In the Wake of the Flood: Identifying Potential Human Habitation Sites in the Submerged Landscapes of the Visayan Sea

Rob Rownd

Submerged landscape archaeology has demonstrated that large portions of prehistoric coastal environments now lie beneath modern seas. During the Last Glacial Maximum, sea levels were approximately 130m lower than today, exposing extensive coastal plains across ISEA. As sea levels rose during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene, many of these landscapes were inundated, potentially submerging archaeological evidence of early coastal migration and settlement. Despite the potential significance of these early shores, systematic investigation of drowned landscapes in the Philippine archipelago has been sporadic and limited. This paper evaluates the potential of the Visayan Sea in the central Philippines as a location for a deep study of submerged landscapes and explores the application of airborne bathymetric LiDAR as a new surveying tool for mapping shallow marine environments. Recent advances in LiDAR technology enable rapid, high-resolution mapping of coastal seafloors morphology across large areas, allowing archaeologists to identify geomorphic indicators of former shorelines, including terraces, paleochannels, and sheltered basins that may have supported human activity. The study outlines a staged survey strategy beginning with a shallow-water pilot survey around Bantayan Island (0–12 m) to test the detection of anthropogenic features such as stone fish weirs, followed by an expanded shelf survey (12–40 m) designed to identify earlier Holocene shoreline surfaces. By integrating sea-level reconstruction with high-resolution remote sensing, this research highlights the Visayan Sea as an important case study for advancing submerged landscape archaeology in ISEA.