Love That Dirty Water: Submerged Landscapes and Precontact Archaeology

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Love That Dirty Water: Submerged Landscapes and Precontact Archaeology," at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

By the last glacial maximum approximately 20,000 years ago, 66.8x106 km3 (5%) of the Earth’s water was locked within ice sheets, lowering global sea-levels to approximately 134 meters below modern levels. Lower sea-levels provided a substantial amount of coastal plain for habitation; moreover, nearly 90% of modern human history has taken place during times of lower than modern sea levels. Since the end of the glacial maximum approximately 20 million km2 of coastal landscape has been submerged worldwide, roughly the area of South America. The reintroduction of water into ocean basins radically changed global sea-levels, inland water tables, and littoral landscapes. The inundation of these landscapes has created gaps in the history of human activity around the world. The focus of this session is to explore new technologies, methodology, and submerged site investigations to better understand these now submerged landscapes and the peoples that once called these lands home.