Watercraft Migration, Indigeneous Maritime Mobility

Discussions on the possible origin of Europe's first boats - 11,500 BP

Three decades ago Detlev Ellmers suggested that hide (skin) boats were being used to hunt swimming reindeer in glacial lakes of northern Germany's Upper Palaeolithic. This paper presents new material in support of Ellmers' contention. A paleo-osteological study from Stellmoor suggests that arrows were directed at the neck and upper shoulders from above and behind, at close range which can be considered evidence of them being shot by hunters in boats as the animals were swimming. Lyngby axes are linked to this hunting technique which provides possible distribution and dating for this proposed early boat technology.

Settlements and Seafaring: Reflections on the Integration of Boats and Settlements Among Marine Foragers in Early Mesolithic Norway and the Yámana of Tierra del Fuego

Abstract excerpt:
The referred studies point out that ca. 90% of the settlements are located at what were islands at the time, demonstrating that the settlers arrived and departed by boat. These are all proxy data for the pivotal role of “missing” boats in the Early Mesolithic period. The lack of woods suggests that Early Mesolithic boats were skin canoes.
Independent of their construction, the boats must have been a decisive instrument in subsistence strategies that also greatly influenced logistics and settlement patterns.

Skin Boats in Scandinavia? Evaluating the Maritime Technologies of the Neolithic Pitted Ware Culture

Open skin boats of the Aleutians, Kodiak Island, and Prince William Sound

Evguenia Anichtchenko_2012
Introduction
It is hard to find an item more symbolic of the very identity of Indigenous maritime cultures than boats. As the most complicated technology of pre-industrial societies, and as objects of power and prestige, boats embody significant aspects of social development, material culture, and spirituality. Mobility helped position them as manifestations of ethnic, tribal, or personal identity. From the first sighting, a specific boat type would identify who was aboard and what their intentions were. This sense of cultural ownership and the firm association between specific cultures and their watercraft have often resulted in a static approach to the study of Indigenous boats, preventing a much needed attempt to analyse them as a dynamic phenomenon of art and technology evolving in time and space.

Open Passage: Ethno-Archaeology of Skin Boats and Indigeneous Maritime Mobility of North American Arctic

Evguenia V. Anichtchenko_Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy_December 2016

Going By Boat: The Forager-Collector Continuum at Sea

Ames 2002 download PDF text

The Kelp Highway Hypothesis: Marine Ecology, the Coastal Migration Theory, and the Peopling of the Americas

Discussion excerpt:
By definition, a coastal route could also have been traversed by maritime peoples entirely at or near sea level, with no major geographic barriers after about 15,000 years ago. The linear distribution of similar coastal habitats and resources could have provided expanding human populations with an ecologically similar and easily followed migration corridor from northeast Asia to northwest North America and beyond.
...A variety of archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and geological evidence provides growing support that one or more coastal migrations contributed to the peopling of the Americas (Erlandson 2002; Fedje et al. 2004; Gruhn 1994; Kemp et al. 2007).
...Given the rising seas, coastal erosion, and dramatic coastal landscape changes that have occurred since the end of the LGM, proving that such a coastal migration took place will be extremely challenging. More archaeological research is urgently needed on land and beneath the sea to help search for late Pleistocene sites
Also see paper [Erlandson et al] from 2008: Life on the edge: early maritime cultures of the Pacific Coast of North America

An Oceanographic Perspective on Early Human Migrations to the Americas

Ice and ocean constraints on early human migrations into North America along the Pacific coast

Growing evidence for a human presence in the Americas prior to 15,000 y ago—when ice sheets blocked transit through the continental interior—imply a Pacific Coast route was the more likely pathway for dispersals from Beringia into North America between ~26,000 and 14,000 y ago. The feasibility of coastal migration at various times depended on the extent of Cordilleran glaciers, sea ice, the strength of ocean currents, and the productivity and availability of marine and terrestrial resources. Based on paleoclimate records and climate models, we estimate that 24,500 to 22,000 and 16,400 to 14,800 y ago were the most environmentally favorable time windows for a coastal migration during the period when the interior route was blocked.

See Ocean Currents and Migration by Watercraft.

excerpt:
Expanded area of coastal land due to the retreat of marine-terminating glaciers, warmer climate conditions, and the attenuation of strong ocean currents may have facilitated greater ease of coastal movement and accommodated larger populations, consistent with an increase in evidence for coastal occupation after ~14 ka in British Columbia,[including] Haida Gwaii, Oregon, and the Channel Islands.

Favourable times for migration excerpt:

This leaves the intervals 24.5 to 22 ka and 16.4 to 14.8 ka as the most environmentally viable time windows to accommodate early coastal dispersals of humans from Beringia into North America. Conditions likely became more amenable for migration via watercraft during the mid-deglacial, when intermediate sea levels (–75 m) inundated shelves and climate warmed during the Bølling–Allerød (14.7 to 12.9 ka), attenuating coastal currents and exposing more ice-free terrestrial areas along the coast. These insights from paleoenvironmental records may help focus future efforts to find further evidence for late Pleistocene human occupations around the North Pacific Rim, including archaeological reconnaissance on paleoshorelines and now-submerged islands dating to the most viable time periods for coastal migration. Paleocurrent, climate, and sea-ice reconstructions reveal how climate changes may have facilitated or hindered movement by ancient seafarers in different oceanic regions, which when paired with archaeological and genomic data, may provide insights into coastal dispersals by ancient humans.

The Bering Transitory Archipelago: stepping stones for the first Americans

Life on the edge: early maritime cultures of the Pacific Coast of North America

On the trail of ancient mariners

Most archaeologists think the first Americans arrived by boat. Now, they're beginning to prove it [2017]
Excerpt:
On Cedros Island, artifacts suggest that people found diverse ways to make a living from the sea. That isn't a given because 13,000 years ago, the island was connected to the mainland, hanging off the Baja peninsula like a hitchhiker's outstretched thumb (see map, below); early sites cluster around freshwater springs that would have been several kilometers inland back then. But Des Lauriers's work reveals that the Cedros Islanders ate shellfish, sea lions, elephant seals, seabirds, and fish from all sorts of ocean environments, including deep-water trenches accessible only by boat. But older coastal sites are beginning to turn up. This year[2017] Dillehay announced the discovery of a nearly 15,000-year-old site at Huaca Prieta, about 600 kilometers north of Lima. Its earliest residents lived in an estuary 30 kilometers from the Pacific shoreline but still ate mostly shark, seabirds, marine fish, and sea lions (Science Advances, 24 May), and their artifacts resemble those at other coastal sites. “I was stunned how similar [the tools of Huaca Prieta] were to [those of] Cedros Island,” Davis says.
See also journal article from 2005:
The Watercraft of Isla Cedros, Baja California: Variability and Capabilities of Indigenous Seafaring Technology along the Pacific Coast of North America

A note concerning Flake axes and Umiaks

Additional reading:

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, by Edwin Tappan Adney and Howard Irving Chapelle

The Project Gutenberg eBook_Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. 1964
See ch 7. Arctic Skin Boats: by Howard I. Chapelle_ The Umiak__The Kayak

Pleistocene Water Crossings and Adaptive Flexibility Within the Homo Genus

Main Page

Links:

Watercraft Migration, Indigeneous Maritime Mobility