ABSTRACT Offshore submerged sites can retain valuable data concerning many questions of interest to archaeology, including what form coastal occupations may have taken during periods before the establishment of modern coastlines and late Holocene climate and ecological conditions. However, submerged offshore sites experience postdepositional forces entirely unlike those in terrestrial contexts, including erosion/deflation of sediments, and degradation of artifacts and/or features caused by the marine environment. Methodological and theoretical approaches to assessing submerged marine sites, versus terrestrial ones, must be adjusted accordingly to extract valuable data and interpretations from them. This study demonstrates the application of these different approaches at the Econfina Channel site (8TA139) in Apalachee Bay, Florida, USA. The site appears to contain significant evidence for coastally adapted occupation during the final part of the Middle Archaic period (∼8600–5000 cal BP), but we needed to address marine site formation processes before we could assess human activities at the site. Sedimentological and archaeological traces of human activities can be teased out using geoarchaeological methods, which differentiate between nonhuman postdepositional processes and the cultural material remains left behind by those who used the site before it was abandoned and subsequently submerged.

中文翻译：

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过去的只是序幕：美国佛罗里达州阿巴拉契湾 Econfina Channel 遗址的发掘

摘要 近海淹没遗址可以保留有关考古学感兴趣的许多问题的宝贵数据，包括在现代海岸线建立之前以及全新世晚期气候和生态条件之前可能采取的沿海占领形式。然而，被淹没的近海地点所经历的沉积后作用力与陆地环境中的完全不同，包括沉积物的侵蚀/收缩，以及海洋环境造成的人工制品和/或特征的退化。评估水下海洋站点与陆地站点的方法论和理论方法必须相应地进行调整，以从中提取有价值的数据和解释。本研究展示了这些不同方法在美国佛罗里达州阿帕拉奇湾的 Econfina Channel 站点 (8TA139) 的应用。该遗址似乎包含中古风时期最后阶段（~8600-5000 cal BP）沿海适应占领的重要证据，但我们需要先解决海洋遗址的形成过程，然后才能评估该遗址的人类活动。可以使用地质考古学方法梳理出人类活动的沉积学和考古学痕迹，该方法区分非人类沉积后过程和使用该遗址的人在该遗址被遗弃并随后被淹没之前留下的文化材料。