Narrowing the Search for Late Pleistocene-Aged Submerged Sites on Oregon's Continental Shelf

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Re-Visualizing Submerged Landscapes", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Geographic information systems-based modeling of submerged paleolandscapes along the central coast of Oregon, USA combined with offshore geophysical and marine coring studies led to the discovery of multiple submerged and buried alluvial drainage systems dating to the late Pleistocene period. These discoveries highlight the preservation of landscape-scale stratigraphic units that may hold archaeological evidence of early coastal peoples or signal the nearby presence of geoarchaeologically-relevant landform targets. The archaeological implications of this research are important and far-reaching: late Pleistocene-aged landforms that were undoubtedly attractive to early coastal people are preserved on Oregon's continental shelf. Further exploration that focuses on these localities provides a viable path forward for finding archaeological evidence of early human presence on the Pacific coast of North America.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Re-Visualizing Submerged Landscapes   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow