Holocene Transformation of San Francisco Bay and Transbay Man Site Stratigraphy

Summary

San Francisco Bay was created by post-glacial sea-level rise during the span of prehistoric human occupation. The Bay is the single largest Pacific estuary in the Americas (4,160 square kilometers) and is the outlet for California’s largest freshwater drainage system that carries 40% of the state's runoff. The earliest known evidence of widespread human use of the estuary or tidal resources in the Bay Area first appears at shell midden sites located around the Bay in the middle Holocene (6300-4600 cal BP). Recently, however, an intact human skeleton ("Transbay Man") was found at an elevation of 12.8 meters (42 feet) below sea level in downtown San Francisco, which is the fourth, and oldest (~7600 cal BP) such skeleton recovered from a submerged context in the region. The stratigraphic sequence and paleoenvironmental context of this rare and unusual find are examined in relation to Holocene sea-level rise and landscape changes that transformed the Bay Area into an ideal place for prehistoric human settlement.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• One of California's Earliest Visitors: The Discovery of Transbay Man

Keywords

Spatial Coverage