Archaeological Evidence for Village Abandonment Associated with Late Holocene Earthquakes at the Northern Cascadia Subduction Zone

Ian Hutchinson · Alan D. McMillan

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Maritime and Coastal Archaeology earthquake and tectonic studies Earthquake and Disaster Impact Studies

Abstract

Geologic evidence suggests that great (magnitude 8 or larger) earthquakes, or series of such earthquakes, occurred six times in the past 3000 yr at the northern Cascadia subduction zone. The archaeological record, and native oral traditions, demonstrate that native villages along the adjacent coasts of southern British Columbia and Washington State were occasionally abandoned in the late Holocene as a result of these earthquakes and associated tsunamis. We infer the temporal pattern of village occupation and abandonment from midden stratigraphy and from an activity index based on the probability distributions of radiocarbon ages at 30 archaeological sites in three regions of northern Cascadia. Deposits of probable tsunami origin are interbedded with, or bound, cultural strata at several sites. Earthquakes probably predate hiatuses in occupation, or periods of low inferred human activity, at many sites. The strongest correlation between earthquake incidence and site abandonment occurs in the Nootka Sound region. Effects of tsunamis vary with village location, coastal morphology, and late Holocene sea-level history.

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1840Smithsonian contributions to knowledge 1951The Northern and Central Nootkan Tribes

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2002When the Mountain Dwarfs Danced: Aboriginal Traditions of Paleoseismic Events along the Cascadia Subduction Zone of Western North America 2007Finding Fault: Indigenous Seismology, Colonial Science, and the Rediscovery of Earthquakes and Tsunamis in Cascadia 2003Large earthquakes and the abandonment of prehistoric coastal settlements in 15th century New Zealand 2001Catastrophic seismic-related events and their impact on prehistoric human occupation, coastal New Zealand 2005Earthquakes and tsunami as elements of environmental disturbance on the Northwest Coast of North America 2014Geo-archaeological evidence for a Holocene extreme flooding event within the Arabian Sea (Ras al Hadd, Oman)2007Folklore and earthquakes: Native American oral traditions from Cascadia compared with written traditions from Japan 2018Māori oral histories and the impact of tsunamis in Aotearoa-New Zealand

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