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Coastal paleogeography of the California-Oregon-Washington and Bering Sea continental shelves during the latest Pleistocene and Holocene: implications for the archaeological record

ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University

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Title Coastal paleogeography of the California-Oregon-Washington and Bering Sea continental shelves during the latest Pleistocene and Holocene: implications for the archaeological record
Names Clark, Jorie (creator)
Mitrovica, Jerry X. (creator)
Alder, Jay (creator)
Date Issued 2014-12 (iso8601)
Note To the best of our knowledge, one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work. This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-archaeological-science.
Abstract Sea-level rise during the last deglaciation and through the Holocene was influenced by deformational,
gravitational, and rotational effects (henceforth glacial isostatic adjustment, GIA) that led to regional
departures from eustasy. Deglacial sea-level rise was particularly variable spatially in areas adjacent to
the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets. Such regional variability in sea level due to GIA is important to
identify when investigating potential coastal migration pathways used by early Americans. An improved
understanding of regional sea-level rise may also be used for predictive modeling of potential archaeological
sites that are now submerged. Here we compute relative sea-level change across the California-Oregon-Washington and Bering Sea continental shelves since the Last Glacial Maximum using an ice-age
sea-level theory that accurately incorporates time-varying shoreline geometry. The corresponding
non-uniform sea-level rise across these continental shelves reveals significant departures from eustasy,
which has important implications for improved understanding of potential coastal migration routes and
predictive modeling of the location of now-submerged archaeological sites.
Genre Article
Topic Sea level
Identifier Clark, J., Mitrovica, J. X., & Alder, J. (2014). Coastal paleogeography of the California–Oregon–Washington and Bering Sea continental shelves during the latest Pleistocene and Holocene: implications for the archaeological record. Journal of Archaeological Science, 52, 12-23. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2014.07.030

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