Human-Environmental Dynamics on the Atlantic Coast of North America

The shorelines and estuaries of North America’s Atlantic coast have undergone significant environmental and cultural changes since the Last Glacial Maximum, including the inundation of thousands of square kilometers of land, major shifts in plant and animal distributions, the arrival of humans, and the proliferation and diversification of indigenous peoples. Subsequently, the arrival of Europeans and widespread urbanization and industrialization have caused significant environmental changes as well. With millions of people living along the Atlantic coast today, and many coastal ecosystems in states of crisis, archaeology provides a perspective spanning millennia of interactions between climate change, coastal ecosystems, and human societies. This symposium brings together scholars focused on the prehistoric Atlantic Coast and the Native American peoples who called it home for thousands of years. Ranging from the Canadian Maritime Provinces to the Florida Keys, the papers in this electronic symposium will focus on a range of issues significant to coastal archaeologists, including: sea level fluctuations and landscape change, the interaction between human culture/society and environment, the relevance of coastal archaeology to modern ecological issues, and future directions. These synthetic papers for each region will serve as a platform for discussion in the session at the meeting.