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ProfileSources (3)Mentioned in (1)
BCNamed 1998
Person · Historical

Bryony Coles

British prehistorian who named Doggerland in 1998

Field
Prehistoric and wetland archaeology
Position
Professor emerita, University of Exeter
Honor
Fellow of the British Academy
Known for
'Doggerland: a speculative survey', Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society (1998)
Also
Somerset Levels Project with John Coles

The Exeter archaeologist who coined the name Doggerland in 1998 for the drowned Stone Age landscape under the North Sea.

What is Bryony Coles known for?

Bryony Coles is a British archaeologist specializing in prehistoric wetlands, and professor emerita at the University of Exeter. With John Coles she worked for many years on the Somerset Levels Project, which studied waterlogged prehistoric sites such as the Neolithic Sweet Track.

In 1998 she published 'Doggerland: a speculative survey' in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Drawing on finds dredged from the North Sea and on sea-level research, she argued that the land which once joined Britain to continental Europe should be treated as a real inhabited landscape, not just a land bridge, and gave it the name Doggerland after the Dogger Bank.

The name was quickly adopted, and later projects, notably those led by Vince Gaffney, used seismic survey data to map Doggerland's buried rivers and coastlines.

Why it is on Credible Theories

She named Doggerland, the drowned land beneath the North Sea.

Mentioned on these pages

Sources

  1. British Academy, 'Professor Bryony Coles FBA'Reference
  2. Coles, B. J., 'Doggerland: a Speculative Survey', Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64 (1998), via Semantic ScholarPrimary text
  3. Wikipedia, 'Bryony Coles'Reference

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