Our Submerged Past: Exploring Inundated Late Pleistocene Caves in Southeast Alaska with SUNFISH

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Exploration-Forward Archaeology Through Community-Driven Research", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Our Submerged Past’s NOAA OER-funded project surveyed, mapped, and sampled caves and overhangs on the continental shelf west of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. Sea levels were as much as -165 m lower during the last glacial maximum exposing a large continental shelf. The project goal is to identify caves and rock shelters that early people would have inhabited or used when they settled the region at the end of the Pleistocene and to develop and test sampling methods for deeper caves. In 2022, we conducted side-scan sonar and ROV surveys; this data identified over 80 locations of high-cave potential for targeted surveys in 2023. SUNFISH explored and mapped over 25 locations, sampled in a cave, and worked with technical cave divers to sample at four locations. Samples are being analyzed for pollen, dinoflagellate cysts, and microdebitage with radiocarbon samples to expand our understanding of the palaeoenvironment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Exploration-Forward Archaeology Through Community-Driven Research

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow