Evidence for early hunters beneath the Great Lakes.
Scholars have hypothesized that the poorly understood and rarely encountered archaeological sites from the terminal Paleoindian and Archaic periods associated with the Lake Stanley low water stage (10,000-7,500 BP) are lost beneath the modern Great Lakes. Acoustic and video survey on the Alpena-Amberley ridge, a feature that would have been a dry land corridor crossing the Lake Huron basin during this time period, reveals the presence of a series of stone features that match, in form and location, structures used for caribou hunting in both prehistoric and ethnographic times. These results present evidence for early hunters on the Alpena-Amberley corridor, and raise the possibility that intact settlements and ancient landscapes are preserved beneath Lake Huron.
O'Shea
John M
JM
Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. joshea@umich.edu
Meadows
Guy A
GA
D001106:Archaeology; D005007:Ethnology; D005618:Fresh Water; D006114:Great Lakes Region; D006801:Humans