 First of all, thanks to Nick for the kind of invitation to this very interesting meeting. As an answer, I will present the results of two decades of landscape research into the depletion, and also early policy in the scalability of northern Belgium. The results I will present are the work of a whole team of different specialists in different fields of research. I will list their names on this slide. This is the structure of my presentation after the short introduction. I will briefly give a description of the main leaflets of antiforms. Then I will focus on the methodological aspect, the ways we use for mapping late-lays of landscape and very late-lays of landscape and sites. And then hopefully we have got some time for discussing the environmental issues and land use. The scalps is the second most important river in Belgium after the Moes. It starts in Normand-France, here, where it runs in the open direction towards the Normcy basin, where it runs the river Rhine and Moes. The upper section of the scalps runs through a hilly area, a moose area, and once beyond the city of Cannes, we speak about the lower-scaled basin, which runs through a typical sandy-lowland area. There are pretty much sites known from the late-lays show. We've got nothing so far earlier, older than Phaedamus culture. We've got two distribution maps here, one for the Phaedamus sites and another one for what you can link to the Younger Dryas. I'm taking the ironwork on something related. And from these distribution maps you can draw two main conclusions. First of all, there's a serious decline, a decrease in number of sites from the Alloy to the Younger Dryas. We've got 30 Phaedamus sites against 5-6 Younger Dryas sites. And secondly, perhaps this is not that clear, there seems to have been a sort of occupational shift from the Alloy to the Younger Dryas. Whereas most on nearly all Phaedamus sites are located away from the rivers, away from the scouts and its territories, into the sandy interior and where you are clustered around a series of freshwater lakes. I'll present these to those later. And if you look at the map of the Younger Dryas sites, you can clearly see that these sites are really linked to the fruit plains, in the fruit plain or just along the view. So in order to understand this settlement pattern and land use more in detail, we developed and defined a number of research questions in the last few years. And one of these research questions is, first of all, how reliable are these distribution maps? To what degree are they affected or biased by osteoporosis? No factors. You have to know that most of the sites indicated on these maps are surface sites discovered through field work. So it has still the potential to find seals like buried sites. I think this is a very important research question. And secondly, if distribution maps are not too highly biased, strongly biased by these factors, how can we explain these settlement patterns? A short introduction about the main, late-lays, land forms. This is a very simplified map, a geomorphological map of the lower scouts, because the lower scouts are the areas where we have been working most. And it's only recently that we also extended our research to the other scouts. The first land form, of course, is the River Scouts, and still trees with their wide-broad flood plains, which locally extend into large meanders. This is one of the largest ones. It's about two kilometers long. And within these flood plains, we've got plenty of fossil biochannels of these rivers, which are sedimentary traps. Very important for sampling, for bio-environmental analysis. And along these biochannels, there's numerous elevations, small elevations, mostly sandy elevations, laddies, crawlbarks, and also river dunes, which might have been attractive to late-laysial hunter-gatherers. If we move away from the rivers more to the inland, we have a typical corpus sand environment with numerous corpus sand dunes. And most of these dunes are rather small but elongated, as you can see on this cross-section and small but elongated sand dunes. But there's one exception. There's a big dune, a large dune, this one, which we call the Great Red Ridge of Maldenham State, which runs over, this is indicated here in yellow, runs over a total length of 80 kilometers. This will be two to three kilometers wide. In fact, it's a dune complex, it's built of intersection and overlapping of different smaller dunes, but locally it's a massive dune. A typical feature of all these dune smaller and larger dunes is their parallel orientation, they're all south, east-west, or southwest-north-east oriented, and this is mainly due to their formation under dominant western or northwestern winds, as you can see on these slides. On top of these dunes, and also in between the numerous dunes, there are plenty of, there were plenty, there were plenty of small depressions, shallow depressions, closed depressions, probably blowouts, which were wet depressions, because at the base of these depressions we find thick, I would say, 10 to 20 septic thick, strongly organic sediments, sometimes even 80 sediments, which clearly indicate that these were temporarily wet depressions, people that dune slacks or dune pumps, and there must have been hundreds of these in the artificial landscape. And as you can see, there's a layer on, built with the human sense, so they are present, they are organic leaves, with thick packets of cover sense. And then finally we've got somewhat larger shallow lakes, freshwater lakes, like this one, the Mulvarn Lake, which is about 25 square kilometers large, and these are indicated in blue on this map, and you can see that they are all situated along this steep, southern slope, edge of this massive dune, and you can see that their infilling is totally different than these dune slacks, they are a typical infilling, consisting of calcareous material. So that's the detail of the Mulvarn Lake. So this is just a picture of Western Siberia, but I think it gives a good idea of the landscape during the hour in the real scale piece. So in order to understand the human behavior, I think it's very important that we map these different plant forms as detailed as possible. For that we invested a lot of time and energy, last two decades, in looking for the best practice, the best methodology to map that buried landscape and also buried sites. The methods we use are dependent on the depth of the buried landscape. In shallow landscapes, like the fresh water lakes, the Mulvarn Lake, or the shallow fruit plains, we start with manual drilling, that's the standard methodology, but we combine this with LiDAR information, we've got for the whole French territory, we've got the high-resolution LiDAR information, the resolution of 16 measurements per square meter, and this allows us to detect even the smallest topographical features. And if you look carefully, you can see here and here the old Lake Glacier-Willis channels still visible in the landscape through these LiDAR data. And if the budget allows it, we also apply geophysical survey techniques, like electromagnetic induction EMI, which is mainly the work of my colleague Philly Dismet, who's also doing the research, the surveys in Stonehenge and Maverick. It's a method which measures the electric conductivity of the soil, but also the magnetic properties in depth and range, and depth ranges from half a meter to three to four meters, depending on the type of sensors you use. And the main advantage of this method is that it's very rapid. If you pull it over the poth, you can survey large areas in a short time of period, give you an idea. This is the move actually, and these light bluish zones have been surveyed by EMI. And in lines, parallel lines of separated two to three meters, and within each line, each 20 to 30 centimeters, there was a measurement, so higher resolution measurements, and that took for one hectare or one hour. So in one hour, you can survey one hectare. Of course, the problem is that the processing of the data takes quite a lot of time. But the field work is very rapid. So there's a detail of the mapping, and you can see that with this method, you are able to track these late-lays with bilis of channels, which are quite small. There's a lot of big channels, white channels. So this is the result, by the combination of these three methods, we were able to reconstruct two different successive river systems, one which we called an atomizing river system, dating to the Berlin and Aureus, based on C4, a series of C4 indates, and which was replaced by a single channel river, a river near the end of the tower. And I think this is crucial information for understanding the human occupation around this lake. I forgot this email to include a map with the distribution of theta-massicides, but there's plenty of theta-massicides along the northern bank of this lake. If you have to meet into mapping people, you have a landscape, three to six meters deep, or even deeper, then, of course, manual algorithm is not feasible anymore. You have to do series of pourings, and then we move to mechanical pourings, and we test it out two different methods, the VHL pouring and the sonic aqualobe drill methods, and you can compare the results of these two different methods, and you can clearly see that there's a difference in quality of these two systems, but there's also a difference in price. This sonic drill is the cheapest method, but you can see that it has many problems with it. You've got compression on the sole, you've got loss of material that's the contact of different spits, and most importantly, you've got the deformation of the original stratigraphy. All these problems are absent in the big amount, but it's ten times more expensive. We also did some testing with the mechanical deep trenching or test pitting method, which is developed and generally used in France for mainly looking for early metabolic sites in these deep leuched sequences. We applied it on this, the massive dune of molehead steak, in order to locate and map these dune slacks, and it was very successful, but there's a series of disadvantages, of course. It's rather expensive. It's dangerous, of course. You can't jump into these with this very dangerous collapse, so you need to do your sampling at sea too, at worst. And also, if there's a site present, it's partly destroyed during the mapping, so it's not that simple. And most importantly, it's not widely applicable, because it depends on the ground water level. If the ground water level is too high, you call it the lightest methods. It doesn't make a difference with the dry leuched sequences in northern France or elsewhere in France. And so, in our search for better adapted methods, survey methods, another colleague of mine, Jeroen Verhaer, tested out the feasibility of co-penetrating testing, CPT. This is a method which is widely available in building companies, because it's used for measuring the stability of the soils for foundations. So it's cheap. It's widely available. It's really applied on a daily basis in these building companies. It's a rather simple method. It consists of a metal rod, which is driven into the ground at a constant speed, and while penetrating the soil, it takes two measurements. One at a time is the cone resistance, and then one along the sleeve, which is the friction. And the combination of the two measurements allows us to define the texture or discriminate between clay, sand, and peat, which is very important, certainly, in our area. To demonstrate this, there's a normal graph you get from a company who's conducting these CPTs. The left curve is the cone resistance, and the right curve is the sleeve friction. And here you've got the results of a cone and CPT, and a coring, which were taken at the same spots. And you can see very nicely that where sand is hit here in the upper part and lower part of the coring, there's a peat in the tip resistance and no sleeve friction. And when a peat is hit, you see the opposite signal. Then you have an increase of the fleece and the fleece. The sleeve friction and no tip resistance. So you can use this information to define the large lithosanctograph of units. For example, it applies in a grid, a fixed grid that can make transects like we do for corings. And here you have the definition based on these measurements of different units. So blue is the alluvial, alluvial clay. Below, in the middle, you've got ground, the whole seam peat, and yellow is the place to see, and they place the cone resistance. To our surprise, it also turned out to be possible to identify smaller organic layers. These typical small organic bands that we base on these dune slacks which are within these long sea presence of coarsens, they are detectable to a certain degree with these CPTs. I don't know whether this is clear. Now I will take another example. The one CBT with the tip resistance to the left and to the right, the sea friction. And this is the coarsens. You did the drilling there, and you see that in the coarsens, you've got three superimposed organic layers separated by sand. And if you look at the sea friction, you see a very minor tip peat which perfectly corresponds with that organic layer. This is, for us, a very promising method which allows us to map these deeply buried dune slacks over the extensive areas for the cheap price. So this is the advantages. I won't repeat this all, but there are also, like for every method, the disadvantages. One of the main disadvantages is that you have to do some additional coarsens in order to validate your interpretation of the measurements. But also, what the CBT does not provide is information about the quality of the different layers. Our layers, in fact, are generally the salt formation process, etc. And for that you need extra coarsens to validate and to interpret the preservation of the salt sequences. But a new development, and that's something my colleague Lune is currently testing, is the application of a mini-camera in the CBT in this metal rock. You can see here, with a lens of one centimeter which takes photos every one and a half centimeter while the metal rock is penetrating the salt. And these first results are very promising. Here you've got the pouring which I just showed with the three superimposed organic layers in the copper sense and if you look at the combined photos taken by that small camera you can see that all three levels can be recognized through these photos. So this is, again, according to us, very promising methods which needs to be further tested. I was planning to, after many years of mapping, we come to the conclusion that the lower-scale basin, the landscape during the late days was very dynamic. And we would recognize different aeolian events, events of aeolian erosion and reposition. Of course it is well known, erosion is mostly correlated with the cold and driest periods. We know that during the older and younger periods this deposition of one to two meters of aeolian sense. So these are two events which might have covered potential late-day sites. But to our surprise, we also have proof and proof of aeolian activity during the aeroids. Aeroid which is normally considered as a very stable period because of the increased vegetation One of these elements of the proof is, again, it's the same slide, but it's a very important slide, I think, with these three and superimposed layers. Each layer was dated by means of C4T dating, and at least the middle and the upper one turned out to be to belong to the aeroids. Perhaps the lowest amount you can discuss. But if the middle of our aeroids, that means that the sand in between both has been deposited during the aeroids. The same conclusion can be drawn from this pollen diagram. Here, there's a pollen diagram. Sorry for the bad quality, but it's still in progress. But it's that along the northern bank of this extensive mover clique we found specific locations that Lake Marl, the compare sentiments, are covered by aeolian sentiments and according to the embedded poll these date to the middle aeroids. So we've got, I think, strong proof that there has been aeolian activity in the aeroids, too. There's also increasing evidence that most of the river dunes which are present along the rivers are dating to the younger climes. We started to apply OSL dating on these river dunes and most of the dates go back to the younger climes. And finally, another process where we need to consider and which may bias our distribution maps is collusion, the formation of collusion layers on top of the location sites. As here in the upper skeleton area where we found recently found a younger climes site well preserved, it's one of the best preserved sites we know in the skeleton basin which was sealed by the colluvial packets of about half a meter. Just to mention, we did similar methodological research in order to find buried sites, deeply buried glaciers but also buried Holocene sites and I just want to say that it's perfectly feasible to find these sites through quarry. It's just a matter of doing it the right way the right grid the right size of the course and the sealing work is of course also very important matches to use but I don't believe it's all published so they're available. Another aspect of our research that's the environmental reconstruction of these landforms we are increasingly investing into high-resolution, multi-proxy analysis of some of these continuous soil archives and actually some pictures, diagrams of multi-proxy high resolution, I mean that we are sampling every two, three centimeters to long sequences investigating different proxies not only poem but MPPs, Ostracos, Heronamids, Stable Isotope we've investigated two fresh auto-makes in this way, the Moeferkling and a smaller Leven Snarlahan series of dune slacks and a number of fossil power channels of the river Scalp in its tributaries and these combined information allows us today to formulate some hypothesis concerning prehistoric, lateral land use. What we observe is that towards the end of the aleroids most of these freshwater reservoirs so the dune poles and the freshwater lakes vanished, dried out this is the example of the Moeferkling where you see that we've got sediments starting from the building until the end of the aleroids but there's a large depositional gap between the lake aleroid and the borea there's no signs of erosion so probably most likely the lake dried out at the end of the aleroid start of the younger tribes. Similarly in the smaller Snarlahan lake which is much smaller than the Moeferk we've got a clear change in sedimentology between the aleroids with the persistent of the lake more and then during the younger tribes the formation of peat which clearly indicates the change the hydrological change this is a model of all C14 dates we got from these organic layers of dune slacks and you can clearly see that the dune slacks were existing from the building during the entire aleroids but disappeared during the younger tribes so both the freshwater lakes and these dune slacks seem to have dried out most of them and this must have had a dramatic impact on hunter-gatherers and also on the animal population that's killed them in doubt so our hypothesis now is that due to this important hydroge event hunter-gatherers which were pretty much focused on these imminent fresh water lakes had to move to other territories and one of these possible regions where they moved to were the river river fountains, river food plains and that might explain if you remember two distribution maps I showed in the start that might explain why we find younger dry sites preferably along the food plains or into the food plains so that's what I'm going to say and thank you for your attention if Nikola could come up we'll have a few questions for our two speakers and then we'll move on to the final discussion section so does anyone have any questions? just on the last point who would you like to approach? approaching at the other the they disappeared probably around the end of the hour so I don't think that's a right timing for when the younger dry sites when we believe it's prior to this far on the younger drys of course our chronological resolution is not yet that's refined to really be sure but you've got the impression that it started a bit late a bit early so out of it possibly it can be linked to an outright cold period that's also possible but you've got no proof of freezing but there's no indication no features which can be linked to prior to this or something like that it's not mine the one you spoke of what happens if you come to a rock? it's for soft material so mineral material it's it's not applicable in rocky sediments that in rocky environments so it's for sand, clay bit so for alluvial compounds it's perfect yeah what I think here in Britain there's some areas where it's definitely hard the front of that gold material in size is actually very well made because long-distance design like that have used very poor quality with a flint but they're still using the technical technique that you outline with a gold platform course and I remember going over to see Jean-Pierre Fabiois at the Belvoir assemblage when we took out a long legal print of that gold and put it next to what it is which is about that so yeah that's why people are still using that sort of technology even though it's different from to and I think your point about the variation at that time it again is very well made where I think within that it's very specific localised adaptations of that technology in Tokyo depending on from river valley to river valley and to different places in the landscape depending on the type of grain following the group size so within the broader sort of technical context there are various specific adaptations which are incredible and I think things like these it's been a long time since I've been in this but I mean my feeling was there was a long place that produced within a very short relatively short time of very rapid adaptation of landscape so I think and the other thing is I'm interested in the old question about is it a tent or isn't it a tent you know around the centre of do people live amongst all the rubbish in the shelter or do they actually out there the shelter outside the shelter is inside the shelter it's clean and you know there's a lot of things in there thank you very much we know it's sicker we don't know about the roof we just know it's something sicker but what's interesting is in Alize and Normandy they found a site for the previous site a few years ago and the structure is identified with wall effects too it's very similar it's like 5m at the first maybe that's the only thing I can say and for an adaptation of local traditions you're totally right it's very easy but if you look at the reindeer reindeer is present here in England in the northern country the reindeer is very cool you're totally right thank you I have a question I know you don't want to go into lots of detail about the distribution but did you have any sense of what activities were undertaken within the houses and how the space was organized sorry can you release all this I know you don't want to go into lots of detail about the distribution of the lots of active instructions but did you have any idea of how the space was organized and what activities were undertaken yeah okay so in the center around the earth is mainly projective points manufacture manufacture and reacting mainly we had kind of everything inside the problem is it was clean so all the details are on the walls and which is interesting is ice cracking dry ice cracking activities are mostly outside the structure probably because it's not bad but it's I mean we have ice cracking inside but outside we have only ice cracking activities what else I think it's main reasons so probably if we had around the earth halting a projectile manufacturer project around the earth cleaning and all the reacting outside but inside we are not able to have a good resolution because it's cleaning it okay now I'll bring this part to a close now and thank the speakers the two speakers we made for the front of the exhibition so thank you very much thank you