ABSTRACT

California’s Northern Channel Islands contain an incredible record of terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene human occupation. Since the hunter-gatherer-fishers who created these sites relied heavily on marine resources, a critical aspect of understanding early settlement patterns is calculating distance to paleoshorelines. This has traditionally been accomplished using sea-level curves and bathymetric models that do not account for sediment deposited offshore after inundation by rising seas. Here, we use high-resolution Chirp subbottom data to re-evaluate distance to paleoshorelines at two terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene site clusters on the Northern Channel Islands and identify significant differences between the methods. Our results suggest that Chirp subbottom surveys offer more accurate reconstructions of ancient shorelines than bathymetric modelling and can produce more accurate reconstructions of ancient settlement patterns of terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene peoples along coastal and island environments around the world.

摘要

加利福尼亚的北海峡群岛包含令人难以置信的更新世末期和全新世早期人类占领记录。由于创建这些地点的狩猎-采集-渔民严重依赖海洋资源，了解早期定居模式的一个关键方面是计算与古海岸线的距离。传统上，这是使用海平面曲线和测深模型完成的，这些模型不考虑海平面上升淹没后沉积在近海的沉积物。在这里，我们使用高分辨率啁啾海底数据重新评估北海峡群岛更新世末期和全新世早期遗址群到古海岸线的距离，并确定这些方法之间的显着差异。