The magnificent seven: Marine submerged precontact sites found by systematic geoarchaeology in the Americas

Abstract

There are significant challenges to answering questions of Native American precontact history with data from sites in marine submerged continental shelf settings. We find seven published examples of projects in the Americas that encountered archaeological sites through systematic and phased geoarchaeological research. These seven projects share similar characteristics: recognition of archaeological potential, mapping and learning paleolandscape configurations, modeling where past human behaviors should be expected and, importantly, testing those places underwater. We summarize the approaches and outcomes of each project, discuss similar characteristics, and recommend additional strategies for future discoveries.

Keywords:

• Continental shelf archaeology
• cultural resource management
• paleolandscapes
• remote sensing
• underwater archaeology

Acknowledgements

We reiterate the importance of the pioneering work by the recently deceased Woody Gagliano and his staff Richard Weinstein, Charles Pearson, and David Kelley at CEI. We appreciate the working relationship we have with our Danish colleagues and their pioneering acoustic studies. We are grateful for funding and equipment support from the Archaeological Research Cooperative (www.arcoop.org). John O’Shea recommended the topic to us. We are grateful for the comments of three anonymous reviewers for an earlier version and we are forever grateful for Charlotte Pevny waking us up to a better way.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).