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Marine submersion of an archaic moa-hunter occupational site, Shag River estuary, North Otago

Abstract At Shag River estuary, North Otago, New Zealand, parts of an Archaic moa-hunter occupation site (AD 1340–1410) lie beneath 50 cm of saltmarsh sediment at a modern elevation of 0.3 m below mean high water. Fossil saltmarsh foraminiferal assemblages in the overlying cored sediment provide high-tidal palaeo-elevation estimates (Modern Analogue Technique) that indicate a gradual rise in relative sea level of 0.59±0.05 m since that time. This part of the moa-hunter site appears to have been located on an unvegetated high-tidal sand flat at the time of occupation. There is no evidence that supports previously hypothesised coseismic compaction of underlying sediment as a cause for the submergence during the time of occupation. Comparison with other saltmarsh foraminiferal records in southern New Zealand suggests that the moa-hunter occupation occurred during the interval of lowest sea level in the last millennium (early part of the Little Ice Age) and that approximately half the subsequent sea-level rise occurred after AD 1900.