Coastal and Island Archaeology

As I gear up and get ready to apply to graduate school, I've figured out what I specifically want to specialize in. I contacted Dr. Jon Erlandson of the University of Oregon to see what direction their program is headed and he said that coastal and island archaeology is where it's at. I want to work with indigenous archaeology of the Pacific Northwest, specializing in human migration and settlement patterns, so coastal and island archaeology jive with this quite nicely.

I just read an article about an excavation conducted by the University of Liverpool in regard to the transition to farming during the Neolithic period: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-09/uol-eoi092011.php. Archaeological findings include bones from farming cattle and 4th/5th millenium pottery. What this possibly means is that when Europeans migrated to Britain, they brought their farming practices with them. This transition from hunter-gatherer to farming happened in seven or so locations independently across the world, and at different times - not only in the Middle East as Jared Diamond states in his New York Best Seller Guns, Germs, and Steel. Without going into too much detail, Diamond relies too heavily on geographic determinism and ethnocentric ideals of technology in the attempts to prove why Eurasians dominated history- but that's a whole different issue all together. These excavations in the British Isles shine light on the travel link between the seas and the mainland, which provides a stronger record of seafaring migrations.

On a similar note and tying things back into my graduate studies, the University of Oregon conducted an excavation at the Channel Islands, off the coast of California, this past March. This excavation shed new light on North America's earliest record of seafaring migrations: http://smithsonianscience.org/2011/03/californias-channel-islands-may-have-once-held-north-americas-earliest-seafaring-economy/. Archaeological findings include stemmed, chert projectile points and crescents dating back from 12,200 to 11,400 years ago, as well as remains of shellfish, seals, geese, cormorants, and fish. Dr. Erlandson worked intimately with this project as he is the Director of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon. These serrated, thin, barbed projectile points are unlike anything by Clovis or Folsom peoples, so it's quite an exciting find for better understanding the peopling of North America and some of the first seafaring migrations!