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By Ann S. Eberwein

“Beneath the surface of our oceans, lakes, rivers, and wetlands lies a physical record of humankind preserved in prehistoric and historic shorelines, shipwrecks, inundated cities, harbors, and other traces of our past.”

– Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology

The first underwater archaeological expedition took place over 150 years ago. The dive was conducted on Lake Geneva in Switzerland on May 22, 1854, by Alphonse Morlot, a Bernese geologist. Morlot wore an unsophisticated diving bell, the design of which prohibited him from bending down to pick up artifacts. Instead, he used a net and rake to scoop rocks from the lake floor but was unable to retrieve prehistoric artifacts left by the inhabitants of the ancient lake dweller village that had once stood.

Since Morlot’s first dive, diving equipment and underwater archaeology have significantly advanced. Nowadays, incredible discoveries are made underwater with exceptional regularity. These discoveries contribute a great deal to the field of archaeology because water levels all over the world were much lower in prehistory. At the end of the most recent ice age, global sea levels increased by around four hundred feet submerging not just coasts, but low-lying regions such as Patagonia, which was reduced to half of its previous size. Evidence of human and Neanderthal activity has been discovered in a submerged region called Doggerland, located in the North Sea, which used to connect the British Isles and mainland Europe. This region remained above water until approximately 6500 BC.

Archaeological sites, especially prehistoric sites, are commonly found on shorelines because these environments often provide an abundance of food and other resources. This means that, without searching beneath the depths of the ocean, our collective understanding of prehistory is limited. Some examples of finds from submerged ancient coastlines include three Acheulean handaxes found in Table Bay, South Africa, and a Homo erectus mandible found off the coast of Taiwan.

The peopling of the Americas has been the subject of intense debate for decades, and underwater excavations provide important evidence of coastal travel and human occupation. For example, the Page-Ladson site on the Aucilla River in Florida has yielded evidence of mastodon butchery dating 14,500 years in addition to 7,000 years of preserved stratigraphy. Another example comes from Mexico, where in the Hoyo Negro cenote in the state of Quintana Roo, the complete skeleton of a young woman was discovered. DNA from the woman’s remains was preserved by the underwater environment and her genome analysis supports the hypothesis that the earliest Americans were descended from a single group that migrated to the Americas from Asia. Current long-term projects in the Haida Gwaii archipelago off the coast of British Columbia, in southern California, and on the Atlantic continental shelf are aimed at uncovering additional information about the peopling of the Americas.

In addition to changes in coastlines, the melting of glaciers since the end of the last glacial maximum has had a significant impact on inland bodies of water such as rivers and lakes, sometimes causing long-term water level fluctuations in the case of the latter. For example, due to glacial melting and isostatic rebound, the North American Great Lake water levels have been dynamic over the last 18,000 years. Between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago, low water levels on Lake Huron exposed the Alpeny-Amberley Ridge which once linked Michigan and Ontario.

Beginning in 2008 a combination of acoustic survey, videos taken using a remotely operated vehicle, and mapping and sampling by scuba-trained archaeologists have revealed several archaeological sites on this ridge. The identification of these sites is made possible because the ridge cuts across the center of the lake where very little sediment has accumulated, meaning that structures, artifacts, pollen, wood, charcoal, and other sources of archaeological data remain on the surface of the lake floor. Some of the finds from the ridge include a drive line and V-shaped hunting blinds that were used to hunt caribou and two flakes made of obsidian from a source on Wagontire Mountain in Central Oregon. The evidence of caribou hunting is significant because drive lines and hunting blinds dating back thousands of years are rarely preserved. In addition, finding obsidian so far from its source has implications for our understanding of mobility and social contacts in the early Holocene.

Returning to the 1854 dive attempt described earlier, underwater archaeology at lake dwellings in the circum-Alpine region of Europe has been conducted with increasing regularity by archaeologists since the 1970s. Initially, many new methods were developed such as water-jet pipes to improve visibility and the use of dry diving suits which are necessary since underwater excavations in this region have to be carried out in winter. Once these and other methods were incorporated into practice, the scale of underwater excavations of lake dwellings increased. For example, from 1981 to 1984, a team led by Béat Arnold excavated an entire village of over 7,000 square meters at the Cortaillod-Est, Late Bronze Age site on Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland. In another example, a rescue excavation on Lake Biel, Switzerland that began in 1988 documented 25,000 square meters of the lake floor. This excavation of the Sutz-Lattrigen settlement revealed 20 Neolithic villages built in the same location between 3840 and 2688 BC and was able to trace changes in house orientation, size, and building techniques, and differences in village layouts.

The examples of finds and excavations discussed thus far come from our prehistory, but when most people think of underwater archaeology, they think of maritime archaeology, which often focuses on historical and classical shipwrecks. However, maritime archaeology extends into prehistory as well. For example, early human migrations to Australia 40,000 years ago and to Japan 38,000 years ago could not have happened without the use of rafts or boats. Further evidence of early seafaring in Japan comes from obsidian found on the mainland that was sourced from Kozushima Island. Since this island was thirty kilometers off the coast of Japan during the last glacial maximum, obtaining obsidian from there would have required the use of watercraft. A final example of early seafaring comes from the Mediterranean Sea, where Middle Paleolithic and Mousterian tools have been found on Crete and the Ionian Islands. This suggests that Homo sapiens may not have been the first seafarers since Mousterian tools are distinctive and associated specifically with Neanderthals.

Clearly there is much to be discovered in lakes and rivers, an ancient seafaring revolution to explore, and a whole dimension of our prehistory to investigate beneath submerged coastlines around the world. This fall, underwater archaeologist Ashley Lemke joins the 51���� Department of Anthropology faculty. Dr. Lemke has made numerous contributions to the field of underwater archaeology including her work in Lake Huron on the Alpeny-Amberley Ridge described above. 51���� undergraduate (students with junior standing) and graduate students can learn more about underwater archaeology from Dr. Lemke in a new seminar offered this fall!

See below for details and course description:

Course: ANTHRO 641.002 U/G Underwater Archaeology

Instructor: Professor Ashely Lemke

Meeting: Fall 2023, W 12:30 pm – 3:10 pm

Course Description: Archaeologists learn about past societies by examining the material they leave behind. These materials can include anything affected by human behavior — from small disturbances in the soil to architectural remains, from sacred objects to the mundane refuse of daily life. In some cases this material adds to what we know from historical accounts, but most often, archaeology gives us a picture of the past that we would never otherwise see. Sometimes, archaeological sites are found underwater, such as the remains of a shipwreck or a landscape that was once dry land. Underwater sites offer some of the best preserved but most challenging archaeological contexts to research. This course will introduce students to archaeology underwater, including methods, research questions, great discoveries, and the history of investigation. It will cover vast stretches of time and space, from historic shipwrecks in the Mediterranean to >10,000 year old prehistoric sites in North and South America. Underwater archaeology is an emerging field in anthropology more generally – and this course will explore its important role in the future of archaeology.

Sources:

Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology. Retrieved July 24, 2023, from https://acuaonline.org/

Hafner, A. (2004). Underwater Archaeology, Lake-Dwellings below the water surface. In Living on the lake in prehistoric Europe: 150 years of lake-dwelling research, edited by F. Menotti, p.178-193.

Lemke, A. (2020): Submerged prehistory and anthropological archaeology: Do underwater studies contribute to theory?, The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, DOI:10.1080/15564894.2020.1782540

O’Shea, J. M., Lemke, A. K., Nash, B. S., Sonnenburg, E. P., Ferguson, J. R., Nyers, A. J., & Riebe, D. J. (2021). Central Oregon obsidian from a submerged early Holocene archaeological site beneath Lake Huron. Plos one, 16(5), e0250840.

O’Shea, J. M., Lemke, A. K., Sonnenburg, E. P., Reynolds, R. G., & Abbott, B. D. (2014). A 9,000-year-old caribou hunting structure beneath Lake Huron. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(19), 6911-6915.

Fatimah Collier Jackson was born in Denver, Colorado in 1950. Her maternal great-grandmother was a Choctaw Native American of the Bell Clan and a traditional herbalist and midwife. Growing up, Jackson’s family was poor, but she had a large, close-knit extended family that provided a sense of community. Her mother and aunt both had master’s degrees, so she learned to value education at an early age. The family also regularly visited the local library to check out books. Jackson would later say “we had holes in the carpet, but we had books on the shelves…the idea was, sit down and read, or sit down and think.” She spent lots of time during her childhood reading, roaming through the Rocky Mountain region, and thinking about the natural world. Jackson’s father died when she was six years old and she grew up in a house with her mother, grandmother, and aunt; the three would later form a long-distance support system when she moved away from home to attend college.

Jackson enrolled first at the University of Colorado in Denver, then transferred to Cornell University after finding the anthropology curriculum and instruction at UC to include racist elements. She also had a strong sense that she needed to move away from home in order to grow both personally and academically. At Cornell she received financial assistance, excelled in her classes, and earned the honor of cum laude with Distinction in all subjects upon graduation. She also met her future husband, Robert Jackson during her undergraduate years at Cornell where the two students helped each other to navigate academia. After completing her bachelor’s degree, Fatimah Jackson continued her studies at Cornell and she and her husband moved to East Africa to do research and collect data. While in Tanzania in 1974, Jackson contracted and nearly died of malaria – she was temporarily blind and unable to walk – but recovered, and the experience led her to research malaria throughout her career. After three years in East Africa, she and her husband returned to Cornell to write up their research and she earned a master’s degree in 1978. The couple then travelled to West Africa and lived there for two years; while working in Liberia, Jackson noticed a connection between cassava consumption and a lower incidence of malaria. Since then, she has continued to study human-plant coevolution and the relationships between plants, people, and disease. Her dissertation project was entitled, The Relationship of Certain Genetic Traits to the Incidence and Intensity of Malaria in Liberia, West Africa.

Jackson received a Doctorate in Anthropology in 1981 and, that same year she became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of California, Berkley. Then in 1986 she became an Associate Professor of anthropology at the University of Florida. In 1990, Jackson joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at University of Maryland, College Park where she taught for 20 years, receiving a Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award there in 1995. While still teaching at UMD, she also held the position of professor and director in biological anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill from 2009-2011. Then in 2013, after becoming Professor Emerita at University of Maryland, Jackson became a professor of biology and the director of the W. Montague Cobb Research Laboratory at Howard University. In addition to human-plant coevolution, she studies genetics in populations of African descent including microethnic groups and expressions of health disparities.

Fatimah Jackson cannot be discussed without mentioning several key aspects of her person: her religious devotion, her activism, and the importance of her family. Jackson converted to Islam during graduate school in 1977 and regularly emphasizes that a person can be religious and a scientist at the same time. She wears a hijab in public, saying that her clothes remind her to think of Allah throughout each day, she also says bismillah (an invocation to Allah) before conducting experiments. Jackson has spoken frequently about the way that racism has pervaded anthropological thinking in past decades, and the importance of understanding expressions of biology in communities of African descent, for example, African Americans who are descended from enslaved people who survived the Atlantic Slave Trade Middle Passage. An advocate for women, minorities, and people from low-income backgrounds in academia and science, Jackson regularly shares her story to inspire her students and so that they understand where she came from and why she chose her research foci. Fatimah and Robert Jackson are also uncommon in that they are academics with six children – three were born during graduate school and three were born during their early career years.

Jackson has received numerous honors and awards throughout her career, including the Nick Norgan Award for Best Article in Annals of Human Biology in 2009, the Ernest E. Just Prize in Medical and Public Health Research from the Medical University of South Carolina in 2012, the STEM Woman Researcher of the Year Award from Howard University in 2017, and the Charles R. Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropology in 2020. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Georgia and the University of Khartoum in Sudan as well as a Senior Fulbright Fellow in Egypt.

References

Knudson, Mary (1997) Fatimah Lind Collier Jackson Biography. University of Lincoln: Lincoln, Nebraska.

Mulla, Sameena A. (2020) “In Conversation with Fatimah Jackson: The Life and Career of An African American Muslim Biological Anthropologist.” Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research Publications. Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Marquette University.

The Archaeological Institute of America’s Archaeology Abridged series presents:

Traitors or Native Conquistadors? The Role of Tlaxcala in the Fall of Aztec Mexico

A free lecture by David Carballo on Thursday, March 23 at 1pm CT

Following three centuries of colonial rule, when Mexicans achieved their independence from Spain they embraced prehispanic cultural symbols and labelled Indigenous groups who had allied with Spaniards in the sixteenth century as “traitors”, particularly the traditional Mexica-Aztec foes, the Tlaxcaltecs.��Recent scholarship has questioned such categorizations as a simplification of Native agency in a time of European colonial expansion.��In this talk, David Carballo will provide an overview of Tlaxcaltec resistance and resilience both during the Aztec period and early New Spain. Register at https://www.archaeological.org/march-virtual-lectures-with-david-carballo/.

The Milwaukee Area Biblical Archaeology Society presents:

Early Christian Travel in Macedonia and Greece

A free lecture by Dr. Glen L. Thompson on Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 7:30 PM

At Reichel Lecture Hall, FM15, Wisconsin Lutheran College and live online on Zoom: . Dr. Thompson is currently leading a tour in Greece and will present an update on his research on Roman roads that the apostle Paul may have used in Greece during his travels.

The 51���� at Waukesha Library and the Organization de Lideres Latino Americanos (OLLA) student organization at the Waukesha campus are pleased to announce an art exhibit:

��Arte de Quilotoa: Ecuadorian Art in Response to the COVID Pandemic

Opening reception on Tuesday, March 28th at noon in the 51���� at Waukesha Library. Light refreshments will be served.

The exhibit consists of twelve contemporary paintings by Indigenous artists from the rural community of Quilotoa. These works reflect the impact that COVID has had on indigenous communities in the South American country and were commissioned as part of an ongoing research project by 51���� at Waukesha anthropology faculty member, Joe Quick. Dr. Quick’s dissertation (UW Madison, 2018) is on indigenous development and institution-building in the highlands of Ecuador. The paintings will become part of the permanent art collection at the Waukesha campus.��On display in the library from March 28 through May 26.

ASU Publication Workshop

April 7^th at noon in Sabin 332

Come hear how it is done by those who have done and are continuing to do it!. All of our presenters have first-hand experience with the publication process, as authors, editorial assistants and editors. Speakers include Professor Emily Middleton, Dr. Richard Edwards, and Field Notes editor-in-chief, Ann Eberwein.