Peering into the past Cape vegetation during the Last Glacial Maximum using species distribution modelling and dynamic global vegetation modelling

Summary

The Cape has a rich archaeological record that spans the Quaternary. Understanding shifts and changes of vegetation across this landscape will help to contextualise this record and understand the prehistoric resource paleoscape. In order to do this we couple high-resolution regionally downscaled climate simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum, landscape features (e.g. geology, aspect, slope) and two different approaches to modelling vegetation: species distribution modelling (SDM) and dynamic global vegetation modelling (DGVM). In this talk, we cover the reasons for using a multi-pronged approach to vegetation modelling and, more importantly, what vegetation do the models predict for the southern Cape coast during the Last Glacial Maximum. The predictions are compared between approaches and with existing paleoarchives. In addition, we utilise these modelled vegetation changes to test hypotheses regarding the resource paleoscape for early humans; such as the hypothesis that the abundance of heat-treated silcrete in the archaeological record is linked to the availability of fuel-wood.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Building the hunter-gatherer’s paleoscape on the South African coast: Environment, landscape, and foraging resources   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage