Re-assessment of the archaeological potential of continental shelves

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Marine Environmental Data & Information Network
Last updated:
09 December 2025
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Summary

The Re-assessment of the archaeological potential of continental shelves project is funded through the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund as disbursed by English Heritage. The project assessed the current state of our knowledge and the archaeological potential of marine landscapes for both pre-historic and historic periods on a global basis. The specific geographical areas of interest to this study are the continental shelves which can be defined as the submerged parts of the continental margin, which slope very gently seawards, from the coastal zone (> 0 m depth) to the shelf break (c. 100 - 250 m water depth). Wide (10's - 100's km's) continental shelves are typically associated with passive margins (tectonically benign) which are relatively shallow (e.g. the east coast of North America). Narrow (km's) shelves usually denote active tectonism (e.g. the west coast of South America). In general these latter shelves are also deeper and steeper. On a global average, the shelf is c. 78 km wide, with an average depth of the shelf break being c.135 m. These large scale features aside, the morphology and sedimentology of individual continental shelves is dictated by the complex interplay of both modern and geo-historical factors, including: global and regional fluctuations in sea-level; variability in sediment input rates and sources; and finally modes and rates of sediment transport. Inevitably, these processes not only affect the geological variability of shelves but also play a major role in determining their archaeological potential.

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Additional information

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Added to data.gov.uk
2025-12-04
Access contraints
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/advice/termsOfUseAndAccess
Harvest GUID
15b8af58a874b186338f6d392adb9d0c
Extent
Latitude: 62.3819° to °
Longitude: -16.0768° to 8.4858°
Spatial reference system
Dataset reference date
2008-10-17 (publication)
Frequency of update
notPlanned
Responsible party
University of Southampton (owner, originator); Archaeology Data Service (custodian, distributor)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
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XML
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