Mapping the San Dieguito Paleochannel and Younger Dryas Landscape

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Approaches to Submerged and Coastal Landscapes", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

We examine the submerged continental shelf of southern California to expand our baseline knowledge of the local environment throughout the late Pleistocene and Holocene when humans migrated along the Pacific Coast. We investigate a now-submerged channel offshore the present-day San Dieguito Lagoon in Del Mar, California, focusing on the landscape during the Younger Dryas (YD) period. We use sub-bottom profiling to identify the YD paleoshoreline, now located between 57-60 m depth, about 3km out from the current coastline. The paleoshoreline is used to delineate the subaerial portion of the YD landscape and to constrain sea level during that time. We map the buried paleovalley extent and observe a layered channel along its northern side. Analysis of three sediment cores from the paleovalley, the deepest of which contains a beach-like deposit and terrestrial sediments dating to the YD, contributes to paleolandscape and climate interpretation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Approaches to Submerged and Coastal Landscapes

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow