ARCHAEOLOGICAL MARINE TRANSGRESSION ON THE DELMARVA PENINSULA

The Delmarva Peninsula is a portion of the Middle Atlantic coastal plain bounded on the west by the Chesapeake Bay and along the east by the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Over the past 13,200 years, 4,500 squares miles of the former upland landscapes surrounding the present Delmarva Peninsula have been inundated by marine transgression. Since ancient people once occupied this vast drowned landscape, a large portion of the region’s archaeological record now resides underneath the adjacent estuaries and ocean. Research at several Late Pleistocene and Holocene-age archaeological sites illustrates how marine transgression is expressed horizontally across Delmarva’s landscape and vertically beneath recent tidal marsh peat deposits. These data suggest that drowned archaeological deposits with distinctly unique chronological remains can be used to calibrate regional sea level curves. Differential rates of marine transgression during the Holocene also greatly impacted archaeological site and feature preservation. During periods that experienced rapid rates of sea level rise, the preservation of archaeological deposits and features is usually excellent. In contrast, slow rates of marine transgression usually result in significant erosion and site destruction. While marine transgression limits our ability to reconstruct the ancient lifeways of people living along tectonically-passive and topographically-low coastlines, inundated sites still contain important information useful for reconstructing ancient human settlement strategies and technologies.