The exploration of the submerged landscapes in the North Sea is one of the great challenges of our time. The area is now seen as the most important settlement region of the Stone Age in Northern Europe. Here, particularly well-preserved cultural landscapes and settlement sites await closer study. There are numerous approaches to landscape reconstruction and modeling. So far, however, there is a lack of suitable methods to precisely locate the traces of Stone Age people in the landscape.

This is where the applied SUBNORDICA project comes in: The Universities of Bradford (GB) and Aarhus (Dk) as well as the Museum Moesgaard (Dk) and the NIhk have developed an interdisciplinary approach to broaden the spectrum of methods and to track down the secret of the North Sea.

Already in November 2022, the application for a Synergy Grant was submitted to the European Research Council with a total volume of about 13 million euros. So far, it has taken all evaluation stages, so that the applicants Prof. Vincent Gaffney, Dr. Katrine Juul Andresen, Dr. Peter Moe Astrup and Dr. Svea Mahlstedt were invited to Brussels for an interview on Sept. 13, 2023. A decision on possible funding is expected in November this year.