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You remind me that I once met an archaeologist who had worked there. I remember what he told me as very interesting.
I think that the significance of sites is always determined by their status within what we have found. I'm sure that Bouldnor Cliff is a rich site, but the wealth of archaeological deposits pretty much everywhere is so vast (you just have to look at the stuff on rock art a little further up) that in areas of little knowledge, which includes most of underwater archaeology, I prefer to think of sites as primarily graded by their accessibility, and only secondarily by their significance in relation to the overall. I mean, today the best-known archaeologically-explored civilisations are probably ancient Egypt and the Maya, but even in land-based stuff we don't know yet whether we might find something even more spectacular.
Vincent Gaffney asks a rhetorical question in the above podcast: 'Where else could you find ancient river systems and a lost landscape?' (paraphrasing slightly) Quite simply--on land, e.g. under the current Sahara. I found this quite intriguing considering that Dogger Bank is a mass of sediment heaped up over an ancient landscape, just as the sand in the Sahara is heaped up over what is now beginning to be explored more by means of remote sensing (and where evidence of ancient rivers and a probably fertile landscape has been found), just like Doggerland.
Anyway, it's all uncountable little mosaic pieces to put together.
Oliver Schick-
I mentioned Bouldnor Cliff because I worked on it a great deal! Bouldnor changed the chronology of European prehistory; when it was first discovered, what it came to be acknowledges as was so radical that it was dismissed as impossible.
I’m not quite sure what you’re saying here:
“I prefer to think of sites as primarily graded by their accessibility, and only secondarily by their significance in relation to the overall.”
Some of the most inaccessible sites could be the most significant; I’ve dived to -100m looking for evidence of prehistoric coastlines and early human dispersal. Such landscapes are very hard to access at the current sea level, yet are hugely important. Indeed, in areas where the interior landscape was inhospitable, those coastal areas would have need the most accessible and heavily exploited.
ljmorgan
Doggerland fans should look up Bouldnor Cliff; it’s perhaps the most significant submerged prehistoric sight in Europe and is just in the Solent!