The World As We Know It: Learning From The Past

Fancy finding some fossils on the streets of York? Join Dr Liam Herringshaw as he explores and explains the fascinating palaeontology hidden in our historic city.

The largest earthquakes and the tsunamis they often generate present major and unpredictable hazards to coastal populations around the world. The largest events happen so infrequently that historical records are too short to tell us how often they occur or how large they can be. However, these earthquakes and tsunamis leave clues that can be preserved in the geological record for thousands of years. By studying these traces, Ed Garrett pieces together the past and figures out when, where and how big past earthquakes have been.

The mortuary treatments of the later prehistoric dead of Britain have left little archaeological trace. The Covesea Caves, on the south shore of the Moray Firth in NE Scotland, however, provide a rare glimpse into the complex rites which helped to mediate the boundary between life and death at this time. Drawing on the recent award-winning publication of the Sculptor’s Cave (the best known of the Covesea Caves), this presentation will examine the remarkable archaeology of this enigmatic site within the broader context of this extensive and long-lived mortuary landscape.