| II. A. Goals:
Ongoing IKIP paleo-biological/paleoecological research applies archaeological,
zooarchaeological, geological, and paleoenvironmental data towards a better
understanding of the ecological and biogeographical history of the Kuril
Islands. These data will help us to identify phases of human settlement
across the island chain and to assess the impact of human occupation on
indigenous flora and fauna. Indeed it is the probable impact of humans
on isolated island ecosystems that makes the IKIP archaeological research
most relevant to the ongoing study of contemporary biodiversity. The potential
to recover evidence of prehistoric biota preserved in archaeological deposits
gives us the opportunity to reconstruct environmental and subsistence parameters
of the past. But more importantly these data allow us to assess how varying
ecological conditions through time impacted adaptations and to put the
contemporary biogeography of the Kuril Islands into historical perspective.
Starting from this general orientation, we launched the 2000 field season
with several more specific goals, realizing that one field season would
give us only a chance to assess the potential of a larger scale paleo-biological
project in the near future. The following goals remain cornerstones of
the ongoing analysis and plans for continued investigation. The goals include:
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1. To identify the earliest human colonization of this maritime region.
This evidence is relevant to questions concerning original maritime adaptations
on the North Pacific, the initiation of human impacts on Kuril terrestrial
and littoral ecology, and the possibility of maritime connections with
the Aleutian Islands and North America from Late Pleistocene times forward.
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2. To document the scale and periodicity of human occupation in different
regions and on islands of different geographical position, size, and environment
through time, as a function of island biogeography. This is accomplished
by locating, mapping, and testing archaeological deposits throughout the
Kuril chain. The outcome of this pursuit will be settlement pattern analyses
that incorporate dated archaeological site distributions and geological,
ecological, and geographical data.
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3. To track the relationship between human paleo-economy and changing biodiversity
in the Kuril Archipelago. To do this we collect, identify and quantify
zooarchaeological remains (bone and shell from archaeological garbage deposits),
plot changes in relative composition as well as the presence/absence statistics
of anomalous species (extinct locally or globally today), and compare these
with documented biotic assemblages.
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4. To reconstruct late Quaternary paleoecology and climate. We are currently
pursuing this through study of stratified pollen samples and botanical
macrofossil analysis on archaeological charcoal samples. Future research
will seek to add other proxy measures to this list possibly including geochemical
analysis of lake sediments that serve as measures of prehistoric variation
in anadromous fish productivity.
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5. To reconstruct the late Quaternary geological histories of the Kuril
Islands as they have in turn facilitated, altered, and in some cases obscured
archaeological deposits and as these histories would have impacted the
distribution and adaptations of prehistoric inhabitants (human and non-human).
To this end, the team volcanologist, Dr. Yoshihiro Ishizuka, studies pyroclastic
geomorphology, and sedimentology. Dr. Carole Mandryk, team geoarchaeologist/
paleoecologist, studies landform history and its relation to archaeological
site location, deposition and preservation. Future research will include
the study of Holocene tsunami deposits, earthquake history, and coastal
emergence/ submergence through study of diatom assemblages from near-shore
sediment cores and continued mapping of former sea level indicators includingwave-cut
notches and marine terraces.
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