WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:06.899 --> 00:00:10.990 Hi I'm Amy Gusick from the University of California at Santa Barbara 00:00:10.990 --> 00:00:14.959 I'm Mike Glassow also from the University of California at Santa 00:00:14.959 --> 00:00:18.860 Barbara and we have one more lead on our project that's actually not with us 00:00:18.860 --> 00:00:22.610 today his name is Lauren Davis and he's from Oregon State University and we 00:00:22.610 --> 00:00:25.340 wanted to talk to you guys a little bit today about our project that we're doing 00:00:25.340 --> 00:00:29.720 for NOAA, the main goal in our project is to identify evidence of a Pleistocene 00:00:29.720 --> 00:00:36.380 Pacific coastal migration into the new world. This is an important topic among 00:00:36.380 --> 00:00:43.100 North American archaeologists basically there are two related issues one is when 00:00:43.100 --> 00:00:49.460 did the migration of human populations across the Bering Strait and down into 00:00:49.460 --> 00:00:55.300 North America occur, could it have been as early as 15,000 years ago 00:00:55.300 --> 00:01:00.200 or was it later in time closer to 13,000 years ago 00:01:00.200 --> 00:01:08.329 the other issue is how did that expansion into North America occur was 00:01:08.329 --> 00:01:15.710 it an expansion through the interior of North America once the glaciers had 00:01:15.710 --> 00:01:22.249 receded or was it perhaps a coastal migration by people who already were 00:01:22.249 --> 00:01:29.389 adapted to the use of marine resources and had boats or alternatively it could 00:01:29.389 --> 00:01:36.799 have been both scenarios working in tandem these are issues that are of 00:01:36.799 --> 00:01:41.479 great interest to quite a number of archaeologists working in North America 00:01:41.479 --> 00:01:47.509 today. And our goal with this project as I mentioned is to try to find evidence 00:01:47.509 --> 00:01:52.399 of a coastal migration into the new world but you know there are a lot of 00:01:52.399 --> 00:01:56.179 impediments to being able to identify sites that are date that date to 00:01:56.179 --> 00:02:00.380 thirteen fourteen fifteen thousand years ago and one of the major impediments for 00:02:00.380 --> 00:02:03.740 this is sea level rise so in the Late Pleistocene and through the early 00:02:03.740 --> 00:02:08.240 Holocene there was a sea level worldwide sea level rise that inundated thousands 00:02:08.240 --> 00:02:12.800 of miles of coastline so any of the archaeological sites that were located 00:02:12.800 --> 00:02:16.290 on those would now be beneath the sea so our- this 00:02:16.290 --> 00:02:20.700 project is focusing on looking beneath -looking on the ocean floor to 00:02:20.700 --> 00:02:26.310 identify some of these archaeological sites. Not all of these archaeological sites will be 00:02:26.310 --> 00:02:30.450 preserved of course, wave action will have destroyed quite a number of them 00:02:30.450 --> 00:02:35.970 but there will be certain circumstances in which sites will preserve as sea 00:02:35.970 --> 00:02:41.849 level rose and the area we are intending to investigate is one of these areas 00:02:41.849 --> 00:02:48.920 where we feel that there would be little damage to the archaeological deposits 00:02:48.920 --> 00:02:54.510 sea level rose right and so that brings us to where are we looking the area that 00:02:54.510 --> 00:02:58.890 we're looking in is off is in the Gulf of California in the southern Gulf of 00:02:58.890 --> 00:03:03.060 California off of a small island called Isla Espiritu Santo we're looking off 00:03:03.060 --> 00:03:06.720 of kind of the western margin of this island and one of the reasons are a 00:03:06.720 --> 00:03:10.230 number of the reasons why we feel this is a good area to look for evidence of 00:03:10.230 --> 00:03:14.310 these preserved archaeological sites is that the terrestrial archaeology in the 00:03:14.310 --> 00:03:18.989 area has yielded a number of Late Pleistocene sites that date to about 00:03:18.989 --> 00:03:22.650 eleven thousand two hundred years ago but are located in rock shelters on the 00:03:22.650 --> 00:03:27.690 island itself another really big boon to the research done in this area is that 00:03:27.690 --> 00:03:31.739 the geology of the island itself presents a lot of rock shelters and a 00:03:31.739 --> 00:03:34.950 lot of rock outcroppings and these are features that are considered attractive 00:03:34.950 --> 00:03:39.450 to these early coastal hunter-gatherers that were interested in finding evidence 00:03:39.450 --> 00:03:43.620 of and you know in a submerged environment we can actually look for 00:03:43.620 --> 00:03:48.389 these particular features using particular types of sonar equipment and 00:03:48.389 --> 00:03:52.139 remote sensing equipment and then what we do is we target these features and we 00:03:52.139 --> 00:03:57.180 can actually sample them so in what we're actually doing for our project to 00:03:57.180 --> 00:04:02.069 be able to identify this is we're doing a combination of side scan sonar and 00:04:02.069 --> 00:04:06.870 sub-bottom profiling what the side scan sonar will allow us to do is look at the 00:04:06.870 --> 00:04:11.970 seafloor and look at the the geomorphology of the seafloor any sort 00:04:11.970 --> 00:04:15.930 of morphological features that are actually located above but on the actual 00:04:15.930 --> 00:04:18.220 seafloor below the sediment so we'll be able to 00:04:18.220 --> 00:04:22.870 find things like rock outcrops you know rock shelters steep slopes and we'll be 00:04:22.870 --> 00:04:27.130 able to target those for future research we also use a sub bottom profiler and a 00:04:27.130 --> 00:04:31.960 sub bottom profiler actually gets below the sea floor surface it penetrates the 00:04:31.960 --> 00:04:35.860 the sediment and we'll be able to save to see things like buried river channels 00:04:35.860 --> 00:04:40.360 and also buried shell middens and the reason why would we would be looking for 00:04:40.360 --> 00:04:43.360 buried shell middens is because these are the types of archeological sites 00:04:43.360 --> 00:04:51.580 that are most frequently associated with these early maritime hunter gatherer cultures. Indeed shellfish is 00:04:51.580 --> 00:04:56.920 one of the easiest coastal foods to acquire in many locations along the 00:04:56.920 --> 00:05:03.100 coast so we already know in fact that there are sites in Baja California that 00:05:03.100 --> 00:05:09.520 contain abundant shell that are dating more than ten thousand years ago so it's 00:05:09.520 --> 00:05:16.300 it's a reasonable expectation that we would find these kinds of sites in this 00:05:16.300 --> 00:05:22.870 location and so after we complete a sonar survey in the area and we'll have 00:05:22.870 --> 00:05:26.920 identified these these different targets within the sonar images that we're going 00:05:26.920 --> 00:05:31.360 to be processing and once we have our targets selected what we are going to do 00:05:31.360 --> 00:05:35.140 then is actually scuba dive on the targets and you know these targets are 00:05:35.140 --> 00:05:38.620 going to be in the area anywhere from you know 20 feet all the way up to 300 00:05:38.620 --> 00:05:42.910 feet we're only using conventional scuba for this this time around so we're only 00:05:42.910 --> 00:05:46.840 going to be able to actually physically get down to 130 feet deep to sample 00:05:46.840 --> 00:05:51.010 these targets and what we're going to do when we sample them is take videos of 00:05:51.010 --> 00:05:55.120 them we're going to generally survey them to verify what we see on the sonar 00:05:55.120 --> 00:05:59.890 images is actually what we think it is when we get down there and we're going 00:05:59.890 --> 00:06:03.540 to do a general survey and we're going to do sampling sampling will include 00:06:03.540 --> 00:06:08.680 archaeological test pit sampling and it will also include core sampling you know 00:06:08.680 --> 00:06:12.960 of course we're hoping to find archaeological material shell middens 00:06:12.960 --> 00:06:16.770 evidence of tool fracturing but you know we also can 00:06:16.770 --> 00:06:20.850 collect a lot of other types of data and some of these the core samples will be 00:06:20.850 --> 00:06:24.540 able to collect a lot of data that pertains to the sedimentation rates in 00:06:24.540 --> 00:06:27.540 the area that have happened over the fifteenth over this last 15 thousand 00:06:27.540 --> 00:06:31.290 years and we'll also be able to identify different depositional episodes within 00:06:31.290 --> 00:06:35.040 the sediment that will kind of clue us in to what the environment used to be 00:06:35.040 --> 00:06:39.000 like in the area so if we find terrestrial sediments that indicate it 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:42.300 was a marshland or indicate that there was an estuary there you know that'll 00:06:42.300 --> 00:06:46.590 really help us target our our archaeological focus to areas that are 00:06:46.590 --> 00:06:51.000 going to be you know the best areas to look that are going to produce the types 00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:54.330 of resources that these early hunter-gatherers we're interested in in 00:06:54.330 --> 00:06:57.870 collecting and then we can look for evidence of that collection there and 00:06:57.870 --> 00:07:01.560 another great thing about being able to do these types of projects is that with 00:07:01.560 --> 00:07:05.010 the data that we collect it's not only beneficial to our project but it's also 00:07:05.010 --> 00:07:08.580 beneficial to other types of Sciences that would be interested in the area 00:07:08.580 --> 00:07:12.750 there hasn't been a lot of research done in this particular area that we're 00:07:12.750 --> 00:07:16.260 working in so our data is going to be really beneficial to people that are 00:07:16.260 --> 00:07:21.120 interested in geology and any number of marine sciences biology environmental 00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:24.090 studies in the area and so that's really great that we can you know try to 00:07:24.090 --> 00:07:29.330 collaborate and share our data with these with these other Sciences. Well the 00:07:29.330 --> 00:07:38.370 project is of course going to be a challenge to find these sites that might 00:07:38.370 --> 00:07:46.020 be dating as early as 13 to 15 thousand years ago but if we are successful there 00:07:46.020 --> 00:07:52.340 is a good chance that we will be helping to rewrite a chapter in the history of 00:07:52.340 --> 00:07:59.430 the human occupation of North America we might very well be finding some of the 00:07:59.430 --> 00:08:04.950 most definitive evidence in fact of occupation dating as much as thirteen to 00:08:04.950 --> 00:08:11.430 fifteen thousand years ago which will be a first along the coast the Pacific 00:08:11.430 --> 00:08:14.900 coast of California 00:08:20.729 --> 00:08:22.789 you