Controlling for Landform Age When Determining the Settlement History of the Kuril Islands.

ABSTRACT: Archaeological investigations of settlement patterns in dynamic landscapes can be strongly biased by the evolution of the Earth's surface. The Kuril Island volcanic arc exemplifies such a dynamic landscape, where landscape-modifying geological forces were active during settlement, including sea-level changes, tectonic emergence, volcanic eruptive processes, coastal aggradation, and dune formation. With all these ongoing processes, in this paper we seek to understand how new landscape formation in the Holocene might bias archaeological interpretations of human settlement in the Kurils. Resolving this issue is fundamental to any interpretation of human settlement history derived from the distribution and age of archaeological sites from the region. On the basis of a comparison of landform ag

SUBMITTER: MacInnes B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4326108 | biostudies-literature | 2014 May-Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature