Establishing a Baseline: New Archaeological Research in Lake Michigan Building Community and Indigenous Connections

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The variation in water levels of the Great Lakes over the past 15,000 years has resulted in portions of formerly dry land and unique environments becoming inundated. Although underwater archaeology in the cold, fresh waters of the Great Lakes has often focused on shipwrecks, older archaeological evidence of indigenous peoples is preserved. This project seeks to locate such evidence within Lake Michigan using a set of methods refined over the past 10+ years by similar studies in Lake Huron, and with a basis in the tenants of community and Indigenous archaeologies. The preliminary work presented here outlines the path forward in discovering submerged sites in Lake Michigan, as well as highlighting the ability of underwater archaeology to answer questions about early lifeways in the Great Lakes, seek insight to how past peoples responded to problems similar to contemporary ones, such as rising water levels, and establish collaborations with Indigenous and local communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52698