Investigating the potential for archaeological sites on the submerged southern Beringian Archipelago

The Bering Land Bridge is the most likely route taken by the first Americans (Dixon, 2011), but archaeological confirmation is difficult because it was submerged by post-glacial sea level rise.  The southern archipelago of the Beringian continent is a likely route for the first peopling of the American continents.  An island archipelago that existed from at least 16,000 is investigated using reconstructions of shoreline geometry and sea level (Wickert et al. 2012 and 2013) of southern Beringia.  Environmental variables, including rivers, lakes, and coastal sinuosity will be reconstructed and incorporated into a paleo-land-use model for the archipelago.  The paleo-land-use model is similar to Monteleone’s dissertation research in southeast Alaska.