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Coastal Erosion and Archaeological Site Formation Processes on Santa Rosa Island, California

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Formation Processes of Maritime Archaeological Landscapes

Part of the book series: When the Land Meets the Sea ((ACUA))

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Abstract

On California’s northern Channel Islands, marine erosion is actively destroying many archaeological sites, including large coastal villages and other permanent settlements. This permanently limits potential archaeological interpretations of the prehistoric maritime archaeological landscape. This chapter assesses the effects of two winters (rainy seasons) on 11 sites from four different locations on Santa Rosa Island, including the windward and leeward sides of the mountainous landform. This is done using GIS, site photography, and field measurements of specific points during the summers of 2013, 2014, and 2015. The erosion of sea cliffs from marine transgression occurs across the island, with midden deposits visibly eroding out of these coastal locations. Fluvial and eolian erosion are primarily related to site location, with those sites along the north and northwest coasts of the island eroding more extensively than those along the south and west coasts. Both of these factors are exacerbated by modern ranching that left the landscape denuded and unstable. Interpretations about differential site preservation and post-depositional processes provide important information that could influence the management and preservation of cultural resources in coastal locations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These data are available online from the Western Regional Climate Center of the Desert Research Institute (http://www.wrcc.dri.edu).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Channel Islands National Park, including Kelly Minas, Don Morris, and Ann Huston, for help with this project. This research was supported by Channel Islands National Park (135414, P11AC30805), the National Science Foundation (BCS-1338350), and Pennsylvania State University. Sarah Mellinger, Kyle Garcia, Michelle Wilcox, Amber Marie Madrid, Terry Joslin, Blaize Uva, Hugh Radde, Stephen Hennek, Nathan Beckett, Henry Chodsky, Mike Price, and Kyle Jazwa assisted with fieldwork. I would also like to thank Alicia Caporaso for inviting me to be a part of this volume and for her helpful comments on this manuscript. Ben Ford also provided helpful comments on a draft of this paper.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, 89557, USA

    Christopher S. Jazwa

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    Alicia Caporaso

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Jazwa, C.S. (2017). Coastal Erosion and Archaeological Site Formation Processes on Santa Rosa Island, California. In: Caporaso, A. (eds) Formation Processes of Maritime Archaeological Landscapes. When the Land Meets the Sea. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48787-8_8

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