Ancient Hunters and the Lake Stanley Causeway: A Pilot Study

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，约翰·M。奥谢和一个同事小组将进行一个初步的实地调查季节，以调查位于休伦湖下的古代考古遗址。 该小组汇集了来自人类学、海军工程和计算机科学的学生和教师，共同努力调查被休伦湖沃茨淹没和保护的营地、定居点和驯鹿伏击地点。 随着大陆冰盖的消退，早期的五大湖经历了一系列水位的快速上升和下降。 大约一万年前，湖泊达到了一个极低的水平，可能比现代湖泊的水平低100米，这被称为斯坦利湖阶段。 当时，现代休伦湖的盆地拥有两个湖泊，由西北向东南横跨盆地的大山脊分开。 这条堤道大约有十英里宽，呈现出桑迪海岸线、露出地面的岩石和开阔的云杉林。 考虑到它的方向，它似乎很可能为驯鹿群的年度迁徙提供了一条重要的路线，并为早期猎人提供了天然的伏击点。 随着大陆冰盖的进一步退缩和湖泊出口的变化，这一独特的景观消失在休伦湖的沃茨之下，保留了早期猎人的痕迹。调查将采用一种新颖的分层策略来定位古代遗址。 这一搜索战略包括复杂的环境建模、用侧扫声纳进行声学调查、用自动水下航行器进行声学和视觉调查、用遥控潜水器进行现场视察和取样，以及可能由受过使用水下呼吸器训练的考古学家对现场进行直接检查。斯坦利湖调查将在理论和实质性层面提供重要的新信息。 这项研究的智力价值是有可能恢复五大湖地区陆地上一个非常不为人知的时期的完整遗址。 这将是第一次在五大湖的深水沃茨发现斯坦利湖时代的淹没占领遗址，并将允许整个范围的晚古-该研究的更广泛影响是，它将导致创建早期社区和古代景观的模拟模型，这将提供一个重要的这是一个研究和公共教育工具，将测试一种可能广泛适用于世界许多地方水下考古搜索的搜索方法的效用。 此外，这项研究几乎肯定会导致发现沉船，飞机和其他具有历史意义的项目失去了在休伦湖深处。 最后，研究计划将促进计算机科学家，海军工程师和考古学家的协作互动，因为他们适应现有的能力，设备和方法，以一个新的研究问题。 这些跨学科的好处将在所有三个项目的教师，研究生和本科生中传播。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. John M. O'Shea and a team of colleagues will conduct an initial field season to investigate ancient archaeological sites located beneath Lake Huron. The team brings together students and faculty from Anthropology, Naval Engineering and Computer Science in a collaborative effort to investigate camps, settlement and caribou ambush sites that have been submerged and protected by the waters of Lake Huron. With the retreat of the continental ice sheets, the early Great Lakes experienced a series of rapid rises and drops of water level. Roughly ten thousand years ago, the lakes reached an extremely low level, perhaps 100 meters lower than modern lake levels, which is termed the Lake Stanley Phase. At that time, the basin of modern Lake Huron held two lakes, separated by a large ridge of land running northwest to southeast across the basin. The causeway was some ten miles wide and presented a mix of sandy shorelines, rocky outcrops and open stands of spruce. Given its orientation it seems likely that it would have provided an important route for the annual migrations of the caribou herds, and natural ambush points for early hunters. With the further withdrawal of the continental ice sheets and changes in lake outlets, this unique landscape disappeared beneath the waters of Lake Huron, preserving the traces of the early hunters.The survey will employ a novel layered strategy to locate ancient sites. This search strategy includes sophisticated environmental modeling, acoustic survey with side scan sonar, acoustic and visual survey using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), site inspection and sampling using remote operated vehicles (ROVs) and the potential direct examination of sites by archaeologists trained in the use of SCUBA. The Lake Stanley survey will provide important new information at both theoretical and substantive levels. The intellectual merit of the research is the potential for recovering intact sites from a time period that is very poorly known on land in the Great Lakes region. It will be the first time that submerged occupation sites of Lake Stanley age have been found in the deep waters of the Great Lakes and will allow an entire range of current models for Late Paleo-Indian and Early Archaic settlement and subsistence practices to be tested.The broader impacts of the study are that it will result in the creation of simulation models of early communities and the ancient landscape that will provide an important tool for both research and public education, and will test the utility of a search approach that may be broadly applicable to underwater archaeological searches in many parts of the world. Additionally, the research will almost certainly result in the discovery of shipwrecks, aircraft and other items of historic importance lost in the depths of Lake Huron. Finally, the research program will foster the collaborative interaction of computer scientists, naval engineers and archaeologists as they adapt existing capabilities, equipment and approaches to a novel research problem. These interdisciplinary benefits will be spread among faculty, graduate students and undergraduates in all three programs.