Submerged Landscapes and the Antiquity of Maritime Adaptations

As recently as the 1980s, most archaeologists believed that seafaring and maritime adaptations were relatively recent developments, limited to the past 10,000 years or less. Since then, the history of human coastal adaptations and dispersals has been pushed back progressively further in time, along the Pacific Coast of the Americas and around the world. It is no coincidence that interest in underwater archaeology and submerged coastal landscapes has intensified during the same period. Focusing primarily on the Pacific Coast of North America, we explore these issues and their implications for researchers and managers of submerged landscapes off the west coast. Significantly, an earlier appearance of maritime peoples along the Pacific Coast—potentially as much as 16,000 to 18,000 years ago—expands the area of research interest and management responsibility into much deeper waters and much further from shore.