Calculated Sea Levels

ABSTRACT. Based on a study of postglacial uplift in the Canadian Arctic it has been proposed that relative emergence can be estimated if the age and elevation of late-glacial marine limits are known. This suggestion is used to construct 5 maps showing the amounts of relative sea level emergence sinc...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Archaeological Sites, J. T. Andrews, Robert Mcghee, Lorna Mckenzie-pollock
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.555.5975
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic24-3-210.pdf
Description
Summary:ABSTRACT. Based on a study of postglacial uplift in the Canadian Arctic it has been proposed that relative emergence can be estimated if the age and elevation of late-glacial marine limits are known. This suggestion is used to construct 5 maps showing the amounts of relative sea level emergence since 4,000, 3,200, 2,400 1,600 and 800 B.P. The archaeological sequence of coastal arctic Canada has been artificially divided into 5 corresponding 800-year periods. Eighty-four archaeological sites are examined; 71 of these appear to have been located with reference to contemporaneous sea level. The mean elevation of the 71 sites is only 5.2 m. above the interpolated sea level for each period; the Spearman rank correlation between site elevations and interpolated sea level is 0.82. The maps can therefore be used to delimit area of search for cultural remains of specific ages in archaeological reconnaissance, but the relationship is not sufficiently close to allow the construction of a detailed chronological sequence using elevation data alone. RÉSUMÉ. Comparaison des altitudes de sites archéologiques et de niveaux marins calculés, dans?Arctique canadien. Sur la base d'une étude du relèvement post-