Flooding, Drought, Fires and Extinctions: How Did Florida’s Foragers Respond to the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition?

Summary

While directly-dated sites are somewhat rare, northern Florida contains an extremely rich archaeological record of diagnostic artifacts from the Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods. Very commonly, Early Archaic diagnostics are discovered at the same sites as Paleoindian diagnostics. The Paleoindian components are presumed to be Pleistocene in age, while the Early Archaic is generally but not universally associated with early Holocene ages. Recent research we have been conducting in northwestern Florida has refined archaeological and paleoenvironmental records for the period 15,500-8,000 cal B.P. at several multicomponent archaeological sites through improved radiocarbon records and numerous proxy records. We therefore can discuss local system response to global climate change with increasing resolution. This also allows us to refine our discussion of human activity on this changing landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Human Adaptations to Lateglacial and Early Holocene Climate and Environmental Changes: Towards a Trans-Atlantic Perspective (Part 1)

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