Record Details
Early retreat of the Alaska Peninsula Glacier Complex and the implications for coastal migrations of First Americans
ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Early retreat of the Alaska Peninsula Glacier Complex and the implications for coastal migrations of First Americans |
| Names |
Misarti, Nicole
(creator) Finney, Bruce P. (creator) Jordan, James W. (creator) Maschner, Herbert D. G. (creator) Addison, Jason A. (creator) Shapley, Mark D. (creator) Krumhardt, Andrea (creator) Beget, James E. (creator) |
| Date Issued | 2012-08-10 (iso8601) |
| Note | This is the author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/quaternary-science-reviews/. To the best of our knowledge, one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work. |
| Abstract | The debate over a coastal migration route for the First Americans revolves around two major points: seafaring technology, and a viable landscape and resource base. Three lake cores from Sanak Island in the western Gulf of Alaska yield the first radiocarbon ages from the continental shelf of the Northeast Pacific and record deglaciation nearly 17 ka BP (thousands of calendar years ago), much earlier than previous estimates based on extrapolated data from other sites outside the coastal corridor in the Gulf of Alaska. Pollen data suggest an arid, terrestrial ecosystem by 16.3 ka BP. Therefore glaciers would not have hindered the movement of humans along the southern edge of the Bering Land Bridge for two millennia before the first well-recognized “New World” archaeological sites were inhabited. |
| Genre | Article |
| Topic | Deglaciation |
| Identifier | Misarti, N., Finney, B., Jordan, J., Maschner, H., Addison, J., Shapley, M., . . . . (2012). Early retreat of the alaska peninsula glacier complex and the implications for coastal migrations of first americans. QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS, 48, 1-6. doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.05.014 |
