The Kawartha Lakes region of south-central Ontario is dominated by water bodies and rivers, where humans are known to have lived since at least 10,500 years ago, only shortly after the retreat of glaciers from the region. Since this time, water levels within the region have changed dramatically as a result of various geophysical, climatological, and human-induced-phenomenon, leaving modern water levels at a maximum high-stand. While it is acknowledged within the local archaeological community that these hydrological dynamics have resulted in the inundation of much of the region's past terrestrial and culturally active landscapes, cultural research into the region's lakes and waterbodies have to date been very few and limited in scale. The subject of this thesis concerns a cultural assessment of the inundated landscapes around an island within Pigeon Lake of the Kawartha Lakes region, known as Jacob Island. Using a series of integrated methods including bathymetric modeling, shoreline and ecological reconstruction, and in-water-visual artefact survey, the goals of this research relate to illuminating the nature of the Kawartha Lakes region's underwater archaeological record and associating specific cultural occupations and land-use strategies with Jacob island's inundated landscapes.
Author Keywords: inundated landscapes, landscape archaeology, Ontario Archaeology, underwater archaeology