Belgium: Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology 9 in the Intertidal and Subtidal Zones of the North Sea Marnix Pieters, Tine Missiaen, Maikel De Clercq, Ine Demerre, and Sven Van Haelst Abstract chance finds, mainly from beaches. In due The evidence for submerged prehistoric course, these growing numbers will hopefully remains and landscapes in the Belgian sector allow quantitative support for certain of the North Sea is scarce. The majority of hypotheses. finds dredged and trawled from the seafloor consists of palaeontological material, notably Keywords mammalian bone remains, dating from the Palaeontological · Submerged · Protohistoric · Early and Late Pleistocene, and possibly the Prehistoric · Palaeolandscape · Raversijde Holocene. Scarce palaeontological and archaeological finds come from the intertidal zone. The available data are rather limited and strikingly sparse compared to neighbouring 9.1 Introduction countries, yet it is steadily growing since the SeArch project. Recent investigations of an Compared to neighbouring countries, the gen- area with exceptionally high concentrations of eral attitude in Belgium towards archaeological Late Pleistocene and Palaeogene bone finds in and palaeontological finds in the North Sea has the ‘Scheur’ illustrates this development and long been marked by a genuine lack of scientific offers a promising avenue for future research. interest. The sparse archaeological research in Growing awareness among a broader public is the intertidal and subtidal zones of the Belgian similarly resulting in an increase in reported part of the North Sea was often very fragmented and focused largely on wreck sites. With the recent SeArch project (Missiaen et al. 2017) and M. Pieters (*) · I. Demerre the new national law on underwater cultural her- Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed, Brussels, Belgium itage (see also later), this attitude has now e-mail:
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