Thesis abstract:

There are significant lacunae in the collective research and understanding of how humans interacted and adapted to the coastal environment on the coast of Sri Lanka during the Holocene (Deraniyagala, 1998; Roberts et al., 2022). The southern border of Sri Lanka was a dynamic and ever-fluctuating landscape throughout this period, with changing sea levels, cyclical tsunami activity, and a consistently shifting mosaic of lagoons and wetlands (Harmsen, 2017). We have a limited understanding of the multi-faceted relationships between the social and cultural dynamics of the inhabitants of this area and the ecological, geomorphological, and hydrological processes that consequentially shaped their lives. Until now, archaeological investigation has primarily focused on the early adaptations of humans to central Sri Lanka during the Pleistocene, primarily rainforest ecology, therefore research into this area is necessary to fill this deficit and further our understanding of prehistoric human coastal adaptation in South Asia. Additionally, with the escalating instability and vulnerability of our coastlines due to climate change, sea level rise, and coastal erosion, historical human adaptation to coastal environments is highly pertinent to current-day issues. 

This research focuses on the Bundala region of southern Sri Lanka to explore Holocene coastal occupation through faunal analysis, geomorphological reconstruction, and hydrological modelling. Key objectives include identifying the faunal resources utilised by past communities, examining how environmental changes influenced subsistence strategies, and synthesizing ecological and topographical variables that shaped site selection. A GIS-based spatial analysis will integrate these data to develop suitability models for identifying unknown archaeological sites and reconstruct past human landscape use patterns, enhancing our understanding of prehistoric occupation and contributing to broader archaeological research on the region.