A post-glacial sea level hinge on the central Pacific coast of Canada

Post-glacial sea level dynamics during the last 15,000 calendar years are highly variable along the Pacific coast of Canada. During the Last Glacial Maximum, the Earth\u27s crust was depressed by ice loading along the mainland inner coast and relative sea levels were as much as 200 m higher than today. In contrast, some outer coastal areas experienced a glacial forebulge (uplift) effect that caused relative sea levels to drop to as much as 150 m below present levels. Between these inner and outer coasts, we hypothesize that there would have been an area where sea level remained relatively stable, despite regional and global trends in sea level change. To address this hypothesis, we use pond basin coring, diatom analysis, archaeological site testing, sedimentary exposure sampling, and radiocarbon dating to construct sea level histories for the Hakai Passage region. Our data include 106 newly reported radiocarbon ages from key coastal sites that together support the thesis that this area has experienced a relatively stable sea level over the last 15,000 calendar years. These findings are significant in that they indicate a relatively stable coastal environment amenable to long-term human occupation and settlement of the area. Our results will help inform future archaeological investigations in the region

The archaeology of Fjordland Archipelagos: mobility networks, social practice and the built environment

Investigation of the archaeological record of hunters and gatherers has been frequently concerned with the origins of social complexity. Yet, 'social complexity' is not a straightforward variable, and the category 'complex hunter-gatherer' may create more problems than it solves. Rejection of the category does not, however, eliminate nor account for real variation in the social organisation and archaeological signatures of hunter-gatherers. Archaeological analyses of hunter-gatherer economies have frequently considered time-budgeting constraints associated with the production, storage, and redistribution of surpluses to be central. However, examination of these time constraints show that they are not necessarily a constraint upon the development of social complexity, but are an expression of the relationship between individual humans and their environment. Spatial and temporal constraints are manifested through the individual's body, and are expressed through technology, settlement pattern, and mobility practice. Some spatial approaches in archaeology, such as locational analysis, have focused on the individual monad but few have done so in a manner that adequately expresses the possibilities and constraints of the individual and individual agency. Instead, most analyses have cast the individual as either a simple optimising 'Homo economicus' making rational decisions within a neutral environment, or as subject to a highly normative culture, or both. It is argued in this thesis that reconceptualising the individual as living within a 'habitus' may be conducive to understanding some aspects of the archaeological record. In particular, conceiving of the individual-environment relationship as one of non-Cartesian mutualism leads to an appreciation of the paired importance of the mobile individual in a built environment. From this perspective, a case study from Vancouver Island on the Northwest Coast of North America is introduced. The pmedian model in a Location-Allocation analysis is applied to a network formed by transportation linkages between 238 habitation zones, created by clustering 576 archaeological sites. It is shown that centrality of place within a network matters, as the more central places are also larger sites, but this pattern only occurs at a spatial scale difficult to reconcile with deliberate optimising behaviour. It is therefore concluded that this descriptive spatial geometry is irreconcilable with any plausible underlying generative social geometry based on either normative cultural rules or deliberate optimisation. Recognition that the built environment is an interrupted process rather than a planned, finished product, allows one to avoid imposing the 'fallacy of the rule:' in this case ascribing to the inhabitants of the study area a totalised decision set for site location and intensity of use based on the location-allocation solution sets. Instead, it is argued that the observed spatial patterning in the case study is better seen as the archaeological signature of long-term, wide-scale, practical activity of individuals within a landscape of habit. The result is the discovery of an important threshold in the spatial scale of the culturally perceived environment. Discussion follows of the implications of this thesis for the interpretation of social complexity, for the predictive modelling of site location, for the establishment of relevant spatial units of analysis, and for such familiar spatial ecological variables as 'population density,' on the Northwest Coast and elsewhere

Terminal Pleistocene epoch human footprints from the Pacific coast of Canada

<div><p>Little is known about the ice age human occupation of the Pacific Coast of Canada. Here we present the results of a targeted investigation of a late Pleistocene shoreline on Calvert Island, British Columbia. Drawing upon existing geomorphic information that sea level in the area was 2–3 m lower than present between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago, we began a systematic search for archaeological remains dating to this time period beneath intertidal beach sediments. During subsurface testing, we uncovered human footprints impressed into a 13,000-year-old paleosol beneath beach sands at archaeological site EjTa-4. To date, our investigations at this site have revealed a total of 29 footprints of at least three different sizes. The results presented here add to the growing body of information pertaining to the early deglaciation and associated human presence on the west coast of Canada at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum.</p></div

View across the beach at EjTa-4 with Calvert Island in the foreground and Hecate Island in the background.

<p>Photo by Jim Stafford.</p

Photograph showing the relationship of site stratigraphy to the track surface.

<p>(A) dense grey clay (XI), likely glacial marine–predates 13,400 cal BP, (B) dense brown clay paleosol (X) with preserved wood dating between 13,317 and 12,633 cal BP, (C) track #15, (D) track #17, (E) track #20, (F) superimposed tracks 14a and 14b (G) track #13, (H) bell shaped pit, (I) bell shaped pit, (J) boulder deposited sometime after 3000 years cal BP, (K)–drainage trench to facilitate excavation. Note: Stratum VIII was not found in this part of the excavation. Photo by Duncan McLaren.</p

View of the 4 x 2 metre excavation unit.

<p>The 2 x 2 metre square at centre was removed in 2015 to Stratum XII. The 2 x 1 metre units on either side of this, under active excavation of Stratum VII, were removed in 2016. Photo by Joanne McSporran.</p

Planview of 4 x 2 m excavation unit undertaken at EjTa-4 showing trackway and track surface.

<p>This illustration is based on field notes and photographs. Radiocarbon dates (cal BP) are from the base of footprint impressions and wood found adjacent to these features on the track surface. All of the bell-shaped pits (shaded grey) are intrusive into the track surface from above with the exception of the rock-lined pit (shaded black) which appears to be stratigraphically associated with the track surface.</p

High intertidal pool near EjTa-4 and present-day features of the upper intertidal zone analogous to those described in the site formation processes for Strata IX—VI.

<p>(A) upper intertidal bell-shaped pool, (B) rill erosion caused by run-off, (C) steeply eroded interrill, (D) 20 cm scale, (E) dunegrass on top of high tide beach berm, (F) driftwood rootball, (G) western redcedar (<i>Thuja plicata</i>) forest. Photo by Duncan McLaren.</p