Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[Boreades]

What about, say, Dawlish and suchlike? Or near the Dor valley (which Durdle Dor is).

What about the bleeding obvious? Dor-setshire. Dor might be a gateway to the rest of the country?

Dawlish ortho etymological bollox now follows:

The name Dawlish derives from a Welsh river name meaning black stream. There was also a Roman translation of Dolfisc, meaning 'Dark river' and 'The Devils Water'. It was first recorded in 1044 as Doflisc.

WTF were the Welsh doing naming a place when the local Damnonians were perfectly capable of naming things themselves? But maybe they were too pisht on local cyder or too damaged by Full-Contact Morris Dancing to think of anything coherent?

I've been to Dawlish many times and the river water was always crystal clear, even after heavy rainfall on the Haldon Hills. The only thing black on the river was the imported Black Swans.

As Dawlish is south of Exeter (Isca), is it more likely the name Doflisc means something like "below Isca"? Below might be conflated with dark(?)

A few 100m inland from Durdle Dor you get Scratchy Bottom. It's not a medical condition, it's the real name of the valley where Gabriel Oak's sheep were driven over the cliff by his effing useless sheepdog. If only he hadn't been so distracted by Julie Christie. Well, I would be too. Far From The Madding Etymologists.

[Mick Harper]

I quite like dor meaning below. Now we need to find the durdle it is below.

[Boreades]

Just thought of an alternate meaning for Dawlish / Dolfisc.

As the Dawlish parish goes as far as Dawlish Warren and the mouth of the River Exe. That name Exe being the same root as Exeter (Isca)

So Dawlish / Dolfisc / Dor-Isca might mean gateway to the River Isca?

[Boreades]

Hat tip to Tisi.

Just found in the uninspiring title "Nonlinear landscape and cultural response to sea-level rise".

From island to archipelago.

Sea level around Scilly rose rapidly in the Early Holocene [defined as the period from 11.7 to 8.2 thousand years (ka)] following the decay of the large Northern Hemisphere (Laurentian and Fennoscandian) ice sheets. Our sea-level reconstruction (Fig. 1) shows that sea level was still rising rapidly in the Mid-Holocene (8.2 to 4.2 ka) at a rate of over 2 mm/year from around 7 ka [2.8 ± 1.4 (1σ) mm/year for 7 to 4.5 ka], gradually slowing to less than 1 mm/year after 4.5 ka [0.8 ± 1.6 (1σ) mm/year for 4 ka to present] for the remainder of the Holocene.

Etcetera.

Of most interest to us maybe Fig. 2 Holocene paleogeographies of Scilly.



Even (just) 2,000 years ago, Scilly was still mostly a single island. Certainly 5,000 years ago it was such. What implications does this have for our view of Doggerland? Especially, how recently it disappeared?

The article itself appears to be a recycle/reprint of material from the 2014 Lyonesse Project.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/45/eabb6376

While taking the credit for the work (or rather, the write-up of the work), they mention in passing the real field work was done by the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Maritime Archeology Society (CISMAS)
http://www.cismas.org.uk/

By that way, I have to confess I've not seen this "Science Advances" portal before. My first response was to recall the phrase usually attributed to Max Plank: "Science advances one funeral at a time". Not sure why UK archeos have to publish in a US magazine. Maybe it's academic brownie points?