From the BBC: Undersea Stone Age site found.
Posted on September 11, 2003 10:26 AM. Filed under: history & archaeology.A team of scuba-diving archaeologists have discovered an undersea settlement that could be 10,000 years old.
The divers were honing their skills in preparation for a more detailed search further away from Tyneside.
But they found what is believed to be the country's second submerged Stone Age development, while practising in the North Sea off Tynemouth.
Another slightly more recent site, still from the Mesolithic era, was also found on the seabed nearby.
The settlements came to light when Dr Penny Spikins of Newcastle University noticed some flints on the seabed, which she instantly recognised as being significant. (...)
Among the flints, the team found an arrowhead and cutting implements with a serrated edge.One settlement is thought to date back to the late Mesolithic period, 8,500 to 5,000 years ago, while the other, found further out to sea, is thought to be early Mesolithic, 8,500 to 10,000 years ago.
Both sites would have been gradually submerged as sea levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age.
Mesolithic people were hunter-gatherers and lived in the Middle Stone Age - between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. (...)
Dr Spikins said: "Archaeologists thought that the sites left by people who lived 5,000 to 10,000 years ago had simply been lost to the sea.
"But our finds could change our understanding of the earliest occupation of the British Isles." [continue]