"…As the Waves Make Towards the Pebbled Shore": Site Formation Processes on Drowned Coastal Sites and Implications for Preservation, Discovery, and Interpretation

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Submerged prehistoric sites left behind by coastal groups have the potential to answer multiple critical questions concerning human activities, but locating, excavating, and interpreting such sites brings with it challenges unlike those encountered in coastal settings that remain (for now) terrestrial. Without a firm grasp of estuarine and marine sedimentological processes, archaeological investigations will lack interpretive rigor. Just as we extend the paleolandscapes onto the continental shelf, so we must also extend geoarchaeological methodologies. To illustrate this point, I present here two case studies that demonstrate how these aquatic processes act on features and artifacts: one sedimentological in nature, and the other geochemical. The first case study examines the effects of two hurricanes on features within a submerged, formerly coastal site; the second addresses geochemical corrosion on lithics deposited in fresh, brackish, and saltwater contexts. Each case study also highlight potentials for additional datasets associated with relative sea level changes and climate changes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23162