity of the Mesolithic activity, the raised beach has sealed a 20 cm thick sandy layer which is interpreted as a Storegga deposit (Åstveit, 2016) Another site with persistent habitation is Kotedalen, located further north, on the side of a strong tidal current in Hordaland. Low Hauxley has Mesolithic evidence from afterwards, but this is limited a single shell midden date of 6170–5,790 cal BC (Hamilton-Dyer et al, 2016), and two dates of over a thousand years later (Waddington, 2016, 53), with insufficient associated archaeological materials from which to infer the nature of human activity at the site from this time. Perhaps the discovery of further submerged sites or coastal sites in the future may hold potential, but at present the ability to gauge impact in this region is entirely incomparable to areas further north
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