Palaeogeographical time series maps of the Pleistocene and Holocene lowland landscapes in and around the North Sea.

Palaeogeographical time series maps provide powerful text figures that narrate the chronological story of landscape change in prehistoric and historic times in a quite accessible way. They inspire and communicate the broad idea of developments quickly, no matter how the maps are produced (essentially by hand, computer aided, model output visual) and are intended (as sketch, as a possible scenario, as the utter truth on past landscape reality).

If palaeogeographical maps are produced more formally, are digitally generated from source data and carry information that allows to track back to evidence and interpretive decisions, the map series become even more powerful. It makes the map series direct summaries of geological, geomorphological and archaeological data, that are pre-organized for time-sliced spatial analysis that just simply uses the map, and are equally prepared for validation and improvement of the landscape reconstruction that the series visualises.

The formal digital approach is what we pioneered in the Rhine-Meuse delta since 1998, what we have expanded to the Netherlands and surroundings, onshore and offshore since 2011, and of which we will present various results in archaeological usage context at this conference.

[[ Abstract of Oral presentation in Session 338: Mapping and modeling past landscapes to aid archeological heritage management and interpretation of the archaeological record ]]