Coastal Predictive Modelling for Early Period Archaeological Sites in a Landscape subject to Rapidly Changing Sea Levels, Quadra Island, British Columbia

Summary

In the Northwest Coast, paleoenvironmental context is essential in the search for late Pleistocene–early Holocene coastal archaeological sites. The dynamic and complex relative sea level history is a key determinant in site discovery. In this presentation I describe how we are using predictive modelling to help overcome the challenges of this dynamic history. This research introduces novel coast-focussed variables and methodology to find early period coastal archaeological sites on Quadra Island, British Columbia. Initially, quantitative modelling is used to highlight potential areas for specific temporal and spatial archaeological site types. These highlighted areas are then evaluated by human judgement to include qualitative and subjective aspects of archaeological potential, such as human behavioural models and landform formation processes. Novel variables such as coastal sinuosity and wind fetch serve as proxy indicators for marine biodiversity and coastal exposure respectively, which in turn may be factors related to site location. Presented are preliminary survey results using this predictive modelling theoretical and methodological approach to find early period archaeological sites on Quadra Island.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Archaeology of Stranded, Intertidal, and Submerged Shorelines on the Northwest Coast of North America

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16400