Daryl Fedje

Hakai Beach Institute · Archaeology

Multi-proxy palaeoecological analyses of lake cores from two sites on northern Vancouver Island reveal previously undocumented non-arboreal environments in the region during the late Pleistocene. Radiocarbon, pollen, sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA), diatom, and grain size analyses indicate that Topknot Lake on the west coast of northern Vancouver...

Karst cave investigations in the south of Haida Gwaii have opened a small window on human and paleontological components of the early post-glacial landscape. At three cave locations (K1, Gaadu Din 1 and Gaadu Din 2) our investigations recovered a paleontological record extending from ca. 13,400 to 11,000 years ago and a small number of human artifa...

The Bering Land Bridge connecting North America and Eurasia was periodically exposed and inundated by oscillating sea levels during the Pleistocene glacial cycles. This land connection allowed the intermittent dispersal of animals, including humans, between Western Beringia (far north‐east Asia) and Eastern Beringia (north‐west North America), chan...

On Quadra Island, west coast Canada, a series of marine terraces formed during a period of rapid marine regression from 200 m to 1 m above modern levels between ca. 14,500 and 12,000 years ago. Within this period of regional marine regression, evidence points to brief periods of sea level stillstand and even marine transgressions. It is hypothesize...

To better understand the depositional context of Late Pleistocene human tracks found at archaeology site EjTa-4 on Calvert Island, on the Pacific Coast of Canada, we present here the results of an experiment designed to recreate the conditions by which these tracks were formed, preserved and then revealed through excavation. Based on radiocarbon ag...

The Bering Land Bridge connecting North America and Eurasia was periodically exposed and inundated by oscillating sea levels during the Pleistocene glacial cycles. This land connection allowed the intermittent dispersal of animals, including humans, between Western Beringia (far north-east Asia) and Eastern Beringia (north-west North America), chan...

In 2016, 2017 an intertidal excavation program was conducted at the outer coastal archaeological site EkTb-9 in the Ńúláẃiťv Tribal Area of Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) territory, British Columbia, Canada. Haíɫzaqv oral history marks this area as a place of origin and longstanding ancestral histories (núyṃ́) have been derived from Ńúláẃiťv. The sea level cu...

The Pacific coast of North America is a hypothesized route by which the earliest inhabitants of the Americas moved southwards around the western margin of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet just after the last glacial maximum. To test this hypothesis, we have been using a stepwise process to aid in late Pleistocene archaeological site discovery along the co...

Little is known about the ice age human occupation of the Pacific Coast of Canada. Here we present the results of a targeted investigation of a late Pleistocene shoreline on Calvert Island, British Columbia. Drawing upon existing geomorphic information that sea level in the area was 2–3 m lower than present between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago, we b...