Exploring the relationship between coastal geomorphic processes and archaeological site distributions in central Puget Sound of Washington State

Summary

Although the uneven distribution of precontact archaeological sites along the Puget Sound shoreline is widely recognized, limited research has been undertaken to systematically consider how this pattern may relate to local anthropogenic and geomorphic factors. In this study, we consider archaeological site distributions through the lens of shoreline geomorphology and discuss possible reasons for any observed relationships. Using publically available drift cell data, we categorized the shoreline in our study area into three geomorphic types; depositional, erosional, and neutral. Following this, we grouped all documented precontact archaeological sites located adjacent to the shoreline in by geomorphic shoreline type. This analysis revealed that the distribution of nearshore precontact archaeological sites is strongly related to geomorphic shoreline type. We then tested these findings by categorizing the shoreline of a second study area by geomorphic type; and generated an archaeological predictive model by assigning each type a level of archaeological sensitivity. We evaluated this model by comparing it to the distribution of documented archaeological sites along the shoreline in the second study area. Our analysis reveals that precontact archaeological site distributions along the Puget Sound coast are strongly related to – and influenced by – geomorphic shoreline type.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage