Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Worldwide, there has been an increase in research focused on submerged paleolandscapes as a way to better understand these spaces within a cultural framework and with the intention of identifying evidence of human activity on these once subaerial places. This research tends to be interdisciplinary and technologically advanced and focuses on a wide range of methods to understand sometimes vast regions. We are interested in highlighting this research to the broader archaeological community in part to bring awareness to this maritime research and to bring together a community of scientists from across the globe that can share experiences and help to advance the discipline of maritime archaeological research.

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)

  • Documents (12)

Documents
  • Across and beyond Site Boundaries: Maximizing the Legacy of Submerged Landscape Assessments (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Louise Tizzard. Claire Mellett.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The last 20 years have seen a massive increase in offshore development around the UK that has provided archaeologists the opportunity to find and examine new sites from areas of seafloor, in deeper waters and further from the coastline than was previously possible. Through the interpretation of geophysical and geotechnical data...

  • Beringia Underwater: The Search for New Archaeological Sites on the Pacific Northwest Coast (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rob Rondeau. Chris Carleton.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When and how people first arrived in the Americas remains one of archaeology’s greatest mysteries. The earliest archaeological evidence suggests that people migrated from Siberia across the Bering Strait, Beringia, and into Alaska around 14,000 years ago. Where they went from there is still unclear! One hypothesis is that these First...

  • Necessity, Not Novelty: Archaeology on Submerged Landscapes (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John O'Shea.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite recent advances in method and approach, the underwater archaeological record continues to make a negligible contribution of prehistoric research. This is due, in part, to a series of widespread but erroneous beliefs about the character of the submerged record. These include the belief that underwater finds are chance...

  • New Insights into a Late Pleistocene Submerged Landscape on the Pacific Coast of South America (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Isabel Cartajena. Diego Carabias. Renato Simonetti. Valentina Flores-Aqueveque. Cristina Ortega.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Identifying evidence of human activity on the continental shelf might prove challenging and employing inductive explanation by collecting data on available evidence represents an initial step to build generalizations. This is the case of the Late Pleistocene site GNL Quintero 1 (GNLQ1), located in Quintero Bay (32° S), central Chile,...

  • An Overview and Synthesis of Paleocoastal Research on the Yucatan Peninsula (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Dominique Rissolo.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The broad carbonate platform and shallow continental shelf of the Yucatan Peninsula supported the rise of the northern lowland Maya and the dispersal of Paleoamerican peoples thousands of years earlier. Exploration—particularly in the region’s now-submerged cave systems—has revealed the remains of the Yucatan’s earliest human...

  • The Rose Room Workshop (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only E. James Dixon. Loren G. Davis.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation reports the outcomes of a workshop held at the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, June 2019. The workshop identified stakeholders, collaborations, and synergistic relationships to establish and expand cooperative interdisciplinary and agency partnerships to encourage, advance, and...

  • The SPLASHCOS Viewer: The First Online Atlas of Submerged Prehistoric Sites in Maritime Europe and the Mesolithic Site of Strande, Kiel Bay (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Segschneider. Hauke Jöns. Moritz Mennenga. Jonas Enzmann.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The EU-funded SPLASHCOS network promoted the fledgling discipline of "Continental Shelf Prehistoric Research." This discipline is based on an interdisciplinary research approach combining archaeological, geophysical, geological, oceanographic, and biological methods. Investigations so far have already enormously expanded the...

  • Submerged Prehistoric Archaeology on the Atlantic Continental Shelf (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Lemke.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Given the last two million years of global fluctuations in climate and ocean levels, submerged landscapes are arguably the most important zone for addressing questions concerning human evolution and migration and are unique for their potential to preserve extraordinary evidence of prehistoric peoples. A discovery off the coast of...

  • A Tale Told . . . Signifying Nothing (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Cook Hale.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Submerged prehistoric archaeology by its nature depends intensively on natural science methods, particularly where topics such as submerged site formation processes are concerned. As such, it offers potential to advance the state of the art in both methodology and interpretation but must be applied with due care. I present here a...

  • The Walker Lake Landscape: Combining Geophysical Studies to Clarify Regional Change and the Archaeological Record (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Puckett.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The high desert basin surrounding Walker Lake, Nevada, has been subject to multiple landscape shifts since the lake reached its Late Pleistocene highstand, 15,679 cal BP. Research has identified at least four lake transgression and regression events postdating 5000 BP, and after its nineteenth-century historic highstand, the lake has...

  • Where Is the Waterline? Integrating Terrestrial and Underwater Investigations in the Aucilla River, Florida (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessi Halligan.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past decade, research in the Aucilla River of northwestern Florida has focused upon understanding the geoarchaeological context of numerous formerly terrestrial, now inundated sinkhole spring sites and the landscapes surrounding them. Dozens of terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene-aged diagnostic artifacts have been...

  • White Caps and Laptops: Results from the 2019 and 2020 Surveys of Submerged Precontact Landscapes in the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Evans. Louise Tizzard. Megan Metcalfe. Alexandra Herrera-Schneider.

    This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sea-level rise models since the last glacial maximum demonstrate that the North American landmass available for precontact human habitation was larger than at present. In the northwestern Gulf of Mexico, less than 1 m2 of the continental shelf has been sampled and tested archaeologically. Out of 106 sediment cores acquired for...