Assessing the Potential for a Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene Occupation at the Tahkenitch Landing Site (35DO130), Siuslaw National Forest, Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology from Western North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While archaeologists hypothesize that early peoples initially migrated into the Americas along the Pacific coast, environmental changes associated with postglacial sea-level rise may have destroyed or obscured such early sites. In coastal areas currently above sea level, early sites are difficult to find due to terrestrial processes of landscape erosion and deep burial. To expand our knowledge of where other early sites might be located, we must work to first find late Pleistocene-aged terrestrial deposits. The Tahkenitch Landing site (35DO130), although currently lacking late Pleistocene-aged cultural components, is suspected to hold many of the stratigraphic qualities we should be seeking in the landscape of the Oregon coast. Geoarchaeological investigations at the Tahkenitch Landing site resulted in the identification of well-stratified late Pleistocene–early Holocene aged deposits. Radiocarbon dating of these deposits reveals a landscape history that span the period from ~42,000 to 3000 RYBP. Importantly, this study revealed the presence of a paleosol developed on aeolian sand buried beneath known midden deposits that dates from 13,111 to 10,112 RYBP. The discovery of these late Pleistocene-aged deposits reveals important stratigraphic targets for future archaeological exploration at the Tahkenitch Landing site and in the larger Oregon coast region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeology from Western North America   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37027.0