Jude & Mark Macklin
Participating in We Live With The Land, and co curating The Land as Other
The lost rivers of Cardigan Bay: a deep-time reflection on displacement and land-loss in early human societies during the first global warming
Judy E. Macklin (Honorary Creative Fellow Lincoln Centre for Water and Planetary Health, University of Lincoln, UK; and Honorary Creative Fellow at Centre for the Study of the Inland, La Trobe University, Australia) and Mark G. Macklin (Distinguished Professor of River Systems and Global Change and Director of the Lincoln Centre for Water and Planetary Health, University of Lincoln, UK; Professor of Fluvial Geomorphology, Institute of Agriculture and Environment, Massey University, New Zealand; and Adjunct Professor Centre for the Study of the Inland, La Trobe University, Australia)
Around 15,000 years ago, when the Earth was emerging from the deep freeze of its most recent ice age, the first people of west Wales entered a wide plain traversed by rivers and fringing wetlands that once extended more than 25 km from the modern coastline. Sea level at that time was nearly 100 m lower than at present, glaciers still persisted in the Rhinogydd mountains and in Snowdonia, and great rivers fed by meltwater from snow and ice flowed into the Irish Sea. These people lived sustainably for millennia by hunting and gathering in a land of tidal rivers and wetlands, fringed by hills and mountains. What is less well known is that as the result of sea-level rise caused by the first global warming, which began around 12,000 years ago, these highly productive lands were entirely lost to the sea by the time that farming was adopted c. 4100 BCE.
This new art-science print project, which draws upon the latest research within these submerged landscapes, uses the displacement of Cardigan Bay’s first inhabitants as a vehicle to explore the current climate crisis and societal angst in the face of unprecedented environmental change. Issues including migration, displacement, a sense of loss and the more modern myth of Cantref Gwaelod (The Lowland Hundred) are also considered.
These themes are explored in a series of new print works, including wood-cuts based on recently acquired submarine topographic data of Cardigan Bay and the rivers that drain to it. These maps show, for the first time, an intricate network of river valleys that existed on the floor of Cardigan Bay until sea-level rose rapidly between 11,000 and 8,000 years before present. The linking title for this new body of work is ‘The lost rivers of Cardigan Bay’ and uses an artistic innovation we conceived in a previous body of art-science work (Macklin and Macklin, 2019; 2021). In order to help the viewer’s engagement of the landscape and to give the more-than-human a voice, these woodcuts are made from a single plywood block printed twice; once onto a sturdy smooth paper and again onto a translucent, absorbent, delicate harakeke (flax) paper, so that the ink can ooze through to the backside. The sandwiching together of the right-reading with the wrong-reading image throws up a shadowy representation of the same form. By creating a mirror image of the river channel network viewed from above, a reflection emerges that simultaneously reveals the topographic signature of the river as well as its presence as an evolving living entity. This process liberates the image to the extent that the ‘spirit’, placed-based and unique natural and anthromorphic qualities of these extant and ‘lost’ lands can be revealed in an unexpected way. Most notably, the emergence and metamorphosis of the submerged plain of Cardigan Bay into a heart-shaped entity fed by artery-like river networks brings into sharp focus the notions of connectivity and a deeply felt – heartfelt – sense of place and loss.
The print series seeks to go beyond simply representing the encroachment of the sea over former riverscapes and endeavours to gives a voice to inter-generational reciprocity between people and place, which is essential to living with, and beyond, the current planetary, environmental and climate crises. It draws upon archaeology, ecology, geography, geology, and new spatial data analysis and visualising technologies.
Macklin, J.E. and Macklin, M.G. (2019) Art-geoscience encounters and entanglements in the watery realm. Journal of Maps, 15(3), 9-18.
Macklin, J.E. and Macklin, M.G. (2021)