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Tyneside-raised archaeologist Vincent Gaffney has been busy mapping rivers, estuaries, lakes and hills.

Only this particular landscape is under the North Sea and was home to prehistoric people when Britain was a range of hills attached to the European mainland.

When the landscape was swamped by rising sea levels, the evidence of those who lived there and the environment which surrounded them was preserved.

Prof Gaffney has been working on the exploration of what is now known as Doggerland for the last decade.

Next year, a Euro-grant will mean he can return to take DNA cores from the land beneath the waves.

Meanwhile on Sunday he will be back in his native North East when he visits Rothbury in Northumberland to give a talk on Doggerland and other projects, such as dramatic new discoveries at Stonehenge, for an event organised by Coquetdale Community Archaeology group.

Prof Gaffney, who holds the Anniversary Chair of Landscape Archaeology at Bradford University, will deliver the annual David Dippie Dixon lecture, named after the Coquetdale local historian and writer who was born in 1842.

Earlier this year, the community archaeology group uncovered what is believed to be the remains of a medieval priory near St Mary’s Church in Holystone in Upper Coquetdale.

“Prof Gaffney is one of the country’s leading archaeologists whose recent discoveries have rocked the study of prehistory in the UK,” said a group spokeswoman.

The event starts at 2.30pm on Sunday at Rothbury’s Jubilee Hall, with booking required by emailing c.butterworth@btinternet.com

Prof Gaffney grew up Newcastle, attending Westgate Hill Primary and Rutherford Comprehensive schools.

He has played a key role in the exploration of 45,000sq kms of prehistoric landscape under the North Sea - an area slightly larger than Holland.

This was a landscape inhabited by people between 18,000BC and 20,000BC which was lost to rising sea levels.

Trawlers have been bringing up evidence such as stone tools, axe heads, and the remains of wolves and bears.

“People think that the land as they understand it is a constant, but this happened not that long ago,” says Prof Gaffney.

“The human-occupied land under the sea is one of the last places to be explored.

“It is a huge, unexplored landscape just off the coast and has been called one of the last frontiers.

When work resumes next year it will, says Prof Gaffney “put the flesh on the map”.

He says: ”At the moment it is like an Ordnance Survey map with the settlements taken off.

“Now the job is to put on the plants, animals and the people.

“It is a landscape which has not been transformed before it was inundated.”

There is a link with excavations carried out by archaeologist Clive Waddington which uncovered a 10,000-year-old dwelling on the coast at Howick in Northumberland, described by Prof Gaffney as “exceptionally important”.

The way the Howick people lived could have been replicated on Doggerland.

Another project on which Prof Gaffney has worked is the underwater discovery of wheat off the Isle of Wight from around 6,000BC - about 2,000 years before it is believed that farming began in Britain.

At Stonehenge, Prof Gaffney has been working on a survey covering 13 sq km which has revealed a whole new landscape of dozens of ritual monuments and thousands of archaeological features.

Growing up in Newcastle, Prof Gaffney was introduced to history and archaeology by his grandfather, a metalwork teacher, and a school visit to Vindolanda Roman fort in Northumberland.

He says: “I am happy to be returning to an area where I used to go camping at Rothbury as a boy.

“It’s nice to come back.”