Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

In the Americas, indirect evidence of watercraft has recently been extended to roughly 13,000 to 11,000 calendar years ago (Erlandson 2002; Erlandson et al. 1996; Johnson et al. 2002). It remains unclear, however, what types of watercraft early peoples used and how these relate to boats described in ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources. North American coastal peoples used a variety of boats, including dugout and plank canoes, tule rafts, and skin boats (Gould 2000; Hudson and Blackburn 1982).