Rising waters and processes of diversification and unification in material culture: the flooding of Doggerland and its effect on north-west European prehistoric populations between ca. 13000 and 1500 cal BC

The present paper discusses how post-glacial sea level rises may have led to material cultural diversification and 'atomization' of geographically extensive cultures or social territories. The resulting smaller social territories, with their associated material cultures, subsequently began to merge, possibly due to the development of better means of transport. Where the North Sea, at the beginning of this process of material diversification, represented a growing barrier to contacts, it later became a means of communication. In this paper, dates for material cultures follow those of Vang Petersen ( ).