A Record of Late Holocene Volcanic Activity from Highland Guatemala

Summary

A record of late Holocene volcanic activity in highland Guatemala was inferred from sediment and tephra stratigraphy in two cores from Lake Amatitlan. Electron microprobe analysis of glass from the tephra samples suggests most eruption deposits are of local origin, coming from nearby Volcanoes Pacaya and Fuego. The 6th-century Ilopango ash is clearly visible, and a few tephra samples have not been correlated to particular volcanoes or eruption events. Using dates from this sequence with others from regional studies of eruptive histories from Fuego and Pacaya, we present a constrained age model spanning from about ~2.7 to 0.6 kbp to understand the timing and frequency of volcanic history. We find that volcanism was episodic, with periods of high-frequency eruptions followed by periods of relative quiescence. This model is relevant to our understanding of regional patterns of urbanization, population growth, and political centralization.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage